Start your journey to become story-ready with the gift of Indigenous bushwhacker in the advancement of Indigenous education, Q’um Q’um Xiiem also known as Dr. Jo-ann Archibald. Through her role as an educator, scholar, and author, Q’um Q’um Xiiem has illuminated the path to engaging with Indigenous stories, teachings, and wisdom in meaningful and respectful ways. At the heart of Dr. Archibald’s legacy is the concept of Indigenous Storywork. A teaching that goes beyond the recounting of tales; it is a holistic pedagogy that encompasses the ethical, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of storytelling. This week in the mentoring circle, we open Q’um Q’um Xiiem’s gift, a basket of digital resources to understand Indigenous Storywork. A website that centres Indigenous stories as a framework for teaching, learning, and inquiry.
Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald is a member of the Stol:lō Nation and Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Education at UBC. She is the former Associate Dean for Indigenous Education and Director of the Indigenous Teacher Education Program (NITEP). She is also the author of Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit, from which she created a wonderful website with valuable gifts to become story-ready including Elder’s teachings, storytelling and reflections. By championing Indigenous Storywork, she has played a crucial role in validating Indigenous epistemologies within education. Her efforts have paved the way for a more inclusive and culturally sustaining approach to education, research, and the preservation of Indigenous knowledges.
The purpose of the Indigenous Storywork website is to help educators learn about Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing, predominantly through Indigenous traditional and life-experience stories. For many years, Q’um Q’um Xiiem learned about the important role of stories from Coast Salish Elders and other Indigenous storytellers. As stories touch our heart, mind, body, and spirit, Dr. Archibald shared a way to appreciate and relate to the beauty and power of Indigenous stories by doing the work – Indigenous storyWORK. The website provides a place where Q’um Q’um Xiiem shares her reflections and teachings about Indigenous Storywork. Everything from what Indigenous Storywork is, how to implement it at any education level? and what resources could be used and how best to use them?
In the following video by The National Centre for Collaboration in Indigenous Education about Indigenous Storytelling, Dr. Jo-ann Archibald shares the importance of getting ready to work with Indigenous stories and shares how Indigenous Storywork contributes to the goals within Indigenous education. In Part One, she shares her perspectives about the Indigenous storywork principles of respect, responsibility, reverence, and reciprocity, which facilitate a process of getting story-ready to work with Indigenous traditional and life-experience stories. In Part Two, she applies the other Indigenous storywork principles of holism, inter-relatedness, and synergy to a Stó:lō story of “Mr. Magpie and Mr. Crow” told by Stó:lō Elders Harry Edwards and Agnes Kelly.
In Indigenous Storywork (2008), Dr. Jo-ann Archibald shares the teaching of – Hands Back, Hands Forward – from the late First Nation Elder, Dr. Vincent Stogan, Tsimilano, from Musqueam. The teaching reminds us that when we gather to share our knowledge and to discuss important ‘work’, we stand in circle to give thanks and to show our support for one another by holding hands. We hold our left palm upward to symbolize reaching back to receive help from our Ancestors and those who have walked before us. As we learn to use these teachings, our responsibility is to help those who come after us. We then extend our right palm downwards as a symbol of giving help. In the following video from the Department of Educational Studies, Dr. Archibald talks about what ‘Indigenizing the curriculum’ means and how it can be practiced explaining our responsibility to pass along our knowledge to others.
During the Educational Studies Symposium of 2018 school administrators, students, researchers, and faculty members of UBC gathered for conversations around Dr. Jo-ann Archibald’s Indigenous Storywork. Following the symposium, a resource was created to facilitate bringing the seven principles of Storywork into the classroom. The seven principles were applied to the themes and messages from the books included in this digital resource. A total of 50 books were reviewed and 24 are included in the resource. The book list is meant to be a starting point – a place for teachers to identify the principles of Storywork in children’s books and to use it as a reflection of Indigenous pedagogy. They are ordered by grade level, ranging from Kindergarten to Grade 5-8.
Q’um Q’um Xiiem is a visionary and an agent of change. She is nationally recognized for creating culturally sustaining teacher education and graduate programs for Indigenous students. Her work has transformed the Indigenous learning landscape through curriculum and program development, policy, teaching and research. In the following Zoom recording, I was fortunate to attend a conversation with Dr. Jo-ann Archibald titled The Many Facets of Decolonizing and Indigenizing the Academy, facilitated by Dorothy Cucw-la7 Christian from SFU. The conversation gave us the opportunity to listen with “three ears” to the spectrum of Q’um Q’um Xiiem’s work in Indigenizing higher education. She highlighted approaches for decolonizing and Indigenizing courses, teaching practices, and approaches that address innovative teaching, learning, and research. Listen below with your three ears…