A website to broaden the PERSPECTIVEs of your Face-to-face, Blended, or Online classroom
An EXPLORATION of re-CONNECTION through a balance of ANCIENT and MODERN practices
An EXPLORATION of re-CONNECTION through a balance of ANCIENT and MODERN practices
What are INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVES?
The foundation for:
- Relationship with Place
- The pedagogy of Circle
- The power of Story
- The practice of Mentorship
- and more
My name is Anne Hilker. I teach English to adults returning to post-secondary education at Vancouver Island University on beautiful, unceded Coast Salish territory of Vancouver Island.
I welcome you as a teacher, educator, learner and friend to explore what excites or intrigues you. These pages are only the beginnings of many conversations.
It's a wondrous journey and a delight to walk with you into your face-to-face, blended or online classroom.
I welcome you as a teacher, educator, learner and friend to explore what excites or intrigues you. These pages are only the beginnings of many conversations.
It's a wondrous journey and a delight to walk with you into your face-to-face, blended or online classroom.
I wondered, what does Indigenizing the curriculum actually mean?
This question started me on a quest. It was floating around the university, and nobody really understood how to do it, apart from including First Nations, Metis and Inuit content in their courses. This seemed inadequate.
What would it REALLY look like to bring Indigenous presence to formal education? I was intrigued and challenged.
What would it REALLY look like to bring Indigenous presence to formal education? I was intrigued and challenged.
I had to look into my own life and find the places where relationships already existed.
Anne Hilker, educator & dancer
PLACE
I understood my own connection and relationships with PLACE. From early Yukon years, to a Prairie childhood and West Coast adulthood, the land has had profound influences on me. The Yukon taught me about light, friendship with trees, and life-death dependence on sled dogs. The Prairies taught me how to live in wide open spaces, to listen to wind, to smell rain 100 km. away. It taught me how to pay attention to little creatures and how to feel warm and safe in a deeply frozen environment. The West Coast had softer lessons in its gentle air and protected coves. Yet the seas and ocean with their tides and undercurrents kept me aware of my surroundings that could change in a moment. From these single-lifetime of experiences, I am deeply moved by the multi-generational, multi-millennial experiences and relationships of Indigenous peoples with the Land, the Place from which they arose. Surely, I have something to learn. |
CIRCLE
Circle has always meant relationship-with-other to me. Be it a Prairie community barn dance, a collective of like-minded people working on a project, or a therapy circle, it’s been about how I communicate and create in the context of group. Sacred Circle Dance and Traditional Women’s Dances have led me to wisdom preserved and passed down through generations from my own Indigenous European roots, dances that have survived through Roman invasions, religious reformations, or centuries of an Inquisition that burned the Indigenous knowledge and ways of being out of most of Europe. Community - support - witnessing - life changes I can tell you it’s a lot harder to step on someone you have to look at across a circle. Taking the Circle into my classroom has been transformative. It opens new ways of communicating and brings the quiet voices to light. In what other ways can I enter into Circle? |
STORY
Story - voice - the universe. It’s how we make sense of life. It’s how we re-create the past and move into the future. Whole lifetimes could be spent on story alone. I am challenged to find ways to look at the narrative I create in the classroom, whether in person or online, and make sure it’s the story I want to be telling. |
MENTORSHIP
It is only a blip on the map of humanity that written text has been used as a method of teaching or of learning. While fantastical changes have come to humans as a result, we seem to have forgotten the value of learning by watching and practicing, of modelling and mentoring others in our stead. Perhaps this is the applied section of learning. It’s the hands on manipulation. At some point, I need to mix some real live experience into the mix of education. |
It is our responsibility as educators to recognize the impact of our actions in the classroom. The way in which we design and deliver our messages becomes the future. What kind of environment allows life to flourish? How can I honour the inter-connection of all life on this planet? That is what I must base my educational decisions on. |
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About Anne Hilker
Part of me is creative, inventive, wildly imaginative, community oriented, and very attached to the natural world that surrounds me. Another part of me is analytical, theoretical, and conceptual and loves to spend time alone. My work and life bring together these different spheres. My teaching and learning strive to connect, facilitate, mentor, nourish, examine, analyze, integrate, celebrate, and transform, both myself and the learners I work with. |
Huy tseep q'u siiem and thank you to the Indigenous voices from many territories on this website.
My gratitude and acknowledgement of the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw Nation and unceded traditional territory of the MAlaxet, Cowichan, Halalt, Penelakut, Lyaksen and Stz'uminus Nations on Vancouver Island.
I also give thanks to the ancestors, the supernatural ones, the matriarchs and hereditary leaders, and to the creatures big and small for preserving, listening to, and understanding the rich network of life and cultural teachings of this beautiful land (adapted from "Territorial Acknowledgement", Indigenous Perspectives Society).
Huy ch q'u a and thank you to each who has walked beside me with much generosity:
My gratitude and acknowledgement of the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw Nation and unceded traditional territory of the MAlaxet, Cowichan, Halalt, Penelakut, Lyaksen and Stz'uminus Nations on Vancouver Island.
I also give thanks to the ancestors, the supernatural ones, the matriarchs and hereditary leaders, and to the creatures big and small for preserving, listening to, and understanding the rich network of life and cultural teachings of this beautiful land (adapted from "Territorial Acknowledgement", Indigenous Perspectives Society).
Huy ch q'u a and thank you to each who has walked beside me with much generosity:
- The Grandmothers/Kookums: the late Olive Wells, my grandmother, and Laura Wasacase (Saultaux - Cree) Saskatchewan educator and mentor
- Joyce Hayden, Yukon writer and community-builder
- Thiyaas Florence James (Penelukut), Philomena Williams (Cowichan) and Della (Rice) Sylvester (Cowichan), language and knowledge holders, medicine women and Elders
- The many Indigenous women who shared tea, tears, and laughter through many years of my work at Somenos Transition House, a safe house for women and their children
- Laura Shannon, scholar & holder of Balkan women's traditional dances and culture
- Mary O'Neil, VIU OLTD program supervisor, Laura Tait (Tsimshian), M.Ed advisor, and OLTD collegues
- Dancing sisters who share footsteps into the ancient past and the imagined future
- Dearest family and friends
image credits
CC attribution: Anne Hilker 2019 |
red-winged blackbird: Jon D. Anderson CC Attribution-Non-commercial
blog page blackbird in flight: photochem_PA CC Attribution image of Anne Hilker: Jan Carnahan place - St. Victor Petroglyphs Provincial Park, SK: Sheryl Ackerman, used with permission circle - Sacred Circle Dance, East Sooke BC: Anne Hilker story - Jan Carnahan: Anne HIlker mentorship - Dr. Nancy Turner: Anne Hilker image credit photo: Weebly. No attribution required. |
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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