サマーコンファレンス①

　　　Today I attended #FESI2017 to know more about the problems that Canadian have in terms of inclusion and education. The workshop’s topic was “problematizing Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples"

I was overwhelmed by today’s workshop, reminded that even Canada, which is one of the most inclusive countries in the world, have been holding human rights issues for over 500 years. Indigenous peoples are suffering from unequal circumstances of their educational supports, stereotypes, infrastructure, and abuse of human rights. But what I like today was the fact that there are a lot of resources, researchers, and organizations to help students and teachers to overcome difficulties for them. The population of Indigenous peoples is only 0.2% of that of Canada, but people take it seriously to consider what it means by true inclusion and try to develop and engage more and more people to raise awareness.

 

　　　On the other hand, when we discussed some practical ways, I also learned that it is very challenging for teachers to address this topic in the classrooms where they have students who have trauma or negative images about the topic. Teachers cannot treat like nothing related to the students while talking about it, and simultaneously, they don’t want the students to feel too individually talking about them.

In the discussion, the phrase that the Indigenous student emphasized was quite interesting; they said not to make them feel alone is important to avoid to make the student being in the spotlight.

According to the facilitator’s experience, making a circle greatly helped them to feel stronger even though they were the only one Indigenous student in the room. It seems effective when discussing these topics that seeing everyone’s faces and giving opportunities to everyone in order to tell their thoughts

 

　　　While learning about situations in Canada, I was also throwing back what I learned about that of Japan.

Although there are Indigenous peoples in Japan, I personally think that most of Japanese, including me, don’t have enough awareness towards them. I remember it is written in the social study’s textbooks that there is an ethnic group called Inuit in Northern Japan. The problem is that I was tested only if I know the most famous protestant, Saksanyu in their language, which is obviously not deep enough to think about how Japanese people are related to Indigenous peoples and how we can show respect to them and cooperate with them for reconciliation.

 

留学先教育学部のサマーコンファレンスワークショップに出ておりました。２日間あるうち１日目の今日のテーマは「先住民とカナダの関係についての問題提議」。午前中セッションはインプットで最後にアクションプランの検討までやりました。

 

授業現場ににおいて、マイノリティ当事者がいるクラスでどうやってそれに関するトピックを扱うかのストラテジー等、現場教師や先住民の方々の生の声を聞きながらディスカッションできたのは本当に貴重だった〜〜。

 

熱量の高い場にいられてワクワクしすぎたのと、久しぶりの英語レクチャーで頭フル回転したのとで夕方にはちょっと疲れました。明日のワークショップ前にもう一度今日のトピックを復習しようと思います。ばあ〜と英語でまとめたこと全部は訳さなかったけど、カナダのことを学びながら、日本の先住民問題を自分ごととして考えてこなかった事も浮かんできて、日本でも学びのアプローチ法（問いの仕方）が変わっていかなきゃなと思いました。