Chatting with Anne-Marie De SilVa about Indigenous Perspectives and CCQ

In this episode, we’re diving into Quebec’s new Culture and Citizenship in Québec (CCQ) program. We explore how Indigenous perspectives are woven throughout the curriculum and highlight essential resources, such as Voices From The Land, available to help educators bring this content to life.

Anne-Marie breaks down the program, explaining its sociological foundations that encourage students to research cultural realities with evidence, and its ethical lens that prompts reflection on how to move forward responsibly. She emphasizes that Indigenous knowledge isn't a standalone unit; it’s a thread that connects to all themes in the program, from our relationships with the land to our sense of identity and community.

We also get honest about the "fear of getting it wrong", a common hurdle for non-Indigenous educators, and the importance of cultural humility. The key is building local partnerships, acknowledging our own knowledge gaps, and learning alongside our students.

If this episode resonates with you, please share it with a colleague! We’d also love to hear how you are integrating Indigenous perspectives into your classroom and how the CCQ program is coming to life for you and your students.

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Focus

Stacy 0:04

Welcome to Kway Let's Talk Education, a podcast where Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices from across Quebec come together to share knowledge and experiences related to education. In each episode, you'll encounter new perspectives that we hope will enrich your practice and deepen your connection to your communities.

CCQ Course Explained

Stacy 0:28

I am one of your hosts, Stacey Allen, and in this episode, Daphna and I had the honor of speaking with Mona Tolli about decolonizing and indigenizing education. So, welcome, Amory, to our podcast. Daphne and I are super excited to have you here today. I'm really curious. I've heard a lot about the new Su CQ program, and I'm wondering if you could tell us a bit about the program and how it brings in Indigenous perspectives and why does that matter in the overall vision or mission of the program.

Anne Marie 1:09

Thanks, Stacey. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. I am the CCQ consultant for the EMSB. So my job is to support teachers in this new course. It's CCQ stands for culture and citizenship in Quebec. So that's what we're hitting on culture and citizenship. And citizenship really falls under these two components of sociology and ethics. So we're asking the kids, sociology is the study of society. So we're asking, it's considered a social science. So we're asking students to sort of take that scientific distance and inform themselves, research about any particular issue. They call it a cultural reality in the program. So they choose, you know, the teacher chooses a cultural reality that they will be studying, and the kids have to do the research of informing themselves what happened in the past, what's currently happening, and not so much what you think is happening, but based on the data and the research, what is really happening. And then the ethics part becomes what do we do moving forward? Now that we know what happened in the past and what's currently happening, what should be some steps that we could take as individuals, as a community, as a society to move this issue forward. And I mean, they're they're kids, so we're not asking them to pronounce or come up with an answer. We're asking them to reflect because that's a lot of what citizenship involves is thinking about not only your perspective, but the other people in your society and what their needs are and their priorities and their values. It's a pretty well thought-out course in terms of those two approaches of sociology and ethics. So you can see how Indigenous perspectives and realities fits right in.

Why Indigenous Perspectives Belong

Anne Marie 3:03

It used to be, you know, since the truth and reconciliation and the calls to action, I know that schools have taken that seriously, and the calls to action, specifically directed at education, things like bringing in Indigenous voices and acknowledging current perspectives, not just in the past. I think teachers have taken that seriously. And I think, you know, initiatives have definitely been started, but the CCQ class has allowed it to have a permanent home. Like it's it's specifically mentioned in the CCQ. It's not one of the themes, but it runs all the way through it. And I can remember going to a training workshop and somebody saying, you could do this entire course from indigenous perspectives and faithfully do the course. And I thought, you know, that's right. So it fits in in a lot of different places in all the different themes that we're talking about, relationships with the earth, relationships with each other, and and uh, you know, self-awareness and so on, and things about culture, situating yourself in your culture versus other cultures, etc.

Building Teacher Support Systems

Daphna 4:16

And Marie, what support and resources are available to help equip and support teachers in incorporating indigenous perspectives and content in the program?

Anne Marie 4:27

That's an excellent question because most of our teachers are non-Indigenous. And so there is a certain discomfort in bringing in something where you are aware that there are, let's say, issues of appropriation or issues of misinformation and so on that teachers are afraid of perpetrating. So we have provided quite a lot of support and resources for teachers. The first being we have an Indigenous consultant at the board. And so teachers can talk directly with our Indigenous consultant who has a perspective for education. We've also got a lot of resources that the Indigenous Consultant has provided, as well as various other workshops that we've attended. There's a really good platform called Voices from the Land that we are using that is it's Quebec-based, and that's why it's really valuable. Because the other thing about Indigenous is you would like it to be as local as possible, the issues that you're talking about. And we have these wonderful resources from Outdoor Learning Store, Outdoor Learning Center, which are magnificent, but they are BC-based, you know, it's West Coast. So you can't really call that local. I mean, a lot of it does overlap, a lot of the perspectives and the, you know, the approach to education is similar, but we really need something Quebec-based. And so this voices in the land is fantastic. We also have a lot of community contacts with people at uh Kanawaki. You know, they have a visitor center and they welcome students. And so we would have field trips, you know, send kids to visit Kanawaki. And we also have kind of a list of elders and so on that will come into the classroom and speak to the students as well. One of the best things we have really is, you know, books by Indigenous authors because a field trip or a visit, it's kind of it comes and it goes.

Local Resources And Community Links

Anne Marie 6:18

But if you have the books in the classroom that are always there and you can refer to them all year long, not just at Orange Shirt Day, but all year long. So we have lots of books by Phyllis Webstad. She's written a whole series of really good ones for every grade level, every age level about Orange Shirt Day. And then we've got authors like Julie Flett and David Robertson, who have written just magnificent books. And then for high school things, the Gord Downey Secret Path, and those kinds of things. So we find that things like books are very kind of a tangible thing that you can keep in your classroom and refer back to at will.

Stacy 6:56

Thanks, Amory. I think those resources are wonderful. Whenever we can leverage resources that are already created by Indigenous communities, particularly in Quebec as educators, I think that's a win. I'm wondering if there's like one really memorable way you've seen a teacher incorporate Indigenous perspectives within the CCQ program.

Anne Marie 7:19

Yes, I mean it's still fairly new. And so a lot of teachers have not really had a chance to really wrap their minds around how they're going to do this. But yes, I've seen a couple of teachers. Certainly, what I was saying about the outdoor learning, they've got a whole program really about Indigenous-based education, the idea that you can do all of your subjects through the lens of nature. For example, they offer all kinds of resources about like patterns and nature and way you can incorporate math and science and you know, all of these different, different ways that nature can can teach us and how animals can teach us and what we can learn from it. And so I had there was a teacher who actually did that with her class. She bought all the outdoor learning resources and she really made it into kind of an indigenous education experience. And I think she was blown away by how the impact of it. Because I think the way our school system works is we tend to box our subjects, like we treat them as disconnected from each other. So kids will go to math

Books That Stay In The Classroom

Anne Marie 8:21

class and then they'll leave math and go to phys ed. And at no point do we talk about the connection between math and phys ed, and then they'll go from phys ed to English language arts, and we won't it, it gives the impression that everything is a separate entity unto itself and that nothing is connected to anything else. And I think we're doing the kids a disservice because clearly that's not true. Everything is connected, and I think the indigenous approach really allows kids to see that. And it's like, yeah, you know, they've got this outdoor learning, they offer all these math resources. Like I said, patterns in nature where you can see the same patterns recur over and over in nature on the micro and the macro level. And it's fascinating and it opens up the world of math to you because you can see where it's tangible, it's less abstract than it's real. So I think that's a very powerful way to approach. And I'll just give you another example of a teacher that brought in, she actually brought in Christy Jordan Fenton, who is the author of Fatty Legs, which is a very popular book about the residential school experience from the insider's

Classroom Examples That Work

Anne Marie 9:27

perspective. And I know a lot of schools have fatty legs in their classroom. And so this teacher managed to get the actual author to come to her classroom. And we ordered fatty legs for all the kids, and she signed them. So every student has a signed copy of her book. And I feel like that is powerful. That's the kind of thing that these kids will remember, even if they don't realize the value of a signed copy of a book right now. If they hang on to it, I think they, as they get older, they will realize what an amazing experience that was. And so I think that's the kind of thing we're going to continue to encourage because of the impact it has. I'll just say at the high school level, there's a lot more talking about the TRC and the impact of whether or not, like researching where are we at with the 94 calls to action and which the ones are actually, you know, a lot of them don't really apply to students, but the education ones, they can see whether or not we are actually following those or making an attempt. And so, yeah, at the high school level, it's much more kind of pointed as to what we should be doing moving forward.

Daphna 10:32

Emory, what are some of those things that we should be doing moving forward?

unknownAnne Marie 10:38

I don't know.

Anne Marie 10:40

Like I'm saying, I'm saying it's the kind of thing that we're inviting high school kids to reflect on before they become adults, and it really is in their hands to decide what to do. So right now they have the freedom to practice thinking about what are some of the issues? What can we, what are things that, you know, we know what happened in the past, but what are some of the things that are happening right now that maybe we could bring awareness to? Because we got to be careful, the school system is not really intended to make kids into full-on social activists, because that's not really school's role. What you can do is, you know, show them how they, you know, avenues they could pursue if they choose. But the school itself has to be kind of careful about that. So we offer them information and you know, places to research what are some of the suggestions that other people have made about moving forward and which of these seem feasible, doable, how can you contribute? But it's really offering the kids a chance to practice right now.

Daphna 11:42

Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more in terms of the uh the context of education and uh that it's a place that develop critical thinking more than anything else.

Anne Marie 11:56

That's right. That's right. Because values values are tricky, like you've got the Quebec values of the Charter and Human Rights, but I'm saying individual families have their own values, and school is not really intended to trample on those. It's more to allow kids the the freedom to understand the different perspectives that are out there so that when they're adults they will make their own decisions.

Connecting Subjects Through Nature

Daphna 12:23

Absolutely. I guess my question was more in it had to do more with moving forward with the CCQ program. Um and you know, what can we do better? Or what are the some of the challenges when we talk about incorporating indigenous perspectives and content?

Anne Marie 12:46

Yeah, I would say, as I said before, there's still kind of a fear on the part of a lot of teachers of opening up a can of worms where they don't know what they're doing, or because they are not indigenous, it's kind of similar at Black History Month. The teachers take it on, but if you're not Black, you feel like you're telling somebody else's story somehow. So I think there is a lot of fear of that, and that's where these really solid resources will make a solid lesson. You know, impactful learning comes from impactful resources, and I think it relieves teachers a lot when we have this bank of things that they can use. And in teaching it, they're also informing themselves. So as the years go by, I think the comfort level will rise as teachers get more experience with it.

Daphna 13:33

Excellent. Amory, I'm just curious, are there any uh differences uh between the French and the English school boards when it comes to this topic?

Anne Marie 13:44

Yeah, that that's difficult for me to answer in that I'm only in the English board, so I'm not entirely sure. I know French boards have made had had made attempts also to make community uh connections with indigenous. I mean, we have people close by, like local communities that we can have have a relationship with. I think part of the issue was trying to find indigenous people who can speak French, because English is often their second language, and then French their third. So I think that is a bit of a barrier to some extent, but it's just a question of finding the right people. And once we do, it'll move forward in in all the boards. Excellent, Stacy?

Stacy 14:28

I just want to thank Emery for your reflections. I think I hear a lot of that in my role of educators expressing concern because they want to be bring indigenous perspectives into their classroom. They're non-Indigenous, but they fear of doing more harm than good. And, you know, my answer to them is always if we're not bringing these perspectives into our classroom, then are we continuing to bring in those Eurocentric ideas? I feel like it's very much it's better to make a mistake and be humble and have an open conversation and be like, oh, I didn't realize I was making

Ethics, TRC, And Student Reflection

Stacy 15:06

a mistake then and necessarily dismissing that altogether or not addressing those. So I'm very happy to see indigenous perspectives and content being fused with curriculum. So it's specifically tied to the roles of educators and that there's so many resources by Indigenous communities and support that they can pull from. So I'm very grateful to hear about that and have you share.

Anne Marie 15:32

100%. And I think, you know, in studying another culture, it allows you also to see your own culture and sort of some of the things like I was saying, about the way we box the subjects, you might not necessarily notice that unless you see a different way of doing it. And yeah, and one of the one of our previous uh Indigenous consult consultants talked about cultural humility and the idea, like what you just said, to be able to say, Oh, okay, I didn't quite have that right, but I'm gonna fix it. You know, that idea that, you know, yeah, you might make mistakes, but you need to have that sort of cultural humility humility going in that you know your own culture, but you don't know everything.

Stacy 16:13

Yeah, and it's beautiful. I think it connects to that program when you're saying it's not only history, but teaching the contemporary stance is, you know, acknowledging yourself maybe as a non-Indigenous person. I know speaking myself, I didn't learn about indigenous perspectives much in school. But then to have that humility with my students to be like, I didn't because of that situation. So I might make mistakes, but let's move forward and think about how we can do better. So Daphne, did you have any other uh questions for Anne-Marie?

Daphna 16:43

No, I think that we're good. And I want to thank you, Anne Marie, for taking the time to be with us here today.

Anne Marie 16:50

No, this was a pleasure. I thank you.

Stacy 16:52

Oh, thank you. And uh to our listeners, I hope you'll tune in for our next episode.