Teaching in the taiga: learning to live where I am

• Main Author: Hagens, Shanna
• Other Authors: Oberg, Antoinette A.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Indigenous education; cross-cultural education; autobiography; currere; bioregionalism; UVic Subject Index::Humanities and Social Sciences::Education; Arctic; taiga
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/2942

I am a non-Aboriginal teacher from the South, living and teaching in the Canadian North, traditional home to Aboriginal people for thousands of years. The Aboriginal people of the North have come to know the land deeply, their knowing rooted in an intimate understanding of and respect for the natural world. Coming to this land as a foreigner, I believe it is incumbent upon me to live and interact in the community in a way that respects the culture and way of life of the community. In this inquiry, I explore what it is to live respectfully, by relating to place and community from a position of unknowing, locating myself moment to moment as I am involved and implicated teaching and living within the flow of the community and the rhythms of the land. Specifically, I explore what it is to be connected and entangled, yet have no permanent roots. For this purpose, I draw on my experiences teaching and living in a number of northern locations throughout the taiga sub-arctic biome and represent experiences and understanding through mixed genre and multimedia such as poetry, descriptions, stories, photos and journal entries. The aim of my inquiry is to bring forth and theorize my emergent understanding of my self-in-relation to the curricular lifeworld of the school and community in the place where I teach.