Biidaaban Community Service-Learning helps future teachers study MMIWG Final Report

Dr. Jonathan Pitt holds the resource booklet Honouring Our Women: A Resource for Educators to the MMIWG Calls for Justice, a booklet created with student submissions.

By Kelly Anne Smith

NORTH BAY— A Nipissing University program benefits the Indigenous community while helping students give back.

Christine Benoit is the Biidaaban Community Service-Learning (BCSL) Officer in the Enji giigdoyang – Office of Indigenous Initiatives at Nipissing University. Benoit explains Community Service-Learning is about giving time back to community and analyzing that role.

“Many professors require students complete volunteer work outside of class time. And then based on their experience, they would do a reflective assignment.”

Benoit says the program offers students the opportunity to see the Indigenization of learning environments.

“Many student teachers feel that kids in school today are learning so much more about Indigenous cultures and histories than they did at their age. That’s why they are so eager to spend time in schools and community, supporting Indigenous youth via a number of volunteer programs, to learn more about how schools are increasingly indigenizing learning environments, curriculum and teaching practices.”

Dr. Jonathan Pitt utilizes BCSL in his courses. Recently he worked with his students in the Indigenous Summer Institute to read through the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls.

Benoit says Dr. Pitt asked students to create an artistic response to the Report about what it meant to them.

“It’s an example of experiential learning and giving back. These works of art have been printed through our office with copies shared with student teachers to be used as a teaching tool.”

Dr. Pitt is of mixed First Nations ancestry and of the Bear Clan. Many of his relatives come from off-reserve communities in Pontiac County.

Pitt says Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) is very personal.

“As an Indigenous educator, I see a lot of policies that come out. Whether it’s the Royal Commission on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples or the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, policies come out from government but we don’t see them implemented.”

Dr. Pitt doesn’t want that to happen to the MMIWG Final Report.

“There is a lot of passion that goes into the Report topics because somebody has lost a sister or somebody has lost a mother, or grandmother, or a cousin. Somebody has lost somebody important to them,” he expresses. “It was authentic because they had to interpret the document. They had to figure out what part of it they were going to speak to; they then had to create a piece of art or photography or poetry— whatever they were going to do to help engage with that call within the inquiry itself.”

The booklet was created with all of the student’s submissions.

“We wanted to have the students engage with the content in a meaningful way and also, something they could be proud of. Most of the students never had any artistic training. This is just natural ability. A lot of Indigenous students have a natural inclination to using colour and composition. To me, that’s where the beauty is in this document.”

Dr. Pitt reminds that MMIWG has touched so many people.

“For us, it really was not so much work as it was something that we felt strongly about that we took pride in.”

Dr. Pitt calls the MMIWG document quite large and meaningful with 231 calls for justice.

“This was a more streamlined way to get people to raise awareness about the inquiry’s findings. Because of the variety of ages of students, the milieu is not only what I bring as the instructor and what the content is, it is also what they bring. The discussions are very rich and meaningful.”

He says it is important to look at the historical ties in contemporary issues like MMIWG.

“A lot of Indigenous communities prior to contact were matriarchal. When the Europeans came, they wouldn’t engage in conversation with the females. They only wanted to speak with men, so that forced change on communities. There you see a shift in status of women. You can connect the dots to where we are today and where we came from and how we got here.”

Dr. Pitt says there was an implementation part for the Community Service-Learning component.

“We took the document once it was finalized and we went into the classes and we did a curriculum workshop with them. We explained the usage of the document and how it could be used to spark conversations. The vision was that not only could it be used in a classroom, but it could also be something on a staffroom table for when educators come in,” explains Pitt. “Contemporary knowledge takes a while to catch up to that Indigenous knowledge. When it does, it gives it validation. It is what people have been saying for hundreds of years.”