As I was listening to the presentation in class on Indigenous leaders, I realized that promoting all Indigenous peoples is so very important to creating a positive society. Considering I will be working in schools with younger children, promoting Indigenous Youth is very important to me. Like the presentation pointed out, I believe its important to have all students voice their individual power. People are awesome in general, because no one is the same. We are all unique human beings with similarities and differences. This is what I love about our world! This is also what I love about children. How honest, raw and unique each and every one of them are.
Speaking from my internship, the classrooms (and entire school) was based on white children. If I am being honest, there wasn’t a ton of cultural differences. So when it comes to promoting Indigenous youth in the classroom, it’s tough if theres no students who represent that culture. But that doesn’t mean we (as teachers) shouldn’t teach Indigenous content in the classroom. I think it makes it just as important to teach in the classroom when you don’t have Indigenous youth.
In class, we created a short action plan to promote Indigenous youth. The action plan that was talked about at our table group was focused a lot around representing Indigenous youth in the classroom through books, lessons, decorations and so on. I think it would be awesome to also teach students about youth leaders! This would give them a good chance to understand the importance of youth leaders. So in other words, an action plan that I would implement in my classroom is to teach all students about Indigenous youth and their importance. Students would learn that in order to move forward, we need to become human beings that advocate for the Indigenous communities (and all communities/cultures) and work together with all cultures to have reconciliation.
Hailie Logan 