At OE Global 2023, Indigenous ways of knowing and being were a fundamental component of the conference design and organization. Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizers established a collaborative governance approach to foster partnership and mutual guidance throughout the planning and execution stages.
In this session, the four conference program co-chairs will perform métissage to recount the design and implementation of, and personal experiences with, a conference program that reflected the concept of two-eyed seeing, navigating Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews. We will explore the incompatibility and compatibility of Indigenous ways of knowing with the ontological and epistemological assumptions embedded into open education. A fundamental question we examine is how the braiding of conference stories can unearth the interplay of Indigenous (nêhiyawîhcikêwin Plains Cree) ways of knowing with the values and practices of open education.
As a storytelling research method, métissage provides an opportunity to use an arts-based approach to evoke, provoke, and possibly unsettle the privileged notions of knowledge and knowledge sharing embedded into open education. Métissage draws from life writing, storytelling, theater, and figuratively, from the art of braiding (Chambers et al, 2008). This research performance will use the metaphor of braiding to weave together the conference program co-chairs' short narratives as they respond to specific prompts:
1. Why did the metaphor of braiding matter to the conference experience?
2. How did you experience relationality or what did you think it was and what do you think it is now?
3. Why does braiding open education with Indigenous ways of knowing matter?
4. How can the richness of Indigenous knowledge face the challenge of, and domination of western knowledge systems and practices?).
Through this narrative and arts approach, truths and awareness of the self and knowledge of others may be conveyed; self/other knowledge is a hallmark of arts-based research (Gerber et al, 2012 as cited by Leavey, 2017).
This session draws upon open education practices (Cronin, 2017) and explores their relation to the Seven Sacred Teachings (Norquest, 2017). The seven sacred teachings cannot be swiftly summarized. The areas they cover include Peyak: Respect, Nîso: Courage, Nisto: Truth, Newo: Honesty, Nîyânan: Wisdom, Nikotwâsik: Love, and Tepakohp: Humility.
There are significant differences between the axiological, ontological, and epistemological characteristics of Indigenous Ways of Knowing and open education but there are also areas of overlap. “The Cree natural law concept of wahkôhtowin shows us that there is no ‘us and them.’ All human beings are part of the same family; we are all interconnected.” (Norquest, 2017, p. 10). It is this interconnection among the two framings that underlies this research project and our methodological approach of métissage. Through the metaphor of braiding, stories reflective of the seven sacred teachings and of open education practices will work individually and collectively to reveal the interconnections, the gaps, and the need to listen closely to these braided stories.
Included in
[Session 3B]: First NationsReferencesBishop, K., Etmanski, C., Beth Page, M., Dominguez, B. & Heykoop, C. (2019). Narrative métissage as an innovative engagement practice. Engage Scholar Journal, 5(2), 1-17.
Cronin, C. (2017). Openness and praxis: Exploring the use of open educational practices in higher education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(5).
https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i5.3096Leavey, P. (2017). Research design: quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and community-based participatory research approaches. Guilford.
Norquest College. (2017). Wahkôhtowin we are all related: Norquest College Indigenization strategy 2017.
https://www.norquest.ca/NorquestCollege/media/pdf/about/publications-and-reports/norquest-college-indigenization-strategy.pdfAuthor KeywordsFirst Nations perspectives, métissage, Local Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing, Open educational practices, Inclusion diversity equity and access
