Your Voice Matters

Throughout this semester, I felt that all of the teachers and guest speakers have been warning us, for lack of a better word, about the responsibility of becoming a teacher. Our lecture hall at times felt like Uncle Ben was speaking to a room full of Peter Parkers, reminding us that with great power comes great responsibility. After all, educators shape the future of our society. And those who are educating the educators have a great responsibility as well.

One speaker that has made a profound impact on my journey as an educator was Patrick Aleck from the Stz’uminus First Nation. Patrick is a motivational speaker who talks about his experience as an Indigenous man with Cerebral Palsy and the mental health struggles he had to overcome to get to where he is today. He spoke very bluntly about many things that have happened to him personally and to his community. I could not ignore what he was saying even if I wanted too. He was loud, bold, and not afraid to speak his truth. I appreciated his raw and harsh honesty. Despite acknowledging the atrocities and discrimination he and his community had faced at the hands of colonial institutions and society, Patrick Aleck was not simply motivational or inspiring, he was empowering. Empowering us teachers and equipping us with the responsibility of our words and actions.

“Your voice matters.” Patrick would repeat this over and over and had us to repeat after him a few times too. I reflected deeper about what this really meant and I wrote some affirmations below to go along with my understandings of this phrase.

MY AFFIRMATIONS

My voice matters. I thought about this initially in terms of speaking out about injustice. Like Patrick, someone who has been abused or discriminated against needs to speak up and share their story. Their voice matters in helping others get through the pain too. Listeners may be looking for comfort and someone else’s voice could be the determining factor to help them heal.

My voice matters. What I choose to not discuss is an action in itself. If I do not acknowledge something as harmful or wrong, I am choosing that side because I chose to not speak up. I have privilege because of my white skin. I must use that privilege productively and mindfully to lift up those who may not have the opportunity or platform to speak to different issues. I have the responsibility to use my privilege for good.

My voice matters. When I was younger my Mother always said “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” Her Mother told her this too, and I assume that my Grandmother’s Mother repeated a similar sentiment. My mother also said “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” Be honest and have integrity. What you say says a lot about you.

My voice matters. Sometimes it is hard to choose kindness when someone has been so unkind to you, but forgiveness is a powerful weapon to combat hate. I am still learning about forgiveness in relation to my own life experiences. Hearing residential school survivors and victims of generational trauma and abuse talk about forgiveness baffles me. Their lives have been much more difficult and heart-breaking, yet many of our speakers choose to say “I forgive.” They use their voice strongly because they must, but kindly because they can.

My voice matters. I have important thoughts, experiences, and opinions that are worth sharing. No matter what I have told myself over the years I must ignore the negative self-talk and address my anxieties rather than push them away like they do not exist. I am not stupid, nor am I a know-it-all. I have worth and value and so do my words. Never apologize before speaking.

As Patrick taught us a song he wrote called “Equality,” I paid close attention to how he taught us the song. He never said “These are the words. This is the melody. This is the rhythm.” He began by explaining why he wrote this song and what he hopes it will accomplish. He had us close our eyes and forget the notion that we must sing well or accurately. Those things don’t matter. What matters is our voice and how we use it. We had to sing from the heart and let go of everything else. This whole experience was very empowering. Patrick gifted us the song to use and teach to our students. I felt humbled and privileged. As a music teacher, I cannot teach Indigenous songs because it is not appropriate for someone outside of the First Nation to take a song out of its context and teach it for academic reasons. Indigenous traditions in music often have specific purposes or spiritual ties. It is seen as stealing to perform or teach Indigenous music. I felt extremely grateful not only for the gifting of the song, but for what I had learned that day about my voice. There are many things I will learn about in the PDP regarding lesson planning, assessment, and the like, but the most important lesson I will learn is that my voice matters. I will remember this lesson for the rest of my life and I will work on recognizing and embracing the responsibility and privilege I have every chance I can.

Land as Pedagogy

I had many assumptions about what an academic paper should be; the content, the writing style, and in general it should never be too personal. Anything personal is a story and those are not factual academic papers. Because of this assumption I was surprised when I started reading Simpson’s “Land as Pedagogy” because to me it broke all conventions of academic writing. The first sentence speaks in the first person which goes against the number one rule in academic writing that teachers have been repeating since the beginning of academic writing. I began to consider why telling personal stories is looked down upon in academia. If someone learns something from an experience why is it not as legitimate as tests and figures? This mentality looks down upon Indigenous ways of Knowledge and Learning, as well as the Nishnaabeg intelligence that Simpson brings forth in this reading. In the story of Binoojiinh. there is a spiritual connection and relationship to the land, the animals, the family, and the community. I have never heard a story like this before so it was hard to understand at first but Simpson’s discussion helped me process what I had learned from the story.

Binoojiinh learned a tremendous amount over a two-day period—self-led, driven by both their own curiosity and their own personal desire to learn. They learned to trust themselves, their family, and their community. They learned the sheer joy of discovery. They learned how to interact with the spirit of the maple. They learned both from the land and with the land. They learned what it felt like to be recognized, seen, and appreciated by their community. They came to know maple sugar with the support of their family and elders. They come to know maple sugar in the context of love. (p. 150)

There was so much more learning occurring in Binoojiinh’s personhood that a teacher could not test on, or even more than Binoojiinh could express. Much of this knowledge is spiritual, larger than life. Words like self-led, curiosity, trust, discovery, recognition, support, love, cannot be taught and assessed by a colonial educator. Those are abstract concepts, but they were still learned and achieved through a process of learning by ‘coming to know’ with and on the land. This process of ‘coming to know’ seems innate to all humans, yet we overlook the significance of what we learn out of a classroom setting. On our first week of EDUC 400 I recall writing down “Eduction does not equal schooling.” This has stuck with me throughout my experiences and observations. Binoojiinh’s ‘education’ is self-led, on the land, and in relation to others. I really started to question what how children like Binoojiinh’s would be in a Westernized school? Simpson also wondered:

What if Binoojiinh had been in a desk at a school that didn’t honor at its core their potential within Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg intelligence? Or if they had been in an educational context where having an open heart was a liability instead of a gift? What if they had not been running around, exploring, experimenting, observing the squirrel . . . completely engaged in Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg ways of knowing? What if they hadn’t been on the land at all? (p. 153)

Many questions bounced around in my head. The questions go deeper than just me and my learnings, but those of my future students and the impacts on my community. How can I as an educator foster the ways of knowing that are heavily rooted in being physically on and with the land? Is it hypocritical or ironic in a sense when one says a land acknowledgement without being with the land and learning from it? The perspective that Simpson provided reminded me of the learning that took place for me outdoors, but it also reminded me that this type of knowledge and ‘coming to know’ is not just for children or of the old fashioned ways of living. These experiences of learning from the land happen every day and involve all variations of people. I feel more confident in advocating for having “class” outside because learning is more meaningful when done outside of a classroom. Learning is spiritual and lifelong.

References

Simpson, L. B. (2017). Land as pedagogy. In As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance (pp. 145-173). U of Minnesota Press.

Aleck, P. (2019). Gathering of the Salmon People. Lecture presented at SFU Education 400 seminar, Burnaby, BC.