Braiding Histories

This book proposes a new pedagogy for addressing Aboriginal subject material, shifting the focus from an essentializing or “othering” exploration of the attributes of Aboriginal peoples to a focus on historical experiences that inform our understanding of contemporary relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples. Reflecting on the process of writing a series of stories, Dion takes up questions of (re)presenting the lived experiences of Aboriginal people in the service of pedagogy. Investigating what happened when the stories were taken up in history classrooms, she illustrates how our investments in particular identities structure how we hear and what we are “willing to know.” Braiding Histories illuminates the challenges of speaking/listening and writing/reading across cultural boundaries as an Aboriginal person to communicate Aboriginal experience through education. It will be useful to teachers and students of educational and Native studies and will appeal to readers seeking a better understanding of colonialism and Aboriginal–non-Aboriginal relations.