Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education

A Decolonizing Journey for a Métis Community

Yvonne Poitras Pratt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351967488
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Exploring the relationship between the role of education and Indigenous survival, Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education is an ethnographic exploration of how digital storytelling can be part of a broader project of decolonization of individuals, their families, and communities.

By recounting how a remote Indigenous (Métis) community were able to collectively imagine, plan and produce numerous unique digital stories representing counter-narratives to the dominant version of Canadian history, Poitras Pratt provides frameworks, approaches and strategies for the use of digital media and arts for the purpose of cultural memory, community empowerment, and mobilization. The volume provides a valuable example of how a community-based educational project can create and restore intergenerational exchanges through modern media, and covers topics such as: Introducing the Métis and their community; decolonizing education through a Métis approach to research; the ethnographic journey; and translating the work of decolonizing to education.

Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education is the perfect resource for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of Indigenous education, comparative education, and technology education, or those looking to explore the role of modern media in facilitating healing and decolonization in a marginalized community.

.

1
My Roots, My Story, My Positioning

Within each person lies a story that has the power to change their lives and, if shared, the potential to transform the world of others. As life reveals, some stories call out to us, some stories lay hidden in the recesses, and still others overtake all else—it is this living quality of stories that make them such a potent tool of transformation, and of domination. As the Métis people of Canada, we have only to think of how our history has been taught in schools to affirm this reality. In naming decolonization as the ultimate objective of this research project, I have taken on a rather formidable task and one that may be viewed by those from outside, and even inside, my own Indigenous community as potentially disruptive and destructive. Yet—as I see it—my decolonizing intent within this community-based project was not one of destruction, disruption, or even deconstruction; rather, I have deliberately positioned my work within the realm of the creative where “[t]he last shall be first and the first last” (Fanon, 1966, p. 3).

By supporting the needs of one of Canada’s most marginalized and least recognized Indigenous groups, the Métis, through the creative act of digital storytelling, I am asserting the right to create an “ethical space” for Métis voices and stories to be heard. Just as importantly, I am claiming my right as an Indigenous scholar to meaningfully “give back” to my home community through transformative action (borrowing from Faye Ginsburg, 1997), thereby reciprocating my community’s support of my academic interests. Meeting the goals of empowerment through a narrative approach, as Julian Rappaport (1995) once observed, is best achieved through a mutual influence process such that “[p]eople who seek either personal or community change often find that it is very difficult to sustain change without the support of a collectivity that provides a new communal narrative around which they can sustain changes in their own personal story” (p. 796). This act of “myth-making,” in Duke Redbird’s (1980) terms, advocates for cultural education through the reclamation of voice as a targeted strategy for positive social change. These acts call for courage and caring, and an ethos of creativity. Just as importantly, I align my work with that of Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, 2012) and American educators Beth Blue Swadener and Kagendo Mutua (2008) who see decolonization as the prioritizing of Indigenous ways where “decolonization is about the process in both research and performance of valuing, reclaiming, and foregrounding Indigenous voices and epistemologies” (p. 31).

In creating an ethical space for the stories of the Métis to be heard, my initial aim in this digital storytelling project was to support the Métis in reclaiming the right to tell their own stories. By empowering Métis community members to create a story of insights from their lived experiences, my hope was that these brief, yet powerful, multimedia vignettes would enable community members to revitalize storytelling traditions from our past with one another. I also remain convinced that the future sharing of these stories with other citizens, especially educators, will generate a fuller and richer version of our national history in Canada—one that includes many and diverse stories. The power of the arts to make space for these stories in a variety of formats, as literary artist and author Duke Redbird (1980) suggests, is one that is able to shift societal awareness and awakening:

But before the majority of Canadians can hear the Métis song, much must be done…. Through poetry, song, film, and drama communicated through all of the media that have such a powerful effect on the quality of awareness we have about our reality, the song of the Métis must be sung.

(p. 56)

By working together with Métis community members and allied partners in the creation of a series of digital stories, I situated my research project as a manifestly creative endeavour—one that holds great potential to one day enhance our nation-building and reconciliatory efforts through a shared space for open and honest dialogue amongst our diverse citizens. Yet, in heeding the words of Fanon, I am reminded that the last need to be considered first if we intend to make true and lasting change in our nation.

With this positioning in mind, I focused my research project on whether, and to what extent, digital media technologies such as digital storytelling might help the Métis people of Alberta achieve a form of decolonization through the articulation of their voice and through their active involvement within the project. In looking at the broader context of this work, I also hoped to identify those factors that affected the overall decolonizing potential of a digital storytelling project within a Métis community in Alberta.

As the instigator of this project, one who is both an insider and outsider, I position myself within this study, first and foremost, as a Métis woman who is keenly interested in re-establishing a connection to my Métis roots and striving to more fully understand and appreciate my community of origin. Next, I position myself as an Indigenous academic, researcher, and educator who is ethically obliged to “give back” to my community in a culturally appropriate way that serves to meet not only the community’s needs but also supports my unique academic interests. In this way, the ethics of reciprocity and respect are mutually held where neither research party’s interests are seen as dominating the other party’s interests, and where each person gives as much as they receive (Graveline, 1998, p. 56). Equally important, I am also deeply committed to reconciling some of the divisions that currently prevent Canadians from working proactively with one another—this is, in many ways, striving to enact the traditional role of the Métis person as the mediator, conciliator, and “in-between” person. In this time of reconciliation in Canada, my hope is that the sharing of these stories will help to fill in some of the missing gaps in our national history (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). Finally, I acknowledge the artistic and creative side of my personality that strives to find new and interesting ways of transforming the status quo through innovative and creative forms of education.

In working with my home community, I often found myself struggling to find the right words to locate myself: Is it “the” community, “their” community, “my” community, or “our” community? How do I position myself amongst what is an ever-changing landscape for me? In my conversations with Fishing Lake Settlement community members, I was constantly corrected: “Not your community—it’s our community, Yvonne”—and I found myself thinking: “Right, they are so right. I am after all related to a good portion of the community.” The same issue arose as I stumbled to find the right words to talk about my trips to Fishing Lake. Once again, I was reminded: “But that is the way to say it …when I hear you say [coming back], it’s like you’re going home all the time. Because when you say you’re going back, if you’re going back—it’s some place you’ve come from.” Of course, this is right. So why the confusion?

My connection to the Fishing Lake Métis Settlement community is a strong one—both of my parents came from the Fishing Lake Métis Settlement (formerly known as a colony) but moved away from the community soon after their marriage. Both their families experienced extreme poverty during the Great Depression of the 1930s, as did many; however, this situation was further exacerbated by the fact that they were of Métis heritage and were living, quite literally, on the margins of Canadian society. In order to find work and a better life for themselves, my parents moved off-settlement to the neighbouring province of British Columbia where my two brothers and I were born and raised. Because of this life choice, I grew up far away from the Fishing Lake community, knowing only the stories and the names that came from Fishing Lake and recognizing that our family was somehow different from the other families in the small northern town that we grew up in. As a child, I was often told by my parents not to reveal my Métis heritage, yet I knew in my heart this was not right. My schoolmates celebrated their ethnic heritages, whether Danish, English, Scottish, or Ukrainian, so why did I have to hide my heritage? It was, in retrospect, my parents’ fear of what this cultural disclosure would bring me in terms of racism and negative judgements that prompted their well-intentioned, but still painful, advice.

As the first in my inner family to enter university studies, one of the very few in my extended family to earn a university degree, and the only one to have earned a doctorate on both sides of my family, I stand as a pathbreaker within my family circle and, as I was to later realize, within my home community. Regrettably, achieving higher education is not always a celebrated position within the Métis community; rather it is a life choice that often has to be justified. Indeed, I am continually reminded of Driben’s observation of how the “half-breed” community from his 1970s study did not value formal education so much as they did a hard work ethic. This situation is changing gradually over time as more of my age peers, and our children, pursue higher education, but this change is far slower than I would like to see. As a relatively new academic yet mature woman, I draw inspiration from a growing body of Métis academics who have either gained national recognition or are working towards having their voices heard across the educational landscape. My work has been further informed, and strengthened, through the growing body of Indigenous scholars around the world who work within decolonizing frameworks, and other critical areas of study, and who themselves have forged successful paths into the world of academia. By standing on the shoulders of these “academic giants,” I have been able to see my way clear to my own decolonizing and Indigenizing goals.

Finding the “Blessing Next to the Wound”

For well over 125 years, the dominant story of the Métis people in Canada has been one of tragedy and challenges—that is if one is known at all. Since the defeat of the Métis in the 1885 Rebellion, our world has largely consisted of surviving as the defeated party in a nation where many of our fellow citizens have come to ignore us, despise us, or pity us. For many Métis people, surviving has also meant adopting strategies of silence, hiding our identities, masking pain through addictions, or lashing out at those we love. What I have learned throughout my life and through my journey of collaboration with my community of origin is that there is another way. Rather than continually living with the pain and the aftermath of colonization, or in the wound, there is a healing way. As a former victim of torture within his homeland of Columbia, Hector Aristizábal, a human-rights activist and psychologist, directs us to a brighter story through the wisdom of an African saying: “The blessing is next to the wound.” His innovative arts-based program brings hope and healing back to the oppressed and the troubled by asking people to reframe their life narratives within a more positive outlook (as cited in Lefer, 2005, p. 3). As I see it, the life lessons that Aristizábal has learned convey a unique message of resilience for formerly colonized groups who wish to move out of suffering into a self-determining future.

In recognizing that every person goes through some sort of ordeal in their lives, be it accidents, illness, depression, divorce, imprisonment, or even colonization, Aristizábal (2005) believes that the way to self-actualization begins by creating meaning from the alienating or traumatizing experience. Importantly, this meaning is created through the narratives that we build about our lives. By focusing on the life lessons that are revealed within these events, a traumatic event is transformed into an initiation rite that delivers gifts rather than a lifelong burden to be endured:

Those of us who’ve been [through a difficult ordeal] need to see it as simply one more event in our lives, not a defining characteristic of who we are …it can awaken inner resources. Instead of being a victim, each person can learn the lesson [their] spirit needs to learn.

(as cited in Lefer, 2005, p. 3)

As Aristizábal (2005) puts it, “If you can change the script, you can change your life” (p. 6). As a survivor who has devoted his life to helping others, Aristizábal encourages his readers to move beyond survival to reach a more meaningful place of healing. In his words: “[The lesson] was not just to survive, but to live a meaningful life. Sometimes, in the ordeal, we find the seeds of our identity” (p. 4). By first identifying and then using the gifts that we are given in life, surviving can transform to thriving. Importantly, this narrative reframing is best accomplished by reconnecting and joining with others.

As a person devoted to making positive change for others, I find yet another passage by Aristizábal (2005) to be inspirational for my life’s work:

Instead of diagnosing and pathologizing poor people, why not connect them to their strengths? I listen to people, then help them tell their own stories of survival, stories that are distorted or ignored by the dominant culture, stories that too often end tragically inside our prison system.

(p. 8)

As an academic working with those who have lost their stories through a lack or loss of social, political, or economic power, Julian Rappaport (1995) delivers a similar message to her readers about the power of stories and working collectively:

[P]eople who seek either personal or community change often find that it is very difficult to sustain change without the support of a collectivity that provides a new communal narrative around which they can sustain changes in their own personal story. (p. 796)

In seeking to connect a narrative approach with an agenda of empowerment, Rappaport (1995) suggests that a mutual influence process exists between community, organizational, and personal stories, and that these stories “tell us not only who we are but who we have been and who we can be” (p. 796). In other words, they create meaning in our lives. In working with groups who wish to recover the power over their own stories, “people discover, or create and give voice to, a collective narrative that sustains their own personal life story in positive ways” (Rappa-port, 1995, p. 796). In turn, these personal stories give meaning back to the collective narrative. In my work with the Fishing Lake community, I witnessed an individual responsibility to collective survival emerging as a central theme to the work of decolonizing through our digital storytelling efforts.

In applying these powerful scholarly lessons to my community work with Fishing Lake, supported by my project partners, I have found many meaningful connections and insights. These lessons are found, first and foremost, in my own story of survival. As a child, I faced many demons in our family home—unfortunately, many of them wore the face of my father. In witnessing the hurt and anguish of my loved ones and managing to survive far too many episodes of violence, I became disconnected from those things that made me who I was. In many ways, the violence of colonization was replicated in our family home: “You lose your community, your language, your relations. All these connections are broken” (Aristizábal, 2005, p. 4). The senselessness of what I witnessed tortured me as I tried to find meaning even as a very young child. My mother recalls that at the tender age of five I left a note on the family table after one particularly gruesome night of family quarrelling and violence, asking why this was happening and expressing my anger at the injustice of it all. In many ways, I think I was drawn back to my home community to help me understand why these things happened in my childhood. But this is not the story that I want to frame my life’s work around. Instead, I have chosen to find my gifts, my blessing next to the wound, and to use my gifts to better the lives of others.

As a young girl, I often found refuge in my imagination, in the solace of books, in the expression of art, and in the classroom. These were places that allowed me to soar, to express myself, and to imagine that I could be anyone I wanted to be—there was no fear here, only freedom. In looking back at my childhood schooling, I now realize how fortunate I was to have experienced the freedom of self-directed learning where educational boundaries were fluid enough to accommodate those things that made me whole and made me happy. I spent hours upon hours drawing, painting, making up stories about imaginary people—creating a world without anger, fear, hatred, and self-loathing. In this world of imagination, I found my gifts.

As my story of the digital storytelling project in Fishing Lake reveals, the lessons learned from this project revolve around how technology can be strategically adopted as a tool to enact the reclamation of Métis knowledge through the deliberate use of digital storytelling, how community-based research can serve individual and collective interests within a Métis community, and, finally, how I might continue serving community-identified and educational needs moving forward. It is my hope and belief that these potent seeds of learning can be nurtured and strengthened through an ethos of respectful and appropriate sharing of the digital stories, and the story of these stories, with this first venture into the realm of sharing.

My Positioning as a Métis Scholar and Educator

As a Métis scholar who is intuitively drawn to give back to my community of origin, I am reminded time and again that a “person must first know him- or herself and his or her family line, tribal nation and responsibilities to all relations if he or she is to function within an Aboriginal identity” (Graveline, 1998; McCaskill, 1987). To operate within an Indigenous worldview and to assert an Indigenous identity means that we must also act according to a framework of values that inform how we view life, the natural world, and our place within the world. Our interconnectedness and interrelatedness reinforces the fact that we are personally accountable for the welfare of others, where achieving our full humanity is perceived as a collective responsibility rather than an individual undertaking. This value system emerges in the narrative framework that the Fishing Lake digital stories are premised on—a personal responsibility to collective survival requires the ability to adapt—yet is balanced with an individual responsibility to adapt to changing life circumstances. Th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 My Roots, My Story, My Positioning
• 2 Introducing the Métis and Their Story
• 3 Decolonizing Education Through a Métis Approach to Research
• 4 The Ethnographic Journey
• 5 Decolonizing Education Through Story
• 6 Translating the Work of Decolonizing to Education
• References
• Index