This resource provides some of the most fundamental information regarding the Algonquin Nation, who have played a critical role in the history of our nation’s capital region. We have created this resource so that educators can address a variety of curriculum expectations by basing activities and lessons around our website, as well as using some of our sample lessons to use our content and the external resources we have linked. Focusing on treaty information, language, literature, and culture, this resource touches on the history curriculum, the native languages curriculum, and the language and arts curriculum. These curriculum connections are directly aimed at the grade 7 level. Our content is made in the spirit of fulfilling the calls to action set forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee,
For the grade 7 History and Geography curriculum (2018), this resource aims to give content and activities that address the three overall expectations. Treaty education topics and history of Algonquin territory in the Ottawa region touch on the first over all expectation (A.1): analyzing the aspects of communities in Canada between 1713 and 1800, including indigenous populations like the Algonquin Nation. Placing importance on treaty relationships in modern times describing the ongoing and constantly changing nature of this relationship touches on the second overall expectation (A.2): our activities prompt inquiry into why the status quo is the way it is, and what forces have shaped it. By virtue of studying treaties, their history, and the people that were involved in their making we are touching on the third overall expectation (A3); we are elucidating the important events and actors of the shared history of the Algonquins and the rest of settler Canada.
For the Native Languages Curriculum (2001), our content and languages activities have been made to bolster a general understanding of nature and function of Native languages. We aim to address the grade seven overall expectations for oral communication, reading, and grammar conventions and vocabulary. For communication, we want students to listen in order to understand and respond appropriately in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes. For reading, we get students to Read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of literacy, graphic, and informational texts, using a range of strategies to construct meaning. For grammar conventions and vocabulary, we offer knowledge of the language elements and basic vocabulary for the Algonquin language. While our content is limited, our goal is to help builds students’ foundation of language knowledge and native languages skills, as well as provide the means for students to take their language education further.
Our Teaching Resource Guide was created in order to further the goals of reconciliation as it is envisioned by the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015). As educators, we have a special and critical role in promoting and honouring these calls. Of the 94 Calls to action that were set forth in the final report of the TRC, we have based our resource on these specific calls:
13. We call upon the federal government to acknowledge that Aboriginal rights include Aboriginal language rights.”
14. We call upon the federal government to enact an Aboriginal Languages Act that incorporates the following principles: i. Aboriginal languages are a fundamental and valued element of Canadian culture and society, and there is an urgency to preserve them”
45. We call upon the Government of Canada, on behalf of All Canadians, to jointly develop with Aboriginal peoples a Royal Proclamation of Reconciliation to be issued by the Crown. The proclamation would build on the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Treaty of Niagara of 1764, and reaffirm the nation-to-nation relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Crown. The proclamation would include, but not be limited to, the following commitments:
iv. Reconcile Aboriginal and Crown constitutional and legal orders to ensure that Aboriginal peoples are full partners in
Confederation, including the recognition and integration of Indigenous laws and legal traditions in negotiation and implementation
processes involving Treaties, land claims, and other constructive agreements.
49. We call upon all religious denominations and faith groups who have not already done so to repudiate concepts used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous lands and peoples, such as the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius.
63. We call upon the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada to maintain an annual commitment to Aboriginal education issues, including:
iii. Building student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect.
92. We call upon the corporate sector in Canada to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a reconciliation framework and to apply its principles, norms, and standards to corporate policy and core operational activities involving Indigenous peoples and their lands and resources. This would include, but not be limited to the following:
i. Commit to meaningful consultation, building respectful relationships, and obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of
Indigenous peoples before proceeding with economic development projects.
We want to inspire our students to be more historically conscious. We believe that making the history relevant to their everyday experience to be an effective way to get them engaged. Tupper (2012) argues that treaty education is something that ought should be used in our education system to enlist more historically conscious and active citizenship. One of the best ways to do this by addressing the alarming ignorance of treaty relationships that is present in Canadian society. Another is by presenting an Indigenous way of seeing. We try to give this perspective with the Algonquin literature we have suggested.
Tupper (2014) assessed how effective educational programs aimed at teaching indigenous subjects were in Saskatchewan. In many cases, teaching methods focused on benevolence instead of social critique end up reproducing structural inequalities. We try to be cognizant of this fact and try to present a more real experience. We try to engage in a social critique of the Canadian experience, and try to present the perspective of the Algonquins to the best of our ability. Our treaty section details an ongoing legal struggle for territory, which presents the evolving history of Canada as one of strife and not of resolved and outdated conflict.
One of our objectives is to help show the indigenous peoples of Canada, like the Algonquin peoples, as part of a thriving community. They are part of their own communities, but they are also a part of their own communities. Haig-Brown and Dannenmann (2002) tried to make programs for indigenous knowledge keepers so that they may transfer knowledge that is relevant and will be put to use. They found their efforts limited because of a lack of community. Through all the suffering and injustices that Indigenous peoples have been through, one of the biggest losses has been their sense of belonging to be in a community. By placing an emphasis on the Algonquin people and their cultural knowledge, we have tried to bolster students sense of local community by teaching about the people who lived here before and continue to live here and contribute greatly.