Relational Land-Based Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) Education

Foreword

Dwayne Donald

In September 1874, Treaty Commissioners representing the British Crown and Queen Victoria traveled to Fort Qu’Appelle to negotiate the terms of a sacred promise to live in peace and friendship with Indigenous peoples of the region that came to be known as Treaty 4. Prior to this meeting, Indigenous leaders had learned that the Hudson’s Bay Company had sold their lands to the Dominion of Canada without their consent or consultation. Thus, when the Treaty Commissioners sought to initiate negotiations, they were surprised to learn that the leaders declined to discuss the Treaty. Instead, a chief spokesman named The Gambler explained with the help of a translator that the assembled peoples felt that there was “something in the way” of their ability to discuss the terms of the Treaty in good faith (Morris, 2014, pp. 97–98). It took several days of discussion for the Queen’s representatives to comprehend the concerns expressed by The Gambler. The people were questioning the sincerity of these Treaty negotiations because they knew that the Government of Canada had already made a side-deal with the Hudson’s Bay Company for the purchase of their lands. The view expressed by The Gambler was that these side dealings undermined the integrity of the Government’s Treaty intentions. Through the translator, The Gambler clearly articulated the view that the Hudson’s Bay Company really only had the permission of the Indigenous peoples to conduct trade. They did not have the right to claim ownership over any land: “The Indians want the Company to keep at their post and nothing beyond. After that is signed they will talk about something else” (p. 110). Despite these misunderstandings, as well as notable disagreement among the various Indigenous groups in attendance, the terms of Treaty 4 were eventually ratified.

I begin this Foreword with consideration of this particular microcosmic historical interchange because it is directly connected to the colonial macrocosm that this book brings focus on.¹ The founding principle of colonialism is relationship denial and the centuries-long epistemological predominance of this principle has resulted in the creation of institutional and societal structures that perpetuate relationship denial in mostly subtle and unquestioned ways. In both literal and metaphorical ways, the colonial impetus has resulted in the imposition of a macro-level grid system on top of land and people that has divided the world according to very arbitrary racial, cultural, and epistemological categorizations. With regard to the particular micro-event example from Treaty 4, the years 1830–1870 were the golden age of the fur trade on the Canadian Prairies—a time when the Hudson’s Bay Company prospered and managed a fur trade monopoly over an expanding commercial network that tied together diverse groups of people in co-dependent relationships. However, as the years went on and more newcomers moved into the region, the governing systems began to change and the previous co-dependent balance was lost. During the 1850s, the lifestyles of people in the Prairie region gradually underwent a “Great Transformation” from a communal-style economy toward a private property system based on emerging forms of liberal economics and industrial capitalism (O’Riordan, 2003). As the significance of the land, resources, and people of the region began to be measured according to these emerging understandings of the market, ownership, and private property, previous co-dependent relational balances were subverted and a very violent form of enclosure—colonial frontier logic—was imposed on the land and the people in the name of Progress.² This is what The Gambler expressed as being ‘in the way’ of the Treaty negotiations.

As the Editors and Authors of this book have thoughtfully noted, this colonial frontier logic has also got “in the way” of schooling practices in the sense that prevailing curricular and pedagogical approaches perpetuate relationship denial. Those approaches are reflective of the “Western code”—the Enlightenment-based knowledge system that is presented as possessing all the answers to any important questions that could be asked (Mignolo, 2011, xii). It is important to state that conceptions of knowledge and knowing derived from such techno-scientific understandings of the world have provided many benefits. However, belief in the veracity of those understandings becomes a form of violence when that way of understanding is upheld as the only way. Wynter (1995), for example, has argued that the Columbian landfall on Turtle Island instigated a centuries-long hegemonic process wherein a universalized model of the human being was imposed on people around the world. Citing Foucault’s “figure of Man”, and noting the epistemological complexes resulting from Enlightenment-based arrangements of knowledge and knowing, Wynter asserts that this particular advancement has served to “absolutize the behavioural norms encoded in our present culture-specific conception of being human, allowing it to be posited as if it were the universal of the human species” (Wynter, 1995, pp. 42–43, emphasis in original). Eventually, formal schooling became a primary means by which those with power could discipline the citizenry to conform to this model of the human being. As I see it, this has resulted in the predominance of curricular and pedagogical approaches that perpetuate these universalized behavioural norms by persistently presenting knowledge and knowing in Enlightenment-based forms. As Lowe (2015) observes, the current moment is so replete with these universalized assumptions of human knowing and being that it has become very difficult to imagine other knowledge systems or ways of being human (p. 175).

This struggle to imagine other knowledge systems or ways of being human is implicated in the deepest difficulties faced today in trying to live in less damaging, divisive and destructive ways. It is clear to me that institutional and societal acceptance of relationship denial as the natural cognitive habit of human beings undermines the ability to respond to challenges in meaningful ways and proceed differently. The lingering influences of colonial frontier logics continues to get “in the way” of possibilities for relational repair and renewal. Instead of seeking to provide a specific solution to these challenges—“just do as I say and all will be better”— I have learned that it is much more helpful to focus on the creation of conditions under which something life-giving and life-sustaining can emerge. By taking seriously the wisdom of relational understandings of the world, the fine contributions provided in this book serve to create such conditions.

1. 1 In making this point, I am inspired by this piece of wisdom from Cajete (2004): “We are, after all, a microcosm of the macrocosm” (p. 47). I was reminded of this insight after reading Wiseman, Lunney Borden, and Sylliboy’s chapter offering in this book.
2. 2 I choose to capitalize this term to denote its mythological prominence within settler colonial societies like Canada. This notion of Progress has grown out of the colonial experience and is predicated on the pursuit of unfettered economic growth and material prosperity stemming from faith in market capitalism. For more on this see Donald (2019) and Nisbet (1980).