Entry #11

Hello everyone! It’s Alanna and I’m back to share another blog post with you. Today I want to share an experience I had in my second practicum trying to integrate Indigenous material into my lessons. In no way is this piece meant to be a bragging session about me and my culturally relevant lesson plans. I am in no way an expert in implementing Indigenous Knowledge nor will I ever be, but I tried it once and it seemed to work okay. I will also mention that the music video included in this post might trigger some individuals who have gone through similar experiences described in the song, it is very emotional, please watch what you are only comfortable viewing. 

First let me give you some context. I was teaching a grade 12 Academic English class in a rural Nova Scotia high school. I was teaching a poetry unit (which is often the most hated unit in every ELA class) but I wanted it to be different, I wanted to show my students how poetry is relevant and can be a way to make change in the world. In this particular lesson, my students and I were analyzing Marilyn Dumont’s poem “Helen Betty Osborne” which is a very powerful piece filled with emotion. Dumont is a Métis author and in the poem she writes about Indigenous icons and events that faced adversity.

Photo Credit: Alanna Saunders

My students were not confident in their analysis skills, so I knew we would have to tackle the poem line by line. This was not a bad thing as I knew there would be many references my students would need to look up as well as allusions, images and symbols they could highlight. Before we began to analyze the poem I showed students a music video as a way to prime them for the content they were to analyze. The song “Powerless” is by Nova Scotian rapper Classified and showcases the struggles young girls and women face, particularly Indigenous women. The video introduced the content in a familiar and engaging way. The video was directed by fellow Canadian and Grammy-nominated Andrew Hines. Hines shot the video on the Millbrook First Nations Reserve which is a Mi'kmaq community near Truro, N.S (Classified, 2018). 

After watching the video we discussed The Red Dress Campaign and how it raises awareness of Murdered and Missing Indigenous women and how that connects to the poem. We then began to analyze the text which started with the students annotating the poem with questions or highlighting lines they felt drawn to. From there we researched references to people we didn’t know and gained context to the poem. We then went one step further and looked at word choice within the text and discussed what the words meant to the poem and the author. This wasn’t a perfect analysis but with each read through we were able to go from surface reading to picking the poem apart to gain further meaning. By showing my students this process they were able to understand what type of things to look for when reading a poem, and to be comfortable asking questions and making connections even if no one else has the same idea. 

I should also mention that I purposefully tried to create an open and casual environment so my students would feel comfortable asking questions or hazarding guesses about the content of the poem and about analysis. I went about achieving this environment by trying to create a “coffee house” vibe with low lighting, snacks, a crackling fire video from YouTube and desks pulled together in a group. I told them I wanted it to feel like we were just hanging out in university at a local coffee shop discussing poetry (because isn’t that what all cool university students do?). I don’t know if they believed the university coffee shop thing but they did become more confident in analysis and they learned about the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women crisis in Canada. All in all, I think the lesson was successful and I plan to use a similar strategy again in the future. 

I know this was only one example of one lesson, and it doesn’t shed light on how to seamlessly weave Indigenous content into curriculum. But I hope it shows that it can be possible and small steps like one poem, one video or one story are better than taking no steps at all.   

References: 

Classified. (classifiedmusic). (2018, April 6). Classified- Powerless [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W69e9jDRq0

Dumont, M. (1996). Helen Betty Osborne. In A Really Good Brown Girl (pg. 20). London,ON: Brick Books. 

Greenslade, B. (2015, October 4). Red dress campaign looks to raise awareness about missing, murdered indigenous women. Global News. Retrieved from: https://globalnews.ca/news/2257745/red-dress-campaign-looks-to-raise-awareness-about-missing-murdered-indigenous-women/