Trickster Chases the Tale of Education

About this book

"The story chronicles the collaborative efforts of Wildcat First Nation community members and North Queens School staff as we collaborate and learn initially through a salmon project based in the community and then through the implementation of a native studies course in the school. Both initiatives reflect our efforts to centre and legitimate Mi'kmaw knowledge in the school." Written in the form of a trickster tale, the book explores the challenges of incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being in education. The research uses Indigenous research methodology to examine, through storytelling, the work of a group of educators and members of a Mi'kmaq community in Nova Scotia whose collaborative projects addressed this challenge. Crow, a central trickster character in the story, embodies the wisdom of Indigenous Elders. The juxtapositioning of Crow and the academic writer, who understands the world through Western epistemology, highlights the convergence of these two worldviews in teaching and learning. Their dialogue demonstrates the need for educators to critically examine their assumptions about the world and to decolonize their thinking in order to participate in Aboriginal education. The narrative is an interweaving of voices from Elders, educators, Mi'kmaq community members and trickster figures that speak to the interconnectivity of all life. A salmon project reinforces the teachings of respect, reciprocity, and responsibility and, in so doing, emphasizes the need for repairing and strengthening relationships with other people and all other life on the land as fundamentally important to the efforts of decolonizing our minds."--