Positionality & Purpose
I am the first generation in my family that did not attend Alberni Indian Residential School (AIRS). Thus, I am privileged compared to my parents because I did not physically experience Indian Residential Schools (IRS). Yet, I am oppressed because I indirectly experienced IRS. My earliest memory of oppression was my kindergarten teacher sending me home from a public school because I was “too pale.” However, my oppression was normalized. Unknowingly, John A. McDonald and Duncan Campbell Scott had succeeded and killed the Indian in me. I became ashamed to be different as I grew up colonial.
I returned to post-secondary at the age of 38 years to obtain my B.Sc. degree and I became known as an older, Indigenous female pursuing a degree in science. When I was 44 years old, I cried in my B.Ed. class as I learned for the first-time the nature of IRS. As a graduate student I became interested in culturally responsive mathematics, Indigenous Storyworks, ecopedagogy, the Truth and Reconciliation and the Calls to Action. I struggle along my road to reconciliation as I hear IRS survivor stories first for the first time. I have learned that my father was at AIRS during the food experiments and Arthur Henry Plint’s time.
So here I am, working towards my truth, my reconciliation. I will not wait for the governments or councils to increase my capacity. I feel I owe it to my charges to teach them the value of voice, to advocate for change, while learning to interpret, critique, question, value, and create counter data to challenge the power of privilege. I do not want my charges to be like me and learn of IRS in their mid-forties.
Purpose:
Although, I am only beginning, the purpose of this website is to share what I consider information and best practices for educators to develop teaching curriculum related to IRS and Aboriginal history for K-12 educators. A second purpose of this website is to share my attempt at challenging power as found in Data Feminism by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein. As, I aspire to teach my charges to challenge power through mathematics by using the Data Feminism seven principles to dismantle power.
D'Ignazio and Klein's, seven principles to dismantle power: 1. examine power (analyze how power operates in the world); 2. challenge power (challenge unequal power structures and work towards justice); 3. elevate emotion and embodiment (value multiple forms of knowledge); 4. rethink binaries and hierarchies (challenge the gender binary, systems of counting and classifying that perpetuate oppression); 5. embrace pluralism (complete knowledge comes from synthesizing multiple perspectives with priority given to local, Indigenous, and experiential ways of knowing); 6. consider context (data are not neutral or objective. They are products of unequal social relations, and this context is essential for conducting accurate, ethical analysis); 7. make labour visible (data science is the work of many hands, make this labour visible so that it can be recognized and valued).
Please join me on my journey as I gather and create tools to practice the seven principles to dismantle power to assist me in working towards implementing the Calls to Action within my classroom.