Understanding your Education: Onkwehonwe and Guests Responsibilities to Peace, Friendship and Mutual Respect

This thesis explores how Guest participants have engaged with Onkwehonwe (Original People in Mohawk) worldviews as they enrol within post-secondary courses about Onkwehonwe topics, taught by Onkwehonwe instructors/professors from Onkwehonwe perspectives. In order to acquire an understanding of what it means to be a Guest, I spoke to nine Elders and Traditional Teachers on expected Guest behaviour and actions. These teachings along with teachings of Wampum Belts were used to understand and analyze the stories of nineteen Guest participants. Grounded by Onkwehonwe worldviews, the methodology of this research project centered ceremony. The data collection method was storytelling in sharing circles. In hosting three large sharing circles and seven small ones, participants answered open ended questions. These circles were hosted in Toronto, Ontario between September 2014 and April 2015. The main findings of this thesis are 1) the primary, secondary and post-secondary education systems are not providing students with a historically accurate or relevant current education in relation to Onkwehonwe people, histories and topics; 2) when participants engaged in Onkwehonwe courses and pedagogies they all experienced a paradigm shift that lead to personal and professional growth; 3) this growth fuelled a desire to work in solidarity with Onkwehonwe peoples and a responsibility to share the learnings with other Guest people. This thesis is novel and contributes to scholarly discourse on Onkwehonwe research as it employs Onkwehonwe methodologies with Guest only participants (other than myself). It also offers the term Guest instead of using words like ‘non-Aboriginal’, or ‘settler’ and provides alternative ways of looking at Onkwehonwe/Guest relationships. In staying true to the data collection method of sharing circles, dissemination of the last question is as a sharing circle chapter. Individuals that are interested in how decolonial methodologies can have practical applications as well as those interested in Onkwehonwe/Guest relationships will find this work of interest.Ph.D