Indigenous education conference in Yukon explores culture and curriculum

Tanis Van Bibber weaves light and dark blue beads around a large blue jewel. Each colour represents a daily temperature range for the month of November 2019, the month her daughter was born.

It's beading, but it was also part of a math workshop at the Yukon First Nation Education Directorate's sixth annual conference, this past week.

"It's special to you. It's personal," said Van Bibber, who is a First Nation education advocate, about the beading. "You're also learning a lot with math."

Nearly 300 people took part in the conference held at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre in Whitehorse on Tuesday and Wednesday. The event featured about 50 presenters and 25 workshops. 

The objective of the two-day gathering was to educate the educators, who came from across disciplines and regions. 

Melanie Bennett, executive director of the Yukon First Nation Education Directorate (YFNED), said the goal was to build capacity "for the people who are working with our children…to do it from an Indigenous lens, and in an appropriate way." 

'Like two worlds'

Math is one area that YFNED is focused on. Where Indigenous content does exist in the school curriculum, much of it is limited to history and social studies. 

The directorate's math advocacy program is aimed at changing that. Launched in January 2022, it's piloting several projects on data representation through beadwork — looking at temperature highs and lows, changes in tides, and historical climate data. 

The goal is to provide educators with practical projects they can take back to their classrooms, and eventually, to incorporate their ideas directly into the territory's curriculum. 

"It's like two worlds," said Sarah Biela, a math advocate with the program. "Combining cultural activities and the curriculum. That is really how I believe we're going to have success with math especially, and generally with the school system."

Van Bibber agrees. She's from Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in and grew up in both Dawson City and Whitehorse. She said she experienced trauma and a lack of support in the education system as a child. Now, she helps First Nations youth in the schools where she's placed. 

"I feel like we as an Indigenous people take in things, and it resonates with us more, if it's around our culture," she said. 

The numeracy project currently does not employ any Indigenous math advocates, though Biela said they work closely with Indigenous stakeholders. 

Outside the Yukon, Indigenous perspectives on math are also gaining ground. In Ontario, a project that started in two classrooms has now involved more than 1,000 students. There, math is being taught not just through beading, but also basket- and moccasin-making. 

'We're making a difference'

Indigenous education in the Yukon has a difficult past. The territory was home to six residential schools, the last one of which closed just 40 years ago. The impacts of that system are still felt to this day.

More recently, the Yukon's department of education came under scrutiny in 2019 when an auditor general's report found that the department had no strategy to close gaps in outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. 

The report states that in the 2017 to 2018 school year, just 44 per cent of First Nations students met or exceeded numeracy level expectations, compared with 77 per cent of non-First Nations students. 

Bennett said the path for First Nations students remains challenging, because students still have to enter schools operated by the Department of Education. In addition, much of the funding for YFNED programing, including math advocacy, comes through Jordan's Principle. That initiative, run by the federal government, currently faces a backlog of 140,000 requests.  

Still, Bennett said she's "confident in the work that we're doing. We're making a difference."