Story-Making Reconciliation with Four Grade 5-6 Youth

Abstract

In consideration of TRC Call to Action 63.3 that asks teachers to facilitate cultural understanding, mutual respect, and empathy between First Nations and non-Indigenous students, my thesis sought to find out if a collective, collaborative, story-making activity with four Grade 5-6 students of different cultural backgrounds, including one First Nations student, could further the objectives of Call 63.3. The results of my research suggest that a collective and collaborative story-making activity does, on its own, further two of these reconciliation objectives, mutual respect, and empathy. The third objective, cultural understanding, could probably not been achieved without the intervention of a knowledgeable Indigenous adult, in my case, Annie, (a pseudonym) who was consulted by the story-makers during the scripted “mentor” part of the 12-part hero/ine’s journey story-making process. Using primarily a Posthumanist framework that also integrated some arts-based research/research-creation and critical discourse theoretical orientations for my analysis, I found that an extended focus on a single-story task by four students, not only brought them into a closer relationship with each other, thus facilitating mutual respect and empathy, it also permitted them to imagine a common vision of education. The education world they imagined, in which an educational reconciliation might be realized, was informed, in part, by Indigenous ways of knowing and teaching.