My ESCI 302 Reflective Video

Throughout my all my blogs including my creative blogs, braid, in the middle of things and my love letter I have discovered many themes. I have realized I have such a western identity which has caused me to pin point where “wilderness” is. To add to that, my western identity or my whiteness has caused me to have many decolonizing encounters throughout this class.

At just the beginning it was clear through my blogs 1 and 2 and my braid that I was trying to embody the environment already as I knew that was what I was suppose to do. I stated, “It is important everyone begins to embody the environment. Appreciate it. Love it.” I see this theme throughout all my blogs that the environment is a relationship between nature and people and one without the other is not able to function.

My eco-identity has been formed throughout this class, my work and day to day life and is still continuing to be constructed. My eco-identity has began to change in positive ways, as I get to explore and experience a different, beautiful environment everyday. In this class especially it has helped me to realize all my biases and discourses due to my whiteness. It is clear the philosophy of critical theory has been apparent throughout my experience in ESCI and my blogs.

Curthoys (2012) stated, “Discourses tell me what is possible, yet often produce versions of reality that appear incompatible” (p. 82). Throughout my blogs I never realized how much society had shaped me and lead me to believe certain discourses.

So this idea of wilderness has really stuck out to me as it is a western way of understanding in which I have always understood it to be a silenced and untouched place. In the middle of things and Creative journal 3 I have demonstrated my understanding of wilderness. However, my understandings have been changed since being in this class. Newberry stated, “The space that settlers might call wilderness is also thought of as home, the backyard, or even the pantry” (Newberry, 2012, p.35) which shows that wilderness is a term that was once created by settlers and how they encountered the land. According to McLean (2013), “Wilderness evokes the innocence of white settlers in Canada” (p.360) as we do not use the land in the same way that Indigenous peoples once did. When looking at this from an Indigenous point of view, there is no such thing as wilderness. They used the land for absolutely everything and were very aware and conscious with how they were using it. Every bit of the land was used for their necessities. However, since white settlers, this has changed. We do not use the land for our homes, food, cooking and so on but instead we have a grocery store and a customize home that was built for us, not from material that was found from the land.

“Wilderness and nature are called into being by the meanings given them, are constituted by their own representation, they are human creations and those subject to whims and politics of human activity” as Newberry (2012, p.35) once stated, this shows how our whiteness has created us to think that the wilderness is a silence, untouched place, essentially where all the trees are which I had stated in my cj3. But yet, when the Indigenous peoples were the first ones here, every bit of the land was being used and there was no thing as an untouched place which therefore means, the wilderness does not exist. Untouched means never touched and it is clear that all the land here in Canada has at one point been touched. In my in the middle of things post I state, the environment has many stories and it is important to think outside of the box and not solely about your own story but others as well.

The trees in my backyard as I talked about in blog 1 and 4, lead me to believe I was in the wilderness. I thought being away from human activity that I was in the wilderness which made me build a fort out back as I talked about in blog 4. We would use many different resources that the land had to offer and creatively, used whatever we had. It is clear this was an Indigenous way as I was using what was provided from the land.

Although I did demonstrate an Indigenous way, there are many times where I have not which has lead to my decolonization encounters.

“In the process of decolonization.. I believe it is also important for one to unlearn the oppressive and/or privileged narrative that informs one’s sense of identity. At the same time, we need to relearn and reclaim who we are as humans” (Ho, p. 8).

which has lead me to have many decolonizing encounters throughout this class. As stated in creative journal 6 I had a decolonizing encounter when we had the fishing activity in class. In our group of 5 we were given fish and did not know how many fish were in the bag. We were eat allowed to fish out a maximize of 5 fish each round and me being greedy, obviously took 5. But by the time it got to the last person, there were no more fish for them to fish. Essentially, they starved. This was an alarming experience for me as stated in my cj6 “This was definitely an unlearning as it is disrupting my western view because if I run out of food, I just go to the grocery store and get more. However, looking at this fishing example it is not possible to get more once they are all gone. It is important to limit yourself and only take what you need.” this is an indigenous idea of only taking what you need as the land only has so many resources. Again, we see this idea of how much the indigenous people used the land and how me, with my western identity, was greedy because I am used to being able to run to the grocery store when I am out of food. “Given this reality, it is alarming that our educational system to ignore the cultural roots of environmental and social injustice…” as Ho (p.2) stated. In our Embodying group, the fifth food group, our main focus was food and how we were receiving it here in Saskatchewan. In efforts to understand more about food and how it is grown we met with an Elder in which she demonstrated to us just how important the land is to them and without it, they would not have survived back then.

Being on Treaty 4 land has made me want to learn so much more about Indigenous peoples and how I can connect to the land like they once did. I want to continue to embody the land and as a future educator in my classroom I am going to make sure my students not only know the provinces and territories or Canada but also make the treaty map a must. By this I will be able to embody a connection to the land and Indigenous ways of knowing. Although I have not completely embodied Indigenous ways quite yet, as this was seen through my Inquiry project and my embodying project, this is my overall goal as a future educator. I will get there. I will make treaty education a priority.

Throughout my blogs I see that due to my whiteness and the way society has shaped me I have had many learnings and unlearnings.

I am going to end with one last question: a future educator how can I ensure we do not ignore the past? How can learning from the past reflect how we view the environment?

Curthoys, L., Cuthburtson, B., & Clark, J. (2012). Community Story Circles: An opportunity to rethink the epistemological approach to heritage interpretive planning. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 17, 173-187.

Ho, Y. C. (n.d.). Travelling with a World of Complexity: Critical Pedagogy of Place and My Decolonizing Encounters, 2-14.

Liz Newbery. (2012). Canoe Pedagogy and Colonial History: Exploring Contested Spaces of Outdoor Environmental Education, University of Toronto. 30-45

McLean, S. (2013). The Whiteness of Green: Racialization and environmental education. The Canadian Geographer, 57(3), 354-362.