Presentation by: Sandra Scott, Douglas Adler
Session: Session A | Time: 9:30AM-9:50AM | Location: Room 201
The revised BC curriculum emphasizes place-based learning and developing understandings of First People’s Principles. Guided by the question, How might we connect human and more-than-human communities through shared experiences within bioregional settings, we present an ecological conscious education that embraces Indigenous ways of knowing, being, doing, and healing.
We will present ways instructors and students might engage with community in inclusive ways. Guided by the theme of ‘honouring our Elders’, we story the lives of the critically endangered Southern Resident Killer whales with whom we share the Salish Sea. Elder wisdom held and shared by Orca matriarchs is the lifeblood and Heart Knowledge of three related pods, J, K, and L. With the death of centenarian Matriarch Granny J2, questions arise: Who will assume the role of knowledge keeper? What is the future of the Southern Residents and the Salish Sea as matrilines diminish and disappear into Great Silence? (Saulitis, 2014). Decimated Chinook salmon populations combined with threats of vessel traffic, military testing, pipelines, and pollutants have pushed the Southern Residents to the edge of anthropogenic extinction. This past August, the world watched and grieved with Talequah J35 as she carried her deceased calf for 17 days and 1000 miles. Then, wee Scarlet J50, the much-loved four year-old died undersized and emaciated from failure to thrive. The Southern Resident population is at an historic low of 75 whales. The whales’ heartrending stories are a call to action, and this presentation articulates how educators can respond to that call.
Through conversations shared by the human and more than human worlds, we story how ‘place’ is lived by Elders facing the threat of displacement from their homes, community, and traditional spaces. The whales are our Ki and Kin (Kimmerer, 2017), and we honour them with Respect, Reciprocity, Reverence, Responsibility, Rootedness (Archibald, 2008; Kimmerer, 2013, 2017). Our interspecies bonds are nurtured through spiritual, corporeal, and cosmological connections (Fawcett, 1999; Jardine, 1998; Payne & Wattchow, 2009). We conclude with the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer (2016): “To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it (p. 317)”.