Celebrating the Local, Negotiating the School: Language and Literacy in Aboriginal Communities

Abstract

To introduce this special edition of the Canadian Journal of Native Education,we share our entrances to this topic and to the subsequent work that unfolded in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with a three-day symposium called “Celebrating the Local, Negotiating the School: Symposium on Language and Literacy in Aboriginal Communities," which then evolved into papers that make up this collection of articles. As professional colleagues in the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan, we were brought together by the availability of funds that drew from the Learning Spirit bundle, one of the six working groups of the Aboriginal Learning Know­ledge Centre (AbLKC) under the lead of Marie Battiste, and our common interests in Aboriginal learning and education. Considering that AbLKC had six learning bundles that had focused activity on various areas of learning among Aboriginal peoples including Learning from Place, Nourishing the Learning Spirit, Aboriginal Languages and Learning, Diverse Educational Systems of Learning, Pedagogy of Professions, and Technology and Learning, we considered what would be the most effec­tive use of the limited funds to bring educators together around a topic that the other teams might not be researching. In focused conversations, we each had had diverse knowledge, drawing from our experiences work­ing with Aboriginal people, youth, and children and varied areas of inter­est.