Insights from Indigenous Approaches to Learning

I am not an Indigenous person. This fact places important boundaries on what I can rightly and meaningfully say about Indigenous approaches to learning. I can intellectualize about it, I can understand and appreciate the merits of these approaches, and even explain them to a certain degree. But I cannot feel them as part of my cultural experience.  This is an important distinction. I am not a knowledge keeper of these traditions in any way. Nor is my personal experience of education and its systems burdened by a deeply fraught, violent, and malign history.  I merely offer here, with respect and admiration, and with loose brush strokes, some of what I have gleaned over the years, through reading, and listening, and talking with people. The first thing I’ll say is that to even have a chapter heading titled “Indigenous Approaches to Learning” is problematic. It conveys two things that are not quite right. It’s not quite right to suggest something singular in an Indigenous Approach to learning. There is variation here, mirroring the variation that exists between nations, between cultures, between traditions that exist across huge expanses of time and territory. It is not a single thing. And it is also not quite right to suggest something wholly separate, a separate chapter, a separate idea, a separate instruction. An embrace of Indigenous approaches to learning means, not a tacking on, but a weaving in. I do hope that some of the messages and advice and particular slant of what’s contained in these texts rhyme in some way with an Indigenous sensibility – relational, humanistic, connected – and in that way move in a tiny way towards the weave. But I proceed here, awkwardly, with this inadequate tacking on, by describing what especially resonates for me with certain recurring, common themes of Indigenous pedagogy that can bear meaningfully on our work.

I am drawn to the idea of a Learning Spirit as described by Scott Tunison who writes:

The ―learning spirit is a conceptual rather than a concrete entity that emerges from the exploration of the complex interrelationships that exist between the learner and his or her learning journey. All beings, both animate and inanimate, colour and breathe life into one‘s learning spirit. As such, the learning spirit itself is not quantifiable.  But, when the spirit is absent, learning becomes difficult, unfulfilling, and, perhaps, impossible (Tunison 2007, p. 11).

This is a nuanced, sophisticated idea that Learning Strategists and other educators try to get at with more prosaic language, invoking concepts like student motivation, or a learning stance, or dispositions to learning. Learning Spirit captures something more expansive, but there is a resonance here with what that language of motivation/disposition/stance tries to get at, that core concern of learning strategy work: asking the question, what is our rightful target – the thing to be learned or the spirit to learn it? Obviously both –  but this centering of a “spirit” for learning is important and deeply relevant to learning strategy work as we ponder questions about student readiness, and attitude, and health, and context, and identity, and self-esteem – the varied prerequisites of a good learning experience. We must attend to the learning spirit in students because “…when it is absent, learning becomes difficult…”

This idea of learning spirit, in a way, foregrounds other interconnected elements of an Indigenous approach to learning – things like the importance of place. From an Indigenous perspective, place matters in a way that is more profound than simply location. Place is not simply a setting for learning, it is integral to the learning, it is bound up in it. Place is not neutral. Place is the teacher. Again, there is some rhyme here with other educational influences, but it’s important not to equate these deep conceptions of place with mere “outdoor education”. As Learning Strategists, we can be attuned to some of this in small and not-so-small ways. We can acknowledge place, and territory, we can offer spaces that are hospitable to people, we can tune in to where people are coming from (literally and figuratively), we can understand that school itself is a deeply troubling place for many people, and we can invoke the lessons that a place can offer as an extension to what we teach.

Similarly, I am moved by the idea of relationship and the interconnectedness of things – a concept that figures prominently in Indigenous pedagogy and epistemology. Again, this is a mostly intellectual exercise for me, it’s not part of my cultural experience or being. But there is something compelling about the relationship between discreteness and wholeness that offers a productive lens through which to view some of our work, something richer than simply declaring we support “the whole student” (which is true but a bit empty). Western traditions tend to separate things into taxonomies, classifications, categories – an extremely productive way of organizing the world. But it can also miss something of the interrelatedness of things in those acts of separating. Indigenous perspectives get closer – there is a naming of things that are separate – four directions of the Medicine Wheel, the Four R’s of Indigenous Education, the Nine First People’s Principles of Learning, the four dimensions of learning (awareness, understanding, knowledge, and wisdom), the four dimensions of students (mind, body, emotion, spirit) – but there is, in these conceptions, an explicit message about interconnectedness, that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The metaphor of braids or weave helps – distinct, discrete threads but entwined.

The last thing I’ll say here is perhaps what moves me most – the wisdom of elders. Ours is a profession that favours youth, especially if it sits inside a Student Affairs context. Indeed, we live in a world that overwhelmingly values youth over age. Getting older, it seems, is a diminishment. And this sentiment permeates the world of education where there is a relationship between the extent to which we value history in our profession and how much we value the elders in our midst who know and hold some of that history. And we are prone to dismiss this at our peril. Again,  I am not an Indigenous person so I would not pretend to represent adequately the intricate and varied roles that Elders play in the cultural lives of other folks. But surely, even at its simplest level, there is something good to be learned here, an acknowledgement that the traditions still rooted in a deep, abiding respect for generational roles and responsibilities, and an approach to living together grounded in “All My Relations”, – that this is good and important –  a thing that western traditions have in some ways lost.

It bears repeating that I speak to these things as an outsider from the traditions and teachings themselves, so it is descriptive rather than embodied. I am limited in what I can say because I am limited in what I can understand. I simply treat Indigenous pedagogy as part of the canon, as an integral part of the theory and practice of our work alongside other parts of that canon. It is also worth noting that many traditions from the history, theory, and practice of education invoke ideas about connection, and mind/body/spirit, relationship-building, storytelling and elder-wisdom – but when they are regarded, as they are meant to be, as woven together, not separate threads, it forms a unique pedagogical vision. These are generative ideas for any educator. Whether part of your cultural experience or not, they can influence what you attend to in your work, something more expansive, something more attuned to the totality of student experience of learning, not just a set of achievements and credentials met, but a fathomless part of the human experience. And further, what it may spark in you is a desire to use stories, real stories, your own stories, as a legitimate and productive mode of expression in teaching and learning contexts.