Abstract
This paper is an examination of the way mathematics, and STEM, arises through stories of teaching and learning on, with, and alongside Land. It emerges from research, undertaken in different Nations (Cree, Dene, Métis, Mi’kmaw, Naskapi, Canada), that considers what locally meaningful K-12 STEM teaching and learning might look like in Indigenous contexts. The paper reflects our research process. Each story is followed by a conversation that surfaces elements of how mathematics, language, learning, and different ways of knowing, being, and doing circulate together and emerge in relation to Land and all relations living within it. We frame the work in ethical relationality to open a space where Indigenous and Western knowledges might co-exist, attending to ongoing tensions in the work between ways of knowing, being, and doing of different people and peoples/nations, between perspectives and experiences of indigenous and non-indigenous participants, between languages, while still creating spaces where we might move closer together through iterative processes of collective learning. This exploration provides insight into how and when we might remember that mathematics has spirit, how quantity and pattern live in various contexts, when numbers might be inadequate for a context, and how all these ideas can meaningfully inform mathematics teaching and learning via relationships between language, mathematics and learners. We seek a mathematics that resists abstraction as extraction and instead lives and enspirits teaching and learning through relationships.
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Notes
We use the term “knowing, being, and doing” throughout to underline our resistance to the Cartesian split, and embedded ethics we attempt to take up in our work. For more consideration of these ideas please see Todd (2022), Watts (2016), and Barad (2007). A sense of what they might look like in science can be found in CLEAR (2021).
For this reason, we chose not to italicize words in languages other than English. Italicizing suggests a hierarchy of languages which does not exist in our work.
You will see Mi'kmaw or Mi'gmaw in different parts of the paper. This reflects a regional difference in orthographies. Where Melissa's story takes place, a G is used in the spelling of Mi'gmaw. In Eskasoni, the K is used to make the same sound (see https://firstnationhelp.com/ali/).
The history of relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers in what is currently Canada is long and complex. Indian agents were manifestations of Canadian colonial policy which “sought to place First Nations individuals and communities, their lands, and their finances under federal government control” (TRCa, p. 110). As Rück (2021) underlines, It was Indian agents who imposed the agenda of the Department of Indian Affairs ..., or their personal agendas, and meddled in every aspect of [Indigenous community and people's] lives (p. 4).
We note that enacted engagement with treaties have the potential to open up ethical spaces with broader conceptions of kinship.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following organizations for funding that supported the research presented in this paper: Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Insight Development Grant, John Jerome Paul Chair for Equity in Mathematics supported by the Jeannine Deveau Educational Foundation. We also thank the communities, students, teachers, schools, local leaders, and Elders who generously contribute to our work together.
Funding
Funding was provided by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant no. 430-2019-00475) and Jeannine Deveau Educational Foundation.
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Robinson, L., West, K., Daoust, M. et al. When mathematics has spirit: Aki Chike Win. ZDM Mathematics Education 55, 1053–1065 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-023-01482-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-023-01482-7