5. …places possess a marked capacity for triggering acts of selfreflection, inspiring thoughts about who one presently is, or
memories of who one used to be, or musings on who one might
become. And that is not all. Place-based thoughts about the self
lead commonly to thoughts of other things - other places, other
people, other times, whole networks of associations that ramify
unaccountably within the expanding spheres of awareness that
they themselves engender. The experience of sensing places,
then, is thus both roundly reciprocal and incorrigibly dynamic…
When places are actively sensed, the physical landscape
becomes wedded to the landscape of the mind, to the roving
imagination, and where the mind may lead is anybody's guess.
Basso, p. 55
6. Wisdom sits in places. It's like water that never dries up.
You need to drink water to stay alive, don't you? Well, you
also need to drink from places. You must remember
everything about them. You must learn their names. You
must remember what happened at them long ago. You
must think about it and keep on thinking about it. Then your
mind will become smoother and smoother. Then you will
see danger before it happens. You will walk a long way and
live a long time. You will be wise. People will respect you.
Dudley Patterson, quoted in Basso, p. 70
13. Colonial Frontier Logics
The symbolic power of the single straight story
The utopia of open spaces…hides ingenously a brutal form of subordination.
The North American terrain can be imagined as empty only by willfully
ignoring the existence of the Native Americans—or really conceiving as a
different order of human being, as subhuman, part of the natural
environment…the Native Americans could not be integrated into the expansive
movement of the frontier as part of the constitutional tendency; rather, they had
to be excluded from the terrain to open its spaces and make expansion
possible.
Hardt and Negri, p. 169-70
14. The white Canadian looks at the Indian. The Indian is
Other and therefore alien. But the Indian is indigenous and
cannot be alien. So the Canadian must be alien. But how
can the Canadian be alien within Canada?
There are only two possible answers. The white culture
can attempt to incorporate the other, specifically through
beaded moccasins and names like Mohawk Motors, or
with more sophistication, through the novels of Rudy
Wiebe. Conversely, the white culture may reject the
indigene: „This country really began with the arrival of the
whites.‟
Goldie, p. 234
15. Placelessness as Curriculum and Pedagogy
It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relationship to land can
exist without love, respect, and admiration for the land, and a high
regard for its value. . . . The most serious obstacle impeding the
evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our educational and
economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an
intense consciousness of land.
Leopold, p. 223
In place of actual experience with the phenomenal world,
educators are handed, and largely accept, the mandates of a
standardized, “placeless” curriculum and settle for the
abstractions and simulations of classroom learning. Though it is
true that much significant and beneficial learning can happen
here, what is most striking about the classroom as a learning
technology is how much it limits, devalues, and distorts local
geographical experience.
Gruenewald, p. 8
16. Resident or Inhabitant?
A resident is a temporary occupant, putting down few roots and
investing little, knowing little, and perhaps caring little for the
immediate locale beyond its ability to gratify. As both a cause and
effect of displacement, the resident lives in an indoor world of
office building and shopping mall, automobile, apartment, and
suburban house and watches as much as four hours of television
each day. The inhabitant, in contrast, “dwells” . . . in an intimate,
organic, and mutually nurturing relationship with a place. Good
inhabitance is an art requiring detailed knowledge of a place, the
capacity for observation, and a sense of care and rootedness…
A resident can reside almost anywhere that provides an income.
Inhabitants bear the marks of their places…
Orr, p. 130
17.
18. • Sacred sites and
place-stories
• Nation and
Nationality
• Civilization
Indigenous Histories
• Aoksisowaato’p
Official Canadian Histories
Autobiographical Texts
Braiding Indigenous Métissage
• Papamihaw
asiniy
26. References
Basso, K. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the
Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Chambers, C. (1998). A topography for Canadian curriculum theory. Canadian
journal of education, 24(2), 137-150.
Goldie, T. (1995). The representation of the indigene. In B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths & H.
Tiffin (Eds.). The post-colonial studies reader. London and New York: Routledge, pp.
232-236.
Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place.
Educational researcher, 32(4), 3-12.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2009). Empire. Harvard University Press.
Leopold, A. (1968). A sand county almanac. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press. (Original work published 1949)
Orr, D. (1992). Ecological literacy. Albany: State University of New York Press.
