“Decolonizing assessment through ânisininiwak epistemologies and ontologies”
Dr. Burcu Yaman Ntelioglou, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, Brandon University.
Bev Fontaine, Elder Stanley Wilson, Sylvia Lathlin-Scott, Priscilla Constant & Janna Personius, Opaskwayak Educational Services, Opaskwayak Cree Nation.
Check out our podcast episode and accompanying sketchnote where we welcome the community, educators and researchers of the Joe A. Ross School in Opaskwayak Cree Nation to discuss decolonizing assessment through ânisininiwak epistemologies and ontologies.
The drumming in this episode is performed by drum instructor Ken Henderson and two students of Joe A. Ross School, Jacob Constant and Trapper Fontaine.
About the Speakers
Emerging from a community-research partnership, “Decolonizing Assessment through ânisininiwak epistemologies and ontologies” will present a process of recognizing Indigenous language and education rights in keeping with the call for “reconciliation of indigenous knowledge and culture in learning and pedagogy… [to] be translated into policy and practice in all public forms of education” (Battiste, 2017, p. x-xi). Drawing on findings from a longitudinal community-engaged study that examines the experiences of students, teachers, parents, and Knowledge-Keepers in the Cree-Immersion Program in Opaskwayak Cree Nation, the practice of decolonizing assessment will be explored with specific examples from the community’s efforts to revitalize the Cree language in Nursery-Gr 6 curriculum through ânisininiwak ways of being and knowing with a focus on aspikāpawiwina kanistāmēnitakwōki (prioritizing ancestral beliefs and values), the anisininew culture, and land-based practices that connect the students to the Opaskwayak anisininew traditional territory (Wilson, 2023; OES Strategic Plan 2024-2026).
undoing, decolonizing, liberating, righting and reassembling literacies assessment 