Educators from the Prince Albert Grand Council are looking at ways to Indigenize the provincial school curriculum for students.
The work they are doing is to take the curriculum from the provincial government and redesign it to better fit Indigenous ways of knowing.
PAGC Director of Education Ed Mirasty says the work is incredibly important because tribal knowledge is being lost as elders pass away.
“What we want to do is we want to capture that tribal knowledge in the languages and to use books, videos, online resources. We wanna even extend to virtual reality where we have, that knowledge captured in the resources that we want to create,” said Mirasty.
Mirasty says TRC Call to Action 63 called on governments to work on this issue, but Mirasty says the Grand Council became tired of waiting.
“The Grand Council has taken upon itself to bring the the people together and to share with them that, if we are going to, wait for permission or if we are going to wait for people to get it started for us, then we take part in the colonial project. So we wanna do it ourselves.”
This week, the PAGC is hosting a two-day conference in Saskatoon where ideas and best practices on Indigenizing curriculum are being discussed.
Ed Mirasty’s full interview with MBC Radio News is available here.
(TOP PHOTO – PAGC Director of Education Ed Mirasty and Vince Brittain with the education department pose for a photo at a PAGC Education conference. Photo by Joel Willick)