Participants in the co-curricular project gather along Okanagan Lake at Bertram Park to set an intention and reflect on their shared learning.
As the school year gets underway, a team of UBC Okanagan educators is exploring new ways to approach the K-12 curriculum.
A five-year project with educators, researchers and community partners in the Okanagan examined how curriculum is developed and taught by centring Indigenous knowledge and relationships to land at the heart of teaching and learning.
The project, Co-Curricular-Making: Honouring Indigenous Connections to Land, Culture and the Relational Self , involved more than 240 current and future educators. With guidance from Elders, Knowledge Keepers and community partners, participants were encouraged to see curriculum not as a fixed guide but as a shared, evolving process, explains Dr. Margaret Macintyre Latta, Professor at the UBC Okanagan School of Education .
Participants learned to move away from colonial teaching practices while gaining confidence to lead meaningful classroom discussions about history, culture and identity.
"This project shows that when teachers and students work together to reimagine curriculum, education becomes a powerful space for reconciliation," says Dr. Macintyre Latta. "It is not just about adding new content, but about reshaping how we teach and learn so classrooms reflect the land, the cultures we live alongside and the relationships that connect us."
The project included a range of unlearning activities. In one Grade 6 classroom, students reimagined the 19th-century work song Drill Ye Tarriers and explored its historical and cultural context in relation to Canada's railway construction.
"Students used art, dance, drama, music and poetry to explore different perspectives, including how Indigenous communities were affected," she explains. "The activity opened space for deeper questions, critical thinking and a better understanding of how history is shared and remembered."
Throughout the project, Dr. Macintyre Latta says educators became more confident in making space for these challenging but important conversations. One key outcome was helping both educators and students shift away from looking for right and wrong answers, and instead view uncertainty and questions as opportunities to grow and support wellbeing.
This approach helped teachers and students relate their learning to their own lives and communities, she says, recognizing both what they know and what they're still learning.
"It also showed how important educators are in shaping this vision, using critical and creative thinking to engage students with the world around them."
Dr. Macintyre Latta says the project is a way to re-examine how curriculum can be taught by bringing in Indigenous ways of knowing and being. This includes creating learning spaces that are responsive to place. It also supports inquiry-based learning and encourages students to ask questions, be curious and engage in difficult conversations.
The full research article, The Needed Messy Practice Ground for Curricular Un/Decolonizing and Indigenizing, co-authored by Dr. Bill Cohen and Dr. Danielle Lamb, was recently published in LEARNing Landscapes . It reflects five years of collaboration and draws on the contributions of the Co-Curricular-Making team and community partners, including Okanagan Nation Alliance, Central Okanagan Public Schools, IndigenEYEZ, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna Museums Society and the universities of Alberta and Ottawa.
