WIIKWEMKOONG—Wiikwemikong Board of Education has been at the forefront of enhancing education for Anishinaabe communities, not only within the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory but across the region. This year’s conference was jam-packed with workshops and seminars aimed at assisting educators working in First Nations with the tools they need to better engage with their charges and attracted educators from schools across Manitoulin and the North Shore.
This year’s keynote speaker was Lisa Lunney Borden, a professor in the faculty of education at St. Francis Xavier Universoty who holds the John Jerome Paul Chair for Equity in Mathematics education striving to improve outcomes in mathematics for Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian youth. She spoke on Enacting Equity in Mathematics Education.
Before her university career, Professor Lunney-Borden enjoyed teaching in We’koqma’q First Nation where she spent 10 years as a secondary mathematics teacher, a vice-principal and principal, as well as the provincial mathematics leader for all Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey’s schools in Nova Scotia.
She credits her students and the Mi’kmaw community for inspiring her to think differently about mathematics education, and those experiences continue to shape her work today. Committed to research and outreach that focuses on decolonizing mathematics education through culturally based practices and experiences that are rooted in Indigenous languages and knowledge systems.
Professor Lunney-Borden is a sought-after speaker both nationally and internationally and has a demonstrable passion for working with teachers and their students. She has helped to create the ‘Show Me Your Math’ program that has inspired thousands of Mi’kmaw youth to “share the mathematical reasoning inherent in their own community contexts,” and an outreach program, ‘Connecting Math to Our Lives and Communities’ that brings similar ideas to Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian youth as an afterschool program.
Professor Lunney-Borden currently serves as the vice-president of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group and sits on the Canadian Mathematical Society’s reconciliation committee.
Among the other presenters at the conference were elders Brian Peltier and Madeline Wemigwans, who spoke on making community connections, former Wiiwemkoong ogimaa and Robinson Huron Treaty Litigation Fund spokesperson Duke Peltier, who spoke on treaty education, Sophie Pheasant who delivered a talk on Holistic Assessment, Tara Rielley and Judith Martin, who delivered classroom management strategies, Natalie Parnell, who spoke on reading psychological assessments, Amy Shawanda spoke on researching Indigenous understandings of physical, mental, spiritual components of health, Natalie Neganegjig who delivered a talk on trauma-informed practices, Yvonne Harbinson spoke on understanding autism, Derek Debassige spoke on occupational therapy and physical therapy in the schools, artist James Mishibinijima delivered a talk on the Seven Grandfathers Teachings: A Journey to Self-Healing Book’ and Nimki Lavell who delivered a talk on applying land-based learning into the classroom.
The Expositor dropped into Mr. Lavell’s talk to learn more about what land-based learning entails and how it is best integrated into the classroom—or perhaps more accurately outside of the classroom and in the outdoors.
Mr. Lavell took the attendees through an assessment of what they thought land-based learning means in their schools, before delivering some thoughts on his approach. Mr. Lavell’s knowledge base includes a university career at York University that encompassed sustainability and conservation—followed up with a post-secondary study of Anishinaabe ways of learning at York. But his key foundation comes from his work in land-based learning with the Wiikwemkoong Board of Education.
Perhaps the key concept imparted by Mr. Lavell was the suggestion that educators find a land-based activity and then go back to the curriculum and find ways to integrate that learning into the class, rather than looking at the curriculum and trying to figure out a land-based activity that would fit. “That will provide a more organic and authentic experience,” he suggested.
“Too often land-based learning is going outside and cooking hotdogs over a fire or going to a sugar bush and standing around wondering what is going on,” he said. “We need to go deeper into experiences.”
“Not everything will go the way you planned,” he cautioned, “in fact, I will say that nothing will go exactly as you planned.” But it is reacting and adapting that the best learning opportunities will emerge.
