K-12 Art Educators Learning from Indigenous Insight and Voices: A Collaborative Arts-Based Case Rooted with/in Moh’kins’tsis/Calgary, Alberta

• Main Author: Munroe, Vanessa Jean
• Other Authors: Scott, David Michael, Markides, Jennifer, Spring, Erin, Friesen, Sharon, Irwin, Rita
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Werklund School of Education 2024
• Subjects: arts-based research; K-12 arts education; K-12 educational leadership; ethical relationality; Indigenous education; Education; Education > Curriculum and Instruction; Fine Arts; Native American Studies; First Nations; inuit
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1880/118496; https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/43338

For over twenty years, Indigenous scholars, and their aspiring allies from around the world have been conducting educational research that has generated a wealth of evidence that “learning and teaching are an essential means of protecting and sustaining Indigenous forms of knowledge” (Smith, 2010a, p. 102). Together, their work has informed federal, provincial, and local policies and professional standards to action “Education for Reconciliation” (Government of Alberta, 2024, para. 2) in Canada. One area of focus has been fostering both teacher and “student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, p.7). As a non-Indigenous art teacher, school-based leader, and scholar-practitioner, I am personally attuned to how these professional guiding documents have placed increasing pressure on educators across the territories of the Niitsítapi (the Blackfoot speaking people) and the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta to examine and evolve their practice to “develop and apply foundational knowledge about First Nations, Métis and Inuit for the benefit of all students” (Alberta Education, 2023c, p. 5). At this time, there exists an “axiological void” (Donald, 2014, p. 2) as to how K-12 art teachers in Moh’kins’tsis/Calgary, Alberta should proceed in this work. Art teachers want to break the cycle of colonial engagements with Indigenous art and culture; however, many are fearful of doing something “wrong” (Scott & Gani, 2018). My collaborative arts-based case study attended to this significant problem of practice to better understand how learning from Indigenous insight and voices can provoke K-12 art educators to take up Indigenous art rooted with/in this place in good and ethical ways in their classrooms.