Integrating Aboriginal Education

There are number of benefits to integrating aboriginal ed into our curriculum. 
      For one, the indigenizing of our curriculum is something that we can do to help  make indigenous peoples feel represented in an education system that has failed them so terribly. In addition, by doing this we are also helping to stop the marginalization of indigenous peoples within our country and schools. For example, in science, indigenous culture and beliefs are considered non sense. So as an indigenous child, when you come to science class your teacher is telling you that what your grandparents believed in and the knowledge they have passed down is nonsense. That is no way to treat someones culture. 
         Instead, we should be incorporating indigenous knowledge into our curriculums. There are also essential skills that are valued in indigenous cultures that we, as a community, seem to be lacking today, such as working together and reverence for nature and living sustainably and cohesively with the earth. In addition, where our subject areas are so disjointed and separate, in indigenous cultures all of the 'subject areas' are taught in one, as life lessons. Life does not happen in separate subject areas, and most problems we face in life involve a number of moving parts and thus, by learning all subject areas at the same time we are better equipped to solve real world problems.

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SUGGESTIONS FOR INTEGRATING FNMI EDUCATION
          There are so many opportunities to integrate aboriginal education into our current curriculum that there really is no excuse that educators are not doing it today. For example, Zoe showed us a great chart that listen the common characteristics of aboriginal knowledge, some of which included teamwork, reverence for nature etc. Topics such as teamwork can be taught everyday in the classroom when you do group work. Reverence for nature and sustainability can be taught through recycling or cleaning up the school, or more specifically, you can have the students research how we are destroying the ecology of our planet by polluting. Aboriginal education is very much similar to common sense, so there will always be opportunities to integrate aboriginal ed throughout the school day.