An Open Journey through Decolonization and Indigenization
To encourage and empower educators across the sector to Indigenize and decolonialize their pedagogy, and to amplify Indigenous voices and stories, the eCampusOntario Open Library has curated helpful resources to support you in the classroom and beyond.
Whether you are pursuing personal development and advancement through your journey into reconciliation and decolonization, incorporating indigenous materials into your pedagogy, or advocating at an institutional level, we hope these resources will help supplement your ongoing work to address the Government of Canada’s Calls to Action and Calls for Justice.
- Indigenous e-Learning Assessment Strategies
- Pulling Together
- Skoden: Teaching, Talking, and Sharing About and for Reconciliation
- Indsights
- Indigenous e-Learning Assessment Strategies
Indigenous e-Learning Assessment Strategies
This is a five-module course for online postsecondary teaching that explores assessment strategies, all while using a decolonizing approach. Participants in the course are encouraged to critically engage and adapt assessment for classrooms.
Pulling Together
The Pulling Together series is a set of guides created in collaboration with BCCampus and the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training as professional learning for those looking to broaden their knowledge about Indigenous peoples across Canada.. There are guides for teachers and instructors, leaders and administrators, front-line Staff, curriculum developers, and researchers. While the guides are focused on British Columbia, you’ll find parallels and learnings for people in other areas, too. You can supplement this resource with work considering the caretakers of the lands and waters you reside on, too – check out Native Land, to start.
Skoden: Teaching, Talking, and Sharing About and for Reconciliation
Designed for postsecondary faculty, staff, and administrators, this resource is designed to meet any individuals or institutions at wherever they are on their journey to truth and reconciliation. Each chapter includes questions and activities to help guide and prime intentional reflection and consideration of one’s role as both individual and member of a community.
Indsights
A collection of case studies and stories that explore Indigenous economy across Canada. Currently at over fifteen case studies spanning across 6 provinces and territories, focusing on businesses that run the gamut of Indigenous beauty products to an Indigenous-owned skateboarding brand, Indsights showcases Indigenous voices in an engaging way, all written with students and educators in mind.
We invite you to consider how these resources, and others, can be used to inspire change in your work, your teaching practice, your community, and your institutions.
For a list of all OER in the Open Library about or by Indigenous folx, check out our Padlet here.
Learn More about Indigenous OER
While the Open Library works within the realm of Open Education, we recognize that Indigenous Knowledge does not fit neatly within Western concepts of intellectual property and copyright.
Indigenous Knowledge, also known as Traditional Knowledge, has often been at odds with the Western ideologies of ownership that informed the creation of copyright legislation. Indigenous data sovereignty, the concept that Indigenous nations and folx have the right to govern and own data that is by and about them, is often at tension with Canadian copyright laws.
Traditional knowledge can, for example, be owned by a group of people while Canadian copyright legislation requires an identifiable author. Creative Commons Licenses, which work within the bounds of copyright legislation, are often not the appropriate way to share Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge.
To learn more about Indigenous OER, check out the 6R’s of Indigenous OER and Kayla Lar-son’s Keynote at OE Global 2023 in Edmonton, entitled 6R’s of Indigenous OER’s: Rethinking & Reworking Indigenous Open Ed, where she revisits and expands the 6R’s. We also invite you to learn more about Traditional Knowledge Labels and the work done by Local Contexts to create tools that reassert the sovereignty of Indigenous communities on their knowledge and data.