Nineteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

In Canada, educators are exploring ways to bring reconciliation with indigenous peoples into the classroom. Prior to the European invasion of Turtle Island, indigenous peoples relied on a material environment that reflected a particular way of becoming human with the land. They relied on physical environments and material artefacts for their perceptual, psychological, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual development. The particular kind of people they could become depended quite explicitly upon a process of becoming with. This paper begins with a review of the many ways in which material things (as well as other living beings) in environment always inform the development of any human identity. Reconciliation, we argue, is thus dependent on bringing the right kinds of materialities into new educational processes and, above all, taking those materialities seriously. Next, we explore some possibilities for becoming allies in the restoration of the materiality that would be needed for real reconciliation, in all its many forms, processes and supporting structures. Finally, we close with some tentative speculations about how settler communities might become more mindful of our own relations with stuff and view their own potential for healthy development as possibly being hobbled by a reliance on what might be viewed as our own relatively impoverished ways of becoming with the land.