Cree Literacy Network

I was lucky to see this painting in real life yesterday in the Education South Building at the University of Alberta. It was commissioned by the Department of Educational Policy Studies of the Faculty of Education, for the course EDU 211 – Aboriginal Education and Contexts for Professional and Personal Engagement.

The course was created in 2011 to introduce Education students to Indigenous history and current issues. In 2013, the course creators of Education 211, along with the seminar leaders, received a University of Alberta Human Rights Education Recognition Teaching Award for creating and implementing the course. 

Here’s how the course is described in the university calendar: 

In this course, preservice teachers will continue to develop knowledge of Aboriginal peoples’ histories, educational experiences, and knowledge systems, ways of knowing and being and will further develop an understanding of the implications of this knowledge to the professional roles and obligations for teachers. Students will engage in a learning process of self-and-other awareness, and will be supported by Indigenous educators, Faculty members and Elders. Prerequisite: EDU 100 or pre/corequisite EDU 300 (After Degree students). [Department of Educational Policy Studies]

Alberta Artist Dawn Marie Marchand (whose work is regularly featured here) was given a small mountain of written materials, including the original syllabus and course materials, videos and PowerPoint, and asked to distil its essence into a single image that future teachers and instructors of the course can use to connect with the course material in perpetuity.

It’s an awesome piece of complex, collaborative artwork that now includes not only the painting itself, but a separate, computer-hosted electronic version of the painting that is an interactive installation. Viewers can visually examine the painting in detail (by simply zooming in). They can also click on over a dozen embedded hyperlinks that explicate the painting’s imagery, tying those images to concepts and citations from the project’s printed syllabus and reference list (also available via the link above).

View it online here: https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/visual-syllabus-edu-211/home

On the electronic version of the painting, you can click on any of the grey circle icons with three vertical dots (“kebab menu”) to access related text.  There is also a finger-pointing icon (at the top right of the image) that allows you to see (and click) every one of the hyperlinks embedded in the image.

Take your time to browse through them, and reflect on the richness of the symbolism depicting the history and context of each concept. It’s really a remarkable – and beautiful – presentation that captures many aspects of Cree education, which is, after all, another important part of Cree Literacy!