This conceptual paper outlines narrative reconciliation approaches in my Western Canadian teacher education class, including sharing and demonstrating expressive inquiry through writing and other arts as processes of resiliency. Several class cohorts champion dynamic causes in what Smith, (2024), names a “cloud of unknowing”, the belief that because they belong to a group or movement, they know the truth. Class discussions become heated and confrontational; therefore, I introduce narrative inquiry as inclusive, culturally sensitive expression in aesthetic venues that Smith, 2024, names ‘sensory foraging’, exploring individual and group voice through both lenses of reconciliation (Truth and Reconciliation, 2015) and resilience that Southwick et al., (2014), suggest highlights ‘adversity’, ‘adaptation’, and ‘trauma”. I provide examples of pedagogy and advocacy that embody course topics and integrate specialties and causes: Government Mandated First Nations Principals of Learning; Familial Cultural History, Past/Present; and Facing Adversities: Resiliency and Lived Experience. When student discussions and assignments suggest common ground, unit plan assignments become collaborative. For example, Environmental and Indigenous Cohorts collaborate to incorporate one First Nations Learning Principle, ‘Connectedness to Place’, with impacts of current government policies on increased wildfire activity and information and advocacy about traditional First Nations methods of Forest Management. Donald, 2022, suggests the students reach ‘kinship relationality’ through processes to find voices of resiliency for individual cultural history, reconciliation, and reciprocal relationships, collaborative learning experience planning around specialties and causes that integrate mandated First Nations Learning Principles.

Authors:
Lorna Ramsay, Stenberg College, Canada

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Lorna Ramsay,
Programme Facilitator (Special Education), Stenberg College, Surrey, B.C., Canada, and
Oak and Orca Bioregional School, Victoria, British Columbia (online).
Arts self-reflexive narrative inquiry towards reconciliatory pedagogy.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorna-ramsay-b440b9267/

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