Land Relationships Super Collective
The Land Relationships Super Collective, as we are imagining it, is a network of land-based projects. It is a contingent collaboration of autonomous efforts to decolonize, rematriate, and heal land.
The Land Relationships Super Collective is meant to provide a space for building mutual support and strategy sharing for organizations doing land-based work. In creating the Land Relationships Super Collective, we are actively avoiding the worst aspects of intermediary organizations.
Instead, we want to create something light, flexible and responsive--only for as long as it is needed--to support different paths toward decolonization and the repatriation of land.
We see this as an extension of our writings on decolonization, as a way to pursue the theories that have inspired us.
Our goals are to
- Learn about efforts to rematriate land, share practical advice, theorize together, and identify needs for resources and support, strategize on how best to find those resources and support.
- Hold space for future planning, for the long view of resurgence and relationships to land.
- Whenever possible, bring resources to participating members/organizations/collectives in the Super Collective.
Basket of Stars Workshop
Flood stories, are star stories. No one around here did not survive floods. (Ronnie Dean Harris, 2017)
It weakens us not to know our constellations. Everything is held by light. (Ronnie Dean Harris, 2017).
Basket of Stars is a gathering with the intended purpose of a collective inter-activation (Harris) to begin a conversation about our relationships to stars. Co-curated by Ronnie Dean Harris and Karyn Recollet, this conversation will shift our orientations to our kinstillatory (Recollet) connection to land - as relationships to land are coded in the stars. Within this gathering, we orient ourselves to this time and space to make statements of commitments and intentions towards orienting ourselves celestially, and to possibly activate a collective land statement. We ask that each participant come with a word for star (in an Indigenous language), a concept for star, and/or a star story.
Indigenous Knowledges and Pedagogies in Online Environments
This is the project which brings together the Indigenous MOOCs Research, First Nations Principals Course, and Naadmagit Ki Group, and Connected North
In the SSHRC-PDG funded project Indigenous knowledge and pedagogies in online environments: gaining insight into wise practices for web-based indigenous education innovation, our overall goal is to create a community-academic partnership to study and advocate for the advancement of respectful and appropriate inclusion of Indigenous knowledges and perspectives in online learning environments to benefit all learners.
Among our specific objectives:
- Establish a research network among partners who are immersed in innovative instructional design for Indigenous education in online environments.
- Identify innovative instructional designs to appropriately, meaningfully, and respectfully incorporate Indigenous perspectives and pedagogies in online environments.
- Identify ‘wise practices’ that balance respect for the sources and carriers of Indigenous knowledges along with the technological constraints and opportunities of online learning.
- Provide insights into the challenges and opportunities of fostering virtual learning communities based on traditional Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
- Create training and research opportunities that support the development of student research and instructional design skills while mentoring new scholars as they build their research portfolios.
- Share knowledge and wise practices in academic and community settings to contribute to the discussion and development of excellence in the delivery of Indigenous education through new media.
The initial partnership is composed of three projects, detailed below. Decisions on what ways to bring IK to these varied groups for varied purposes is one overarching theme for all three projects but they will each have their own partner member participation.
Collaborators in the Indigenous MOOC Research project (Jean-Paul Restoule and Jan Hare) have both designed and taught MOOCs about Indigenous education. Their Indigenous education MOOCs were the only ones to date to have been offered by universities in North America at the time of application and they have each used a different MOOC platform, Dr. Restoule’s on Coursera and Dr. Hare’s using EdX.
The collaborators in the First Nations Schools Principals’ Course (partners OISE and MAEI) have been working in partnership since May 2014 on designing a pilot course for education leaders working in band-operated schools. A new feature of the partnership involves a research role, learning from the process of designing and teaching a pilot course for principals as well as studying the translations from a pilot to a more regular offering in multiple sites by multiple teaching teams. The First Nations Schools Principals’ Course project is comprised of Dr. Restoule, and co-applicant Dr. Joseph Flessa, collaborators Cathy Lee, Coleen Scully-Stewart, Patricia Gaviria, all with an OISE affiliation, and Carlana Lindeman, of partner Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative.
The NKG Project is comprised of co-applicants Dr. Restoule and Dr. Styres of partner OISE, and Dr. Wemigwans of partner Naadmaagit Ki Group.