Sister, Have Your Students Write Love Letters to Ho’ēva Néške’éehe: Teaching students to honor Ho’ēva Néške’éehe through letter writing

Colette M. Yellow Robe, Vonâhe'e (Ceremonial Woman)

Abstract

This paper examines how Indigenous storying and reciprocity can guide teacher education toward decolonial and justice-centered praxis. Grounded in Tsitsistas/Suhtai (Northern Cheyenne) teachings that call each generation to prepare the way for the next, I reflect on autobiographical vignettes that illustrate how relational pedagogy emerges through love, gratitude, and responsibility to the land. Central to this reflection is an experience of welcoming Mohawk Turtle Clan peacemaker Danny Beaton into my classroom, where students were invited to write love letters to Ho’ēva Néške’éehe (Grandmother Earth). This practice honored Indigenous worldviews that affirm the earth as kin and modeled ways of cultivating intergenerational responsibility and stewardship. By engaging with story as both method and pedagogy, students were encouraged to connect their own histories and homelands to broader commitments of care, justice, and decolonization. Through these experiences, I argue that teaching for racial justice and decolonization requires educators to embody reciprocity, vulnerability, and courage, thereby offering students not only knowledge but pathways toward deeper connection with self, community, and the earth. Ultimately, this work affirms that the journey of education is collective, rooted in ancestral teachings, and carried forward for future generations.

Keywords: Indigenous education, decolonization, reciprocity, pedagogy, Grandmother Earth

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.58117/jnfm-da97

Prologue

On the primordial steppe rested our strongest roots, tethered spirits, and

cultural medicines,

Love forged each of us and called us back.

Ancient pathways bound us together once again in modern settings,

A wellspring erupted through the submerged truths to reconstitute and re-story…

On the grasslands of the Great Plains, both the ancient and contemporary stewards stand with shields to protect, love, and defend the anthologies to give way for –

The convergence of the vanguard, the relatives from across Turtle Island and

Ho’ēva Néške’éehe (Grandmother Earth), declared emphatically:

She is our Ho’ēva Néške’éehe, not merely soil and water.

We, not merely children, her defenders.

We coalesced around her.

Ho’ēva Néške’éehe’s magnificent six.

Our Ho’ēva Néške’éehe, procured to support land-grant missions upon unceded lands,

Our Ho’ēva Néške’éehe, witness to all sequestered peoples who stood in the way

of westward expansion,

Our Ho’ēva Néške’éehe, recordkeeper of the buried histories,

Our Ho’ēva Néške’éehe, beckoning us, the magnificent six,

Our Ho’ēva Néške’éehe. Our spirits. Back to the center.

We listened to our Ho’ēva Néške’éehe, because we know she is more than the land that held up

corn fields and housing structures, and empty acknowledgements,

The magnificent six and eventually five received her sustenance, and;

We found the essence to solidify our purpose;

Our Ho’ēva Néške’éehe, availed to our pitiful states and provided the paths. Ratifying our ways forward.

The journey. Forged upon a bedrock of honesty, vulnerability, and courage,

Here lies the after place, Beloveds.

We, each the embodiments of prayers and offerings put down by ancestors,

We heeded their calls, and our collective actions carve out the paths for

future generations,

The journey is the future.

The aforementioned epistemic poem is in honor of my former colleagues, my friends, and the journey we sojourned together toward anti-racism, racial justice, and decolonization at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. I left my ancestral homelands in the Midwest in 2022 to start new chapters for a faculty position in Canada.

The Journey Is the Future

The spring of 2025 afforded me with an incredible teaching experience. It

was a transference of spiritual power and energies that reminded me about one of my cores for working in teacher education: my journey is not mine alone, it is about future generations. As a youngster, Náhko'éehe (my mother) gave me a singular teaching that has stayed with me over the years that I continue to apply to my teaching career and journey. She often stated, “The next generations should be three (at minimum) times better than your own generation. We (collectively as Cheyennes) should leave things much better for them, than we ever had.” This teaching illustrates the tantamount urgency to understand my Self as an educator who embodies and prioritizes a relational approach that is steeped in the narratives, commonplaces, and connections between my past, present and future selves (Clanidin et al., 2007). More so, this is an embodiment of reciprocity that relies heavily on storying as an Indigenous method as Kovach (2021) describes: “In Indigenous methodologies, the methods for hearing story arising from Indigenous culture and practiced within Indigenous communities are ascribed to logic and the practice of the gift,” (p. 162). This way of knowing has been passed down throughout many Indigenous cultures across time. The embodiment of reciprocity is central to my work as an educator. I invite the reader to join me on an inward journey of connection and reflection as a way for us as educators to be in service to the next three and seven generations on Ho’ēva Néške’éehe (grandmother/mother earth). The following stories I am sharing revolve around love, gifts, stewardship, and care for the lands. In my Tsitsistas/Suhtai (Northern Cheyenne) culture, earth is Ho’ēva Néške’éehe (grandmother earth). This is not a static concept that promotes any possession or ownership of the land. In fact, the Tsitsistas/Suhtai kinship system extends beyond the biological and physical bounds into a great understanding that we are all interconnected. Ho’ēva Néške’éehe is our grandmother, and we all come from her. Hence, we (collectively) must protect her with great care and love.

The importance of the experiences and stories that I share in this essay are autobiographical vignettes and pedagogical gifts for suggestions to utilize. The experiences took me back to the origin story of my journey of becoming an Indigenous educator.

Narratives

Sister, Have Your Students Write a Love Letter to Mother/Grandmother Earth

One of the tantamount experiences was the privilege and honor to welcome renowned peacemaker, Mr. Danny Beaton, Turtle Clan of the Mohawk, Six Nations, to my classroom. My colleague and friend, Dr. David Webster led the collaborative project to bring Mr. Beaton to campus as a result of their longstanding relational ties. This extension into my classroom was a wonderful way to further embody and bring the messages of protecting the land to my classroom. I teach a mandatory course in Indigenous education titled, Education, Colonialism and De-Colonization in Wabanaki Territory. A visit from Danny, renowned traditional Indigenous flute player was a gift beyond measure. Upon our first meeting in a narrow hallway adjacent to David’s (and my) office, I naturally referred to Mr. Beaton as an Elder, a warrior for Mother/Grandmother Earth, and he lovingly corrected, “I am a peacemaker.”

As I introduced him to my class, I expressed myself openly in my ways, and from a wellspring of teachings that Náhko'éeh (my mother) and additional formidable knowledge keepers and teachers instructed me to do. I learned to express my gratitude, and spoke the following words that day:

He’s now the second strong Indigenous man to come out this way to Quebec to share their ways of knowing. Some of you got to see Dr. Dwayne Donald, I call him Uncle Dwayne from Alberta. And now Mr. Danny Beaton as a strong native man, Indigenous man, Mohawk, turtle clan. I wore this in his honor today, I turned towards him to showcase my beaded medallion of a turtle. It makes me feel good as an Indigenous woman to have him visit here. It gets lonely out here. There's not a lot of, it seems like there are not a lot of Indigenous men out here protecting us women. And in the ‘Academy’ it feels even less. So, thank you for bringing the gender balance to my classroom. I appreciate that in a good way. Néá'eše.

As I sat down, and opened the classroom up for Mr. Beaton, I sat along with my students that day in an active learning experience that is incalculable in its value.

The gifts, teachings and lasting words have permanently imprinted upon my spirit and heart. Even more so, my praxis was revolutionized by his gallant appearance to my class. The following words planted seeds of peace, hope, and love in my students and returned me to the journey. The journey is the future. His words and subsequent flute playing gripped my spirit and heart.

I always give thanks for the journey and for the walk. Because we are on a journey. And then there's- we are on a walk. There's only two paths. One spiritual and one's not. There's only two paths. (D. Beaton, personal communication, March 26, 2025).

The journey is the future that my ancestors prayed about as they faced uncertainty and colonial violence. Néá’eše (thank you) to Mr. Danny Beaton for the reminder of my beginnings in education by way of his insightful words and songs as I traverse my journey in new Indigenous homelands and amongst relatives in what became Quebec, Canada. I gained a new type of iteration in my own understandings and the calling of responsibilities that I hold as a Tsitsistas /Suhtai woman, which is to share, not shrink.

Draw connections to your own family history and the lands upon which you grew up

The encouragement of connection between individuals and the land serves as a basic step to honor location-based approaches rooted in Indigenous ethical relationality. This entails the reminder for Indigenous learners of all ages (especially myself) to uphold traditional ways of knowing that include their own experiences unlike western approaches that separate the personal from the professional. I briefly return to Deloria (2001) in Power and Place: Indian Education in America when he articulated so eloquently for me (as a learner and professor) to remember the following:

Indian students can expect to have a certain amount of difficulty in adjusting to the scientific way of doing things. They will most certainly miss the Indian concern with ethical questions and the sense of being personally involved in the functioning of the natural world. But they can overcome this feeling and bring to science a great variety of insights about this world derived from their own tribal backgrounds and traditions. They must always keep in mind that traditional knowledge of their people was derived from centuries, perhaps millennia, of experience, (pp. 27-28).

The fated visit from Mr. Danny Beaton propelled me back into my own past. Specifically, it transported me back in time to the teachings from Náhko'éehe (my mother), Ameohne’e (Walks Along Woman). As a young girl, Náhko'éehe taught me in the traditional ways that her own mother and grandmother had taught her. While my mother was forced to speak English upon entrance into the day schools on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, she did not lose the way the language was inextricable from all aspects of life as Tsitsistas/Suhtai (Northern Cheyenne) people. The attunement to one’s local environment, the lands that our family lived upon were crucial to childhood teachings. Nėškámane (our mother) towed my little sister and I along as children growing up in the beautiful and green hills of the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) reservation that sat adjacent to the mighty Missouri River. She told us stories and shared land-based teachings. It was not until I was much older that I concretely connected the manner in which she did so as such an incredible feat of preserving the culture while doing so under forced assimilative conditions and the insistence of “monolingual” policies of English only in the United States. I sent a message to Náhko’e earlier in the year to thank her deeply for her teachings. In fact, it was while I was reading and studying the Tsitsistas language that a crystallization of her traditional teaching methods occurred between the land and language. Her reply to me was priceless: “That is what my Mom did for me, and her Mom, Comenha (Mary Dullknife) did for her. They passed on the history and knowledge.” It is now my responsibility to continue this traditional practice with my own children.

These cherished epiphanies of my family’s history whilst in the reality of Indigenous language extinction and the bona fide threats to its existence, provide beacons of hope to strive toward effecting change, preservation, and more importantly, healing and love. Náhko'éehe expressed a love language to us as her children by way of respecting the Indigenous people you live among, remaining Tsitsistas/Suhtai at your core, and lastly, passing down our familial, tribal histories and knowledges to the next generations (future). She passed on the history and knowledge.

The Afterplace and Steps into Action

My students were given teachings and assigned to read about resurgence.

M’ Lot and Ferguson (2022) provide these teachings in the title of their book, Resurgence: Engaging with Indigenous Narratives and Cultural Expressions in and Beyond the Classroom. Resurgence describes the recognition and celebration of Indigenous storytellers, poets, and the manner in which contemporary stories are flowing in between states of the past and present. Further, the authors cite the prodigious words of Marie Battiste (2013) and her illumination of resurgence as:

The regeneration of the dignity and cultural integrity of Indigenous peoples where success has been found in affirming and activating the holistic systems of Indigenous knowledges, engaging Elders, communities, and committed individuals (p. 3).

The manner in which educational resources that are amplifying Indigenous voices, approaches to knowing, learning, and doing provides the necessary step to advance the road to reconciliation. As noted by several Indigenous scholars, including me in my classrooms, resurgence represents the re-birthing of seeds planted in the sacrifices, offerings, and prayers from our ancestors. It is a re-activation of understandings, emphatic ways of knowing, and artistic expressions of Indigenous peoples in Canada and across Turtle Island. This book provided a means for expressing my own teaching and praxis as I approach my work as an opportunity to build bridges between worldviews, cultures, and languages. As I connected the words between Danny’s teachings, my elders and loved ones, along with so many scholars, I re-soldered my commitment to serve as an Indigenous guest in the Eastern Door.

The transformative experience that Danny Beaton gifted to the campus, and my classroom left a deeply moving impact on my students as well. He delivered a powerful message to the young people about protecting the land and water. He engaged them in ways that compelled students to gain clearer understandings about relationality and collective unity. Several students asked questions about how to engage in collective action to support and defend the land and water. Throughout the entire course period, I attested to the manner in which students embodied and practiced the cultural protocols for conduct that we had been working on all term. For example, the students were guided on appropriate ways to greet and thank guest lecturers and knowledge keepers who came to the class. As I stood witness to their reverence, generosity, and the openness they shared to his wisdom and stories, I felt a ripple effect of love cascade throughout the room. The students provided gifts of gratitude, and most importantly they exhibited deference and righteous respect for the duration of the class. This sentiment remains with me, and I engaged this after a follow up communication with Danny in the following weeks. Danny sent a follow up email as we exchanged the links to his presentation and expressed our gratitude for his visit. In one note, he gave me the inspiration for a pedagogical tool, which embodies the importance of living in right relationships and love. Love for Ho’ēva Néške’éehe, she is more than just land and soil. This act of love is one of two gifts that I discuss in this article.

Gift #1

This attunement to land as Our Ho’ēva Néške’éehe (grandmother/mother earth) is a teaching– a way of being that has a permanent role as a grounding approach in my teachings and certainly my land-based learning course. Danny’s request was a reminder and a mandate: “Sister, please have your students write a letter to defend Mother Earth.” In Tsitsistas/Suhtai ways, it is appropriate to use Ho’ēva Néške’éehe (grandmother earth). The revelation that overcame me and the surge of powerful inspiration in that fleeting moment provided a re-attunement to my own origin story as an educator. The usage of letter writing, journaling, and creative expression in the classroom– for this inaugural issue– a love letter to Ho’ēva Néške’éehe. Thus, my gift to the next generations is to resurrect this transformative approach to center love, justice, protection, and acts of resurgence for Ho’ēva Néške’éehe. I act in reciprocity to the gifts and teachings that Danny bestowed upon me. Our meeting was meant to be and our journeys were meant to intersect. As I reflected later on and expressed to a friend, “This is another lesson that I had to come all the way to Quebec in order to receive that teaching. It is good. Peva.” I humbly share this idea, and it is from a place of love and generosity for you to integrate into the future. The journey is the future.

Land As Our Medicine

My teaching, praxis, and Indigenous research are grounded in a land as our medicine approach. This approach is a respectful centering of Indigenous Ways of Knowing and acknowledgment of the sacred relationships that many Indigenous Peoples have to our locations and homelands. This approach insists on Indigenous led approaches to education to achieve respectful re-storying of First Nations, Innuit, Metis and Indigenous (local and transnational) Peoples. The purposeful and cultural approach to transformative teaching embodies the manner in which I strive to serve as a steward to the lands of Turtle Island. This is a responsibility that is familiar to many of us (Indigenous Peoples), however it may seem abstract or vague to many others. I draw upon the teachings Kimmerer (2013) provides in Braiding Sweetgrass to further convey the importance of reciprocity to the land, and the responsibility to protect all kinship systems on earth (birds, plants, animals). Her vivid explanation about the gifts of strawberries (heart berry in Potawatomi) captures the tremendous teachings she learned early on from the land.

Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed and present. Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery- as with random acts of kindness, you do not know their source, (pp. 23-24).

The land provides gifts in many ways to all of us that deserves the utmost care and deference. The implementation of writing a love letter to Ho’ēva Néške’éehe is one concrete step into action to help students re-affirm or perhaps further connect to the local lands upon which they reside. It dispels the notion of land as possession, rather, it affirms that collective action and acts of solidarity to defend, care, and love for Ho’ēva Néške’éehe rests with all of us.

Gift #2

Teacher education institutions and K-12 schools are commonly understood as complicit in reproducing colonial structures and systems; yet they are central to disrupting this dynamic. The future of our younger generations inspires and compels me to move forward with sincere and concrete actions in faculties and schools of education and learning institutions, to equip future and current teachers with relational and guided experiences to practice land-based pedagogies. The second pedagogical gift to approach this journey for the future rests in honoring cultural protocols and living in right relationships. This is a shift in the status quo and compels learners and educators to spark a learning curiosity. In my classes, I guide students through the process of learning how to introduce yourself, and attune to the lands upon which you settle, study upon, and inhabit even if briefly. As Donald (2021) transmits in his striking essay, We Need A New Story, he brings the nêhiyaw (Cree) wisdom concept of wâhkôhtowin (all things are interconnected, kinship) to empower educators with a way to better understand their own connections to the land. He uses walking on the land to teach about kinship relationality and the meaningful ways it can bring about the re-storying of harmful settler narratives. The land holds the memories, and responds to the language it knows, in this part of the world, that of Indigenous languages. This clears a path for new journeys in teacher education to re-story the colonial divisions within education between Indigenous and Canadian relations. Furthermore, it encourages me as a Tsitsistas & Suhtai guest on Wabanaki Territory to continue to lean in on traditional knowledges that include all aspects of kinships systems on grandmother earth. This brave and just ethical approach to strive for healing in education and strive to embody wâhkôhtowin.

My own paths in education brought about healing and transformations. I then arrived at a point in my journey of healing and a strong desire to operate from a place of love and accountability. The journey to work in right relationships with relatives in the north opens and expands my understandings about the larger needs and demands for the re-storying of colonial narratives that inflict so much violence and erasure of Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island. This begins with learning and understanding the cultural protocols from which I currently reside. It is an act of accountability to promote love and respect.

Upon any introduction of my Self in the past or currently, which is situated on unceded Abenaki lands, “I am a Tsitsistas/Suhtai Woman and Scholar; however, I am a guest here. And, I conduct my Self accordingly as a guest on unceded Abenaki lands.” This practice extends into my course syllabus as it promotes cultural humility, relationality, and gives credit to the inextricable Indigenous ways of knowing, languages, and relationships to the land, Ho’ēva Néške’éehe (grandmother).

The honoring of the ancient and modern Indigenous stewards of the land provides the proper cultural protocols and practices for location-based approaches (Deloria & Wildcat, 2001) to land-based learning. Hence, I actively model respect for local protocols to the land, Ho’ēva Néške’éehe, while staying grounded in my own Tsitsistas/Suhtai teachings. I wrote the following excerpt on my initial land-based learning course syllabus:

Land as Medicine

I joined the Faculty at the School of Education at Bishop’s University in July 2022 as a guest in the homelands of the Abenaki Peoples. My family traveled further North and East on what we refer to as Turtle Island to reside in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. I left my ancestral homelands of the Tsitsistas/Suhtai (Cheyennes) to live, work, hopefully serve, and live-in right relationships with the Indigenous Communities in Quebec. I was fortunate enough to be reared with the worldviews and knowledges that we as Tribal Nations/Indigenous Peoples are stewards to the land – past, present, and future. The concept of LAND is interwoven into multiple parts of my daily existence as a Northern Cheyenne Woman, Náhko’e, and teacher educator. These segments are connected and we are interdependent and inter-connected with the Land,” (EDU204 Course Syllabus, Winter 2024).

I strive to expand beyond the walls of a traditional western classroom to

re-affirm connections to the land. This approach operates and replies upon Indigenous led approaches to education to achieve respectful re-storying of First Nations, Innuit, Innu, Metis and Indigenous (local and transnational) Peoples. The purposeful and cultural approach to transformative teaching embodies the manner in which I strive to serve as a steward to the lands of Turtle Island. Further, the land as pedagogy tenet is at the core of my teaching and the utmost respect for Indigenous languages, cultures, values, our relationships to the land, (Simpson, 2014). This is a responsibility that is familiar to many of us (Indigenous Peoples), however it may seem abstract or vague to many others. As an Indigenous Education Professor in the School of Education at Bishop’s University, I recognize the urgent demand for decolonization.  

The time is now to move forward with sincere and concrete actions in Faculties and Schools of Education and Learning Institutions. It is our (educators) shared responsibility to equip future and current teachers with relational and guided experiences to practice land-based pedagogies. This year, 2025, marks the 10-year anniversary of the publishing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report (2015) and its 94 Calls to Action. These policy recommendations arose after the monumental legal victory by Indigenous activists and leaders against the deplorable Indian Residential Schools (IRS) system in Canada. The settlements reached between First Nations, Inuit and Métis survivors of the schools, their families, communities, the churches, former employees of the schools, government officials, and additional Canadian citizens created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A majority of the calls to action remain unfilled, and that provides an on-going reminder for educators and teacher education programs to continue to advance truth-telling, make space for resurgence, and to take responsibility for the way ahead. The Journey Is the Future.

Remember to write a love letter to your Self

The opportunity to embrace my passion for teaching, and most importantly, to embody the true essence of being an Indigenous professor of education required the recognition to live authentically. My journey has been one of healing from years of shrinking to fit into conditioned standards of colonial and patriarchal narratives. It has been a journey of love and courage through the unearthing and re-constituting of my own resiliency and tenacity. The following poem reveals a love letter to this transformative moment in my journey as an educator:

As vibrant colors drape her body,

The patterns invite curiosity,

The light envelopes her

Strong connections to all segments of the land emerge

The source power of this binding energy is a brilliant shield

from division, conformity & false narratives

It possesses a loyalty to authenticity,

It has a balm that re-constitutes her once shattered heart.

Her heart.

All parts of her heart.

The balefire of love & strength

And heart knows the truth.

The truths she tells to announce

Re-storying.

Invigoration.

And,

To occasionally inspire serenades. [August 29, 2024]

In a recent interview about my work in teaching courses focused on Indigenous education and decolonization at my current institution, I drew upon that very source power. The communications officer drew out such big emotions from me as she asked a provocative question about my land-based learning course. Upon reflection about the encounter, I kept returning to my answer I gave to her: “It is difficult to put my love for her into words at times (for Ho’ēva Néške’éehe grandmother earth). I have to ‘go to ground’ and put some offerings down to sort my emotions out.”

The beginning of 2025 was inundated with daily negative interactions about politics, tariffs, and the price of eggs were crippling for me to endure. I found solace in the sage advice from Canadian artist, Ivan Coyote, that gave me such powerful hope, love, and beacons of light during a surreal time in society. As I gingerly read the first few pages of Care Of (Coyote, 2022), I fell in love with the book’s dedication page. It compelled me just to soak up a few more pages, and then it transported me into a state of deep compassion. I felt enveloped with an honest and warm embrace that restored hope and love in just a few pages. Silently, I thanked Creator for placing Coyote’s words into my life by way of a gift from my friend, Linda. I received their beacons (words) of truth and acts of deep love. It was a good day (peva). My future Self pondered on the truth-telling gifts from Ivan Coyote. They wrote, “I know that my real job is to listen and believe, and honor and remember, and continue to fight and to write. Write it all down.”

I add the following: the future generations need it.

For each of the students and esteemed guests who were in my classes, my colleagues, relatives, and friends who have invested in the future of education in various ways across Turtle Island, I am sending some wisdom to your future Selves from Ivan Coyote and their perspective about the divide between the generations.

I think these kids need to reinvent the possibilities for themselves, and in order to do that they have to, for a while at least, forget us, and our pain. They need to learn on their own to spit back much of what we had to swallow. They need to never know all the things that stood in our way. They need to take what we fought for and won for granted, so they can make room to expect so much more than we dared to ever hope about. Then we can all inherit new language, more words, a better day, (p. 13).

These words embody the interconnectedness in the journeys in each of you, in between, and among all of us. The journey is the future.

This essay serves as a herald of love to illuminate the intensity and power that can be found in writing a love letter to the land, Ho’ēva Néške’éehe (grandmother/mother earth). Subsequently, the transformative tools of bringing to life authentic pedagogical tools to invoke sincere approaches to re-story colonial tropes of Indigenous Peoples and our relationships to the land is long overdue. It is time, the journey beckons to each of you. As my elders bestowed upon me, the Journey is the Future. Néá'eše.

Epilogue

Ná-háóéna (I prayed)

I put tobacco down and prayers up for us as a family, a collective and our communities. So, we do not see one another and ourselves as the despicable people in the world that many perceive us as. We are love, powerful and illuminations of light.

I pray that Ma'hēō'o leads each of us to seeing ourselves with love that is impenetrable to stagnation and the cruelty of death.

A prayer for my sons, relatives, and family members across Turtle Island, December 11, 2024.

References

Battiste, M. (2013). Decolonizing education: Nourishing the learning spirit. Saskatoon,

SK: Purich Publishing. 

Beaton, D., Turtle Clan Mohawk, Six Nations of the Grand River. Lives in North

Toronto, OT. Oral teaching. personal communication. March 26, 2025.

Clandinin, D. J., Pushor, D., & Murray-Orr, A. (2007). Navigating Sites for

Narrative Inquiry. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(1), 21-35.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487106296218

Coyote, Ivan. (2022). Care of: Letters, connections, and cures. McClelland & Stewart.

Deloria, V., Jr., & Wildcat, D. (2001). Power and Place: Indian Education in

America. Fulcrum Publishing.  

Donald, D. (2021). We need a new story: Walking and the wâhkôhtowin imagination.

Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 18 (1),

53-63. https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-4467.40492

Kimmerer, R. W. (2015). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific

knowledge and the teaching of plants. Milkweed Editions.

Kovach, Margaret. (2021). Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations,

and Contexts. University of Toronto Press.  

M’Lot, C., & Ferguson, K. A. (2022). Resurgence: Engaging with Indigenous narratives

and cultural expressions in and beyond the classroom. Portage & Main Press.

Simpson, L. B. (2014). Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious

transformation. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3), 1-25.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Calls to Action.

https://nctr.ca/publications-and-reports/reports/

Yellow Robe, C. (2024) EDU 204: Course number: Indigenous Education: land-based

pedagogy [Syllabus]. Location: Bishop’s University, Canada.