Indigenous literature in Canada continues to grow in popularity with Indigenous authored books and other resources increasingly taught in high schools and post-secondary classrooms in Ontario (Talaga, 2019). Based on presenter one’s positionality as a high school educator, and both presenters’ conversations with other educators, we realize that there is sometimes apprehension when adopting Indigenous authored resources due to a variety of concerns including having enough background knowledge to contextualize the resource, having to create new lesson plans, and finding appropriate accompanying resources. Given the Euro-centric biases in education (Battiste, 2013), it is important that educators are prepared to include these literatures in ways that do not perpetuate colonialism. In our presentation, we describe the collaborative approach we have taken to develop an open educational resource (OER) related to supporting Indigenous literatures in educational spaces.
"Moon of the Crusted Snow" is a post-apocalyptic thriller written by Anishinaabe author Waubgeshig Rice, from Wasauksing First Nation. The novel is immensely entertaining, while providing meaningful insight into Indigenous issues in Canada such as land theft and the lasting impacts of colonialism. Its content also connects to real-world events as we live through the global COVID-19 pandemic. Given the lack of OERs on Indigenous literature, we developed a reading guide to support the use of "Moon of the Crusted Snow" in high school, post-secondary, and other learning contexts. Developed in collaboration with the author, the guide includes theme summaries, Creative Commons images, relevant quotes from the author, passages from the novel, discussion questions, activities, and resources. Our collaboration also involved the OER Lab at Ontario Tech University in which students from different academic and cultural backgrounds assisted in creating this guide. Our collaborative story speaks to the significance of diversity of voices, backgrounds, and experiences when developing OERs.
The presentation will include an overview of the process developing the resource, how it supports Indigenization, as well as discussion and an activity from the resource which is currently being adapted for Pressbooks.
References
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Assess the usefulness of the OER, or its specific elements, for their teaching and learning context
- Identify other Indigenous resources from the OER to implement in their teaching and learning contexts
- Reflect on potential collaborative OERs they can develop based on their own teaching and learning contexts
