The warp and weft of it all : Ucwalmicw education emerging out of the Aboriginal education tapestry

Guided by the central tenets of Lester-Irabinna Rigney’s (1999) Indigenist paradigm; resistance, political integrity and honoring Indigenous voice, I take up the Ucwalmicw loom and blanket weaving as metaphor and praxis to honor Samahquamicw engagement in this PhD project. To contribute to the significant work already being done to define and transform Aboriginal education into the ever emerging tapestries of Indigenous education, the research questions that guide the work disseminated here were: 1. In what ways can Ucwalmicw knowledge system processes disrupt mainstream understandings of Aboriginal education? 2. How can the facilitation of Ucwalmicw processes and protocols contribute to transforming classrooms for all students? To maintain political integrity in responding to these two research questions I engaged with my Samahquamicw community members in ways that center on and honor Ucwalmicw voice. Two Sharing Circles were facilitated in the Q’aLaTKú7eM community. We shared meals together, and community members were reciprocated with hand-made gifts for sharing their knowledge and time with me. Local protocols guided our collective knowledge seeking, making and sharing which, for important reasons, included the need to facilitate a survey in lieu of the third planned Sharing Circle. In trusting again in our ways, I came to walk the talk of Q’aLaTKú7eMicw protocols which require beginning and proceeding in good ways towards wholistic approaches to teaching and learning. Within the pages of this dissertation, I illustrate how Q’aLaTKú7eMicw contributions can and have mobilized Indigenous education policies drawn from a selection of nation-wide and provincial reports and accords. While the degree of harm that Aboriginal education continues to inflict on its students varies across student populations, tackling, with Ucwalmicw intentions, the issue of what is and is not considered in the curricula and, equally important, the pedagogies of university programs means doing so for the benefit of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students alike. To contribute to emerging models of Indigenous education with a good heart, mind and spirit requires doing so for Tákem nsnek̓wnúk̓w7a (all my relations).Education, Faculty ofEducational Studies (EDST), Department ofGraduat