Seeding Change: Cultivating De-colonial Practices in Educational Institutes


The Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres (OFIFC) was Founded in 1971 and emerged from a nation-wide, grass-roots movement dating back to the 1950’s. The Organization works to support, advocate for, and build the capacity of member Friendship Centres across Ontario. Friendship Centres are community hubs where Indigenous people living in towns, cities, and urban centres can access culturally based and culturally appropriate programs and services. Today, there are 31-member Friendship Centre’s throughout Ontario who are dynamic hubs of economic and social convergence that create space for Indigenous communities to thrive.

The Original Peoples Learning Centre (OPLC) has been a goal of the OFIFC’s since the 1970s with the vision of, “Advancing urban Indigenous understandings of everyday good living/good life [Mino Bimaadiziwiin/Miyo Pamatisiwin/ Ka’nikonhri:io] through community driven learning and research.” OPLC has multiple working groups including community-based Research, Continuous Learning, Systems Change, and Post-Secondary.

Our session will spotlight the OPLC’s approaches to wholistic learning, course designs, and development. The OPLC applies a trauma informed approach to Learner assessment through the integration of Indigenous ways of knowing that enhance Learner’s skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values. Outcomes within the OPLC are designed to build capacity for urban Indigenous communities including wholistic wrap around care.

The session will use examples such as flexible assignments, Learner-guided rubrics, learner-identified success, and self-grading practices, which re-humanize and de-colonize the relationship between Instructor, Learner, and assessment. These practices build relationships and start conversations between the Learner, Instructor, land, and ceremony. Furthermore, we will discuss how the OPLC is decolonizing the classroom through collaborating with Indigenous knowledge carriers and Elders to incorporate traditional teachings into each curriculum.

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