Resting Lightly on Mother Earth: The Aboriginal Experience in Urban Educational Settings

Dave Hutchinson is assistant superintendent of the School District of
Mystery Lake in Thompson, Manitoba.

Resting Lightly on Mother Earth features the research and personal
professional perspectives of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators who
are striving to define postcolonial pedagogy in multiethnic, urban
environments. Much of the text represents something of a first in
crosscultural qualitative educational research. First, it is centred on
the following four themes: Intercultural Perspectives; Surviving the
City: Stories of Identities Lost and Regained; Rebuilding Culture:
Teacher Education with Urban Aboriginal Peoples; and Touching Earth in
the City.

Second, the research makes extensive use of a human science research
methodology known as researching lived experience. Through this
methodology (which has a distinct parallel in the oral tradition of
Aboriginal peoples), and the identification of the four dominant themes,
the contributors yield significant insight into the kind of teacher
training theory and practice that are essential to effective approaches
to urban Aboriginal education. Throughout the text one encounters two
central recommendations: that urban Aboriginal education can and should
be culturally restorative; and that educators must be trained to guard
against the propagation of colonial pedagogy through the application of
critical ethnography.

Editor Angela Ward, a University of Saskatchewan professor of
education, writes: “I began my research career looking at the daily
interactions between teachers and their students, expecting that
Aboriginal underachievement in North American Schools could be
attributed to differential discourse patterns. From there I moved to a
recognition that the experiences of Aboriginal students in our schools
are part of the colonial imperialism imposed by European invaders. But
as a teacher-educator, I also need to balance the broad sweep of
postcolonial theory with the responsibility to create communities of
care in our schools. I have returned to the idea that it is important to
direct our thoughtful gaze on the minutiae of classroom life. Our
ability to fully see and understand the effects of oppression on the
detail of students’ classroom lives makes us critically conscious
teachers.”

One of this book’s greatest strengths is that it has the capacity to
support the development of this “critical consciousness”—which is
good news for teacher-education students, teachers and administrators,
and teacher-educators. The book is equally relevant to all those charged
with advancing a culturally restorative and postcolonial model of public
education.