
Resurgence
Engaging With Indigenous Narratives and Cultural Expressions In and Beyond the Classroom
Edited by Katya Adamov Ferguson and Christine M'Lot
by KC Adams, Sonya Ballantyne, Charlene Bearhead, Wilson Bearhead, Lisa Boivin, Rita Bouvier, Nicola I. Campbell, Sara Florence Davidson, Louise B. Halfe, Lucy Hemphill, Wanda John-Kehewin, Elizabeth LaPensée, Victoria McIntosh, Reanna Merasty, David A. Robertson, Russell Wallace and Christina Lavalley Ruddy
Published by: Portage & Main Press
Series: The Footbridge
Imprint: Portage & Main Press
224 Pages, 177.00 x 254.00 x 15.70 mm, 3
- Paperback
- 9781774920008
- Published: April 2022
$32.00
Other Retailers:
★ Starred selection for CCBC's Best Books Ideal for Teachers 2023!
Resurgence is an inspiring collection of contemporary Indigenous poetry, art, and narratives that guides K–12 educators in bridging existing curricula with Indigenous voices and pedagogies. In this first book in the Footbridge Series, we invite you to walk with us as we seek to:
- connect peoples and places
- link truth and reconciliation as ongoing processes
- symbolize the risk and urgency of this work for both Indigenous and settler educators
- engage tensions
- highlight the importance of balance, both of ideas and within ourselves
Through critical engagement with each contributor’s work, experienced educators Christine M’Lot and Katya Adamov Ferguson support readers in connecting with Indigenous narratives and perspectives, bringing Indigenous works into the classroom, and creating more equitable and sustainable teaching practices.
In this resource, you will find:
- diverse Indigenous voices, perspectives, and art forms from a variety of nations and locations
- valuable concepts and methods that can be applied to the classroom and beyond
- practical action steps and resources for educators, parents, librarians, and administrators
Use this book as a springboard for your own learning journey or as a lively prompt for dialogue within your professional learning community.
Introduction
About This Book
About The Footbridge Series
Part 1: Resistance
Beyond Being Silenced by Sara Florence Davidson
- Connections
Poetry as Cultural Expression by Rita Bouvier
- Connections
T’seka Reflection by Lucy Hemphill
- Connections
Poetry by Louise Bernice Halfe
- Connections
Part 2: Resilience
Mental Health by David A. Robertson
- Connections
Writing as a Therapeutic Medium by Wanda John-Kehewin
- Connections
Birch Bark Technology by KC Adams
- Connections
Images and Health by Lisa Boivin
- Connections
Part 3: Restoring
Stories are Resurgence by Wilson Bearhead and Charlene Bearhead
- Connections
Why am I not on Star Trek? by Sonya Ballantyne
- Connections
Indigenous Spaces by Reanna Merasty
- Connections
Games as Resurgence by Elizabeth LaPensée
- Connections
Part 4: Reconnecting
Poems by Nicola I. Campbell
- Connections
Paths of Tradition by Russell Wallace
- Connections
Let the Children Play by Victoria McIntosh
- Connections
Ethnomathematics and Beading by Christina Ruddy
- Connections
The Contributors
Additional Resources
Index
Katya Adamov Ferguson (she/her/hers) is a mother, artist, researcher, and teacher. Katya currently works as an early years support teacher in several schools in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and is passionate about teacher professional learning in the area of Indigenous education. She sees potential in the arts to create ethical spaces to mobilize complex topics with both young children and adults. Katya is also a PhD student engaging in curriculum redesign and place-based inquiries, and is branching her arts-based research into public spaces. She has authored several teacher guides with Portage & Main Press and is co-editor of Resurgence: Engaging With Indigenous Narratives and Cultural Expressions In and Beyond the Classroom.
Christine M’Lot is an Anishinaabe educator, curriculum developer, and consultant from Winnipeg, Manitoba. For over a decade, she has worked with children and youth in multiple capacities including teaching and facilitating programs through children’s disability services and child welfare. Christine co-edited the Indigenous-informed resource for educators Resurgence: Engaging With Indigenous Narratives and Cultural Expressions In and Beyond the Classroom, and recently completed her master’s degree in education with a focus on navigating digital spaces in Indigenous education.
KC Adams (Ininnew/Anishinaabe/British) is a registered Fisher River Cree Nation member living in Winnipeg. KC is a relational maker, educator, activist, and mentor who creates work that explores technology in relation to her Indigenous culture. Adams is an award-winning, nationally and internationally known maker with a B.F.A. from Concordia University and an M.A. in Cultural Studies, Curatorial Stream from the University of Winnipeg. KC has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, residencies and three biennales.
Sonya Ballantyne (she, they) is a Swampy Cree writer, filmmaker, and speaker based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her work focuses on contemporary and futuristic portrayals of Indigenous women and girls. Her published works include the children’s book Kerri Berry Lynn as well as contributions to anthologies such as Pros and (Comic) Cons and Women Love Wrestling.
Charlene Bearhead (she/her/hers) is an educator and Indigenous education advocate living in Treaty 6 Territory in central Alberta. She was the first Education Lead for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the Education Coordinator for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Charlene was recently honoured with the Alumni Honours Award from the University of Alberta and currently serves as the Director of Reconciliation for Canadian Geographic. She is a mother and a grandmother who began writing stories to teach her own children as she raised them. Adaptations of these stories have now been published as the Siha Tooskin Knows series, which she co-wrote with her husband, Wilson.
Wilson Bearhead (he/him/his) is a Nakota Elder and Wabamun Lake First Nation member in Treaty 6 Territory (central Alberta). A recent recipient of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation Indigenous Elder Award, he co-wrote the Siha Tooskin Knows series with his wife, Charlene. Currently Wilson is a board member for the Roots of Resilience Education Foundation. Wilson’s grandmother, Annie, was a powerful, positive influence in his young life, teaching him all of the lessons that gave him the strength, knowledge, and skills to overcome difficult times and embrace the gifts of life.
Chloe Bluebird Mustooch (she/her/hers) is from the Alexis Nakoda Sioux Nation of Central Alberta, and is a recent graduate of the Emily Carr University of Art & Design. She is a seamstress, beadworker, illustrator, painter, and sculptor. She was raised on the reservation, and was immersed in hunting, gathering, and traditional rituals, and has also lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an area rich in art and urbanity.
Lisa Boivin is a member of the Deninu Kue First Nation and the author/artist of two illustrated books, We Dream Medicine Dreams (shortlisted for the 2022 Rocky Mountain Book Award) and I Will See You Again (AICL's Best Books of 2020, nominated for First Nation Communities READ Award). She is an interdisciplinary artist and a PhD candidate at the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute at University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. Lisa uses images as a pedagogical tool to bridge gaps between medical ethics and aspects of Indigenous cultures and worldviews. She is writing and collaging an arts-based thesis that addresses the colonial barriers that Indigenous patients navigate in the current healthcare system. Lisa strives to humanize clinical medicine as she situates her art in the Indigenous continuum of passing knowledge through images. @redbioethics
Rita Bouvier, a Métis educator, formally served 37 years in public education as a classroom teacher and in various leadership capacities locally, nationally, and internationally. She was awarded an Eagle Feather from her Awasis peers in 2006, the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation Arbos Award in 2007, and the Indspire Award for Education in 2014. Rita’s poetry collection nakamowin’sa for the seasons (Thistledown Press, 2015) was the 2016 Saskatchewan Book Awards’ winner of the Rasmussen, Rasmussen, and Charowsky Aboriginal Peoples’ Writing Award.
Nicola I. Campbell is the author of Shi-shi-etko, Shin-chi’s Canoe, Grandpa’s Girls, and A Day with Yayah. Nłeʔkepmx, Syílx, and Métis, from British Columbia, her stories weave cultural and land-based teachings that focus on respect, endurance, healing, and reciprocity.
Nicola's books have been among the finalists for numerous children’s literary awards. Shin-chi’s Canoe won the 2009 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and was a 2008 Governor General's Award for Illustration finalist.
Sara Florence Davidson (she/her) is a Haida/Settler Assistant Professor in Indigenous Education in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Previously, she was an educator working with adolescents in the K-12 system in British Columbia and Yukon Territory. Sara is the co-author of Potlatch as Pedagogy: Learning through Ceremony, which she wrote with her father, and Magical Beings of Haida Gwaii, which she wrote with her stepmother, Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson.
When she is not reading or writing, Sara can be found walking with her dog, drinking tea, or listening to stories and learning something new.
Louise Bernice Halfe, also known by her Cree name, Sky Dancer, is Canada’s ninth parliamentary poet laureate. She was raised on Saddle Lake First Nation and attended Blue Quills Residential School. Louise served as the first Indigenous poet laureate of Saskatchewan, and earned her Doctorate of Letters from Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Saskatchewan, and Mount Royal University. Louise’s most recent titles include awâsis—kinky and dishevelled and a new edition of the Governor General’s Literary Award finalist Blue Marrow.
Lucy Hemphill is a Kwakwaka’wakw mother from the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Nation. She graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Arts in First Nations and Indigenous Studies in 2019. Lucy strives to reconnect to ancestral relational ways of being and is currently working to develop language revitalization and healing programs in her community. Lucy is the author of the Overhead Series, which includes three poetry titles: Clouds, Stars, and Trees.
Wanda John-Kehewin is a Cree writer who came to Vancouver, BC, from the Prairies on a Greyhound when she was nineteen and pregnant – carrying a bag of chips, thirty dollars, and a bit of hope. Wanda has been writing about the near-decimation of Indigenous cultures, languages, and traditions as a means to process history and trauma that allows her to stand in her truth and to share that truth openly. Wanda has published poetry, children’s books, graphic novels, and a middle-grade reader with hopes of reaching others who are trying to make sense of the world around them, especially if they think they come from nowhere and don’t belong either. With many years of travelling the healing path (well, mostly stumbling), she brings personal experience of healing to share with others. Wanda is a mother of five children, one dog, two cats, and three tiger barbs, and grandmother to one super-cute granddog.
Elizabeth LaPensée, Ph.D. is Narrative Director at Twin Suns. She is an award-winning designer, writer, and artist of games and comics who was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2018 and inducted into the Global Women in Games Hall of Fame in 2020.
She is Anishinaabe, Métis, and Irish currently living in Nkwejong, Michigan. She designed When Rivers Were Trails, a 2D adventure game about land allotment in the 1890s which won the Adaptation Award at IndieCade 2019. She also designed and created art for Thunderbird Strike, a lightning-searing side-scroller game which won Best Digital Media at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival 2017.
Her ongoing contributions were recognized with the Serious Games Community Leadership Award in 2017. Along with creating curriculum for the award-winning Skins Video Game Workshops, she has led game development workshops since 2006 with Indigenous partners such as the The Boys & Girls Club of Bay Mills, Joseph K. Lumsden Bahweting Anishnabe PSA, the Voyageurs Expeditionary School, the Indigenous Youth Empowerment Program, Native Girls Code, and the Aboriginal Youth Science Exchange Camp at Algoma University.
Victoria McIntosh, also known as Biktoryias, has a strong bond to stories and identifies as ikwe (woman, water carrier). Transitioning from artist to educator, she now merges both gifts into sharing what she sees in her life. Working with many different mediums and combining traditional storytelling with artworks, she strives to create deeper meaning and understanding of Indigenous teachings.
Reanna Merasty (she/her/hers) is Ininew from Barren Lands First Nation, completed her Master of Architecture at the University of Manitoba, and is an Architectural Intern at Number TEN Architectural Group. She also works with One House Many Nations as a Research Assistant on First Nations housing development, where her research focuses on reciprocity, Indigenous knowledge systems, and land-based pedagogy.
David A. Robertson (he/him/his) is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award, has won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, as well as the Writer's Union of Canada Freedom to Read award. He has received several other accolades for his work as a writer for children and adults, podcaster, public speaker, and social advocate. He was honoured with a Doctor of Letters by the University of Manitoba for outstanding contributions in the arts and distinguished achievements in 2023. He is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and lives in Winnipeg.
Russell Wallace (he/him/his) is an award-winning composer, producer, and traditional singer from the Lil’wat Nation. His music can be heard on soundtracks for film, television, theatre, and dance productions. His most recent album, Unceded Tongues, combines Salish musical forms with pop, jazz, and blues, and is sung in the St’át’imc language. Russell is a founding member of the Aboriginal Writers Collective West Coast and an alumnus of the University of British Columbia Creative Writing Program.
Christina Lavalley Ruddy, a member of Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, is an artist, researcher, mentor, and advocate. She has spent her career working to empower Indigenous youth through education, language, and capacity building, in settings such as friendship centres and post-secondary institutions. In 2018, Christina received Lakehead University’s Indigenous Partnership Research Award, with Dr. Ruth Beatty, in recognition of her leadership in incorporating Indigenous knowledge into the Ontario mathematics curriculum.
~Toronto StarOver the past several years, calls have come from across Canada for the inclusion of Indigenous worldviews and knowledge in all levels of education in the country. Enter...Resurgence: Engaging With Indigenous Narratives and Cultural Expressions In and Beyond the Classroom.
~SAY MagazineAt last, the voices, perspectives and reflections you have waited for. This evocative volume is the perfect guide to critical engagement with Indigenous literature—ideal for personal learning, family discussion and classroom content. Go on your own learning journey or recommend this book to your professional learning community today. Be part of the Resurgence.
~CM AssociationResurgence is the professional learning resource that all teachers should have access to, and it is monumentally important for educators to read. Highly Recommended
Among CCBC's Best Books for Kids & Teens 2023, Ideal for Teachers, starred selection of exceptional caliber
~CCBC