4 Connections With the Land

Brief Overview

Incorporating Indigenous land-based learning and Etuaptmumk into your nature pedagogy and approach to nature/outdoor play requires investment, action, and continued embodied learning. While you can begin to think about and understand these approaches inside the classroom, integrating them into your way of being and understanding the world, your role in it, and by extension, your role with children as practitioners, requires being present with this learning in the context of relationship with the land and Indigenous knowledge holders. This is the focus of this week.

Take some time to listen closely to the words of local Indigenous knowledge holders and move with this knowledge outdoors with nature. Go to a natural setting that you feel connected in and whether you move through the space or sit still with intention in it, pay attention to how you relate to what is happening around you.

• What do you notice?
• Do you notice things differently?
• What questions come to you?
• Start to think about a tangible action you can take to learn from local Indigenous knowledge holders in your community and build these relationships.

Watch

Waseteg, by Phyllis Grant, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

Waseteg, a short, animated film by Phyllis Grant and Alanis Obomsawin, tells the story of a young Mi’kmaw girl whose name means “the light from the dawn” who goes looking for healing in the stories of her people.

Watch

Watch Reconciliation with the Earth with Elder Albert Marshall and to gain a deeper understanding of what brought him to Etuaptmumk and what guides him as a human on this earth.

Mi’kmaw Elders Stories

The website for The Mi’kmawey Debert Cultural Centre has gathered a collection of stories from Mi’kmaw Elders.