Big Ideas
Big Ideas
The identities, worldviews, and languages of B.C. First Peoples are renewed, sustained, and transformed through their connection to the land.
The impact of contact and colonialism continues to affect the political, social, and economic lives of B.C. First Peoples.
Cultural expressions convey the richness, diversity, and resiliency of B.C. First Peoples.
Through self-governance, leadership, and self-determination, B.C. First Peoples challenge and resist Canada's ongoing colonialism.
Content
Learning Standards
Content
traditional territories of the B.C. First Nations and relationships with the land
- Sample topics:
- traditional territories of local First Nations
- Traditional territories may overlap.
- difference between political boundaries and traditional territories
- how the land shapes and influences First Peoples worldview (e.g., stewardship, cultural practices of the land, relationship to language)
- cultural and linguistic diversity that exists among B.C. First Peoples
role of oral tradition for B.C. First Peoples
- Sample topics:
- Elders as knowledge keepers who share the history of their people and lands
- oral tradition as valid and legal evidence (e.g., Delgamuukw v. B.C., 1997; ownership of property, territory, and political agreements)
- stories, songs, music, and dance as forms of narrative
- Oral tradition shapes identity and connects to the past, present, and future.
- Oral tradition provides guiding principles for living.
- indigenous concept of time (e.g., spiralling versus linear)
impact of historical exchanges of ideas, practices, and materials among local B.C. First Peoples and with non-indigenous peoples
- Sample topics:
- trade networks and routes
- settlement and migration patterns
- maritime and land fur trade
- exchange of goods, technology, economy, knowledge
- industries (e.g., gold rush, whaling)
provincial and federal government policies and practices that have affected, and continue to affect, the responses of B.C. First Peoples to colonialism
- Sample topics:
- Indian Act and its amendments
- enfranchisement
- White Paper, Red Paper (Alberta), Brown Paper (B.C.)
- residential schools, including federal apology, Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Report
- treaties, including fishing and hunting rights
- Sixties Scoop and foster care system
- Canada’s constitution (e.g., Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms)
- UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
resistance of B.C. First Peoples to colonialism
- Sample topics:
- political actions of local and provincial indigenous groups (e.g., Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, Métis Nation British Columbia)
- Tsilhqot'in War
- Gustafsen Lake
- Idle No More
- Judicial cases (e.g., Calder, 1973; Guerin, 1984; Sparrow, 1990; Van der Peet, 1996)
- Cindy Blackstock and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling
- ecological justice and protests (e.g., pipelines, logging, hydraulic fracturing, liquefied natural gas, hydroelectricity)
role and significance of media in challenging and supporting the continuity of culture, language, and self-determination of B.C. First Peoples
- Sample topics:
- portrayal and representation of First Peoples in media
- repatriation and ownership of cultural objects
- ethics of copyright, patent rights, intellectual property, and appropriation
commonalities and differences between governance systems of traditional and contemporary B.C. First Peoples
- Sample topics:
- traditional governance
- band system
- land claims and self-governance
contemporary challenges facing B.C. First Peoples, including legacies of colonialism
- Sample topics:
- missing and murdered women
- stereotypes and institutionalized racism
- intergenerational trauma
- judicial and correctional system
- child welfare system
- conditions on reserves (e.g., water, housing, education)
Curricular Competency
Learning Standards
Curricular Competency
Use Social Studies inquiry processes and skills to ask questions; gather, interpret, and analyze ideas; and communicate findings and decisions
- Key skills:
- Draw conclusions about a problem, an issue, or a topic.
- Assess and defend a variety of positions on a problem, an issue, or a topic.
- Demonstrate leadership by planning, implementing, and assessing strategies to address a problem or an issue.
- Identify and clarify a problem or issue.
- Evaluate and organize collected data (e.g., in outlines, summaries, notes, timelines, charts).
- Interpret information and data from a variety of maps, graphs, and tables.
- Interpret and present data in a variety of forms (e.g., oral, written, and graphic).
- Accurately cite sources.
- Construct graphs, tables, and maps to communicate ideas and information, demonstrating appropriate use of grids, scales, legends, and contours.
Assess the significance of people, events, places, issues, or developments in the past and present (significance)
- Key questions:
- What factors can cause people, events, places, issues, or developments to become more or less significant?
- What factors can make people, events, places, issues, or developments significant to different people?
- What criteria should be used to assess the significance of people, events, places, issues, or developments?
- Sample activities:
- Use criteria to rank the most important people, events, places, issues, or developments in the current unit of study.
- Compare how different groups assess the significance of people, events, places, issues, or developments.
Identify what the creators of accounts, narratives, or maps have determined to be significant (significance)
Using appropriate protocols
Local First Peoples may have established protocols which are required for seeking permission for and guiding the use of First Peoples oral traditions and knowledge.
, interpret a variety of sources, including local stories or oral traditions, and Indigenous ways of knowing (holistic, experiential, reflective, and relational experiences, and memory) to contextualize different events in the past and present (evidence)
Characterize different time periods in history, including examples of progress and decline, and identify key turning points that marked periods of change (continuity and change)
- Key questions:
- What factors lead to changes or continuities affecting groups of people differently?
- How do gradual processes and more sudden rates of change affect people living through them? Which method of change has more of an effect on society?
- How are periods of change or continuity perceived by the people living through them? How does this compare to how they are perceived after the fact?
- Sample activity:
- Compare how different groups benefited or suffered as a result of a particular change.
Assess the long- and short-term causes and consequences, and the intended and unintended consequences, of an action, event, decision, or development (cause and consequence)
- Key questions:
- What is the role of chance in particular actions, events, decisions, or developments?
- Are there events with positive long-term consequences but negative short-term consequences, or vice versa?
- Sample activities:
- Assess whether the results of a particular action were intended or unintended consequences.
- Evaluate the most important causes or consequences of various actions, events, decisions, or developments.
Assess the connectedness or the reciprocal relationship between people and place (cause and consequence)
Explain different perspectives on past and present people, places, issues, or events, and distinguish between worldviews of today and the past (perspective)
Explain and infer perspectives and sense of place, and compare varying perspectives on land and place (perspective)
Make reasoned ethical judgments about actions in the past and present, and assess appropriate ways to remember, reconcile, or respond (ethical judgment)
- Key questions:
- What is the difference between implicit and explicit values?
- Why should we consider the historical, political, and social context when making ethical judgments?
- Should people of today have any responsibility for actions taken in the past?
- Can people of the past be celebrated for great achievements if they have also done things considered unethical today?
- Sample activities:
- Assess the responsibility of historical figures for an important event. Assess how much responsibility should be assigned to different people, and evaluate whether their actions were justified given the historical context.
- Examine various media sources on a topic and assess how much of the language contains implicit and explicit moral judgments.