Bonjour. Sego. Tansi. Hello. Greetings and welcome to the first screen side chat. This is a feature that I hope we will use to address questions that are coming up in the forums, or to clarify or address some matters coming out of the video lectures. This first screen side chat. I have about 10 items that I want to address. And most of them are pretty quick. So I'll, I'll try to get through these relatively quickly. The first is a big thank you,[INAUDIBLE], for your responses to activity 1. Describing a place that has meaning to you. You I'm sending out a debrief announcement so that you understand what was behind the assignment, what were some of the, the, the reasons for asking you to share that, that meaningful place. The second thing that I want to address is The, the value of this screenside chat feature, and that is being able to respond to burning questions that you have. So we're setting up a sub-forum that'll be questions for the instructor, and you can post questions that you have that you'd like me to address in the screenside chat. You can upvote them, and I'll try to address some of the most, popular questions or the questions people most want answered. While we're talking about posting, a third item that I want to address is, Just a reminder to try and post, in the appropriate sub-forum. It does get a little overwhelming to see, dozens of pages of forum posts and, threads that are started. So try and use tags when you do start a thread, and people then can search for the topics they want to browse. Browse and participate in, or add tags to an existing thread, so that again people can find the topics they most want to browse and participate in, and that comes to a fourth item. When you're participating in the in the forums, the participation mark just, just want to clarify something there. We're asking for you to, have minimum of ten posts and ten comments to get that 10% participation, mark towards your final grade in the course. And, this, this sounds like a lot, but actually, given the kinds of activities that we're having, and all the activities count toward this participation mark, it's an opportunity to get people chatting and talking with each other. You can post anonymously. We at Coursera will still know who it is that's making the anonymous post. We won't reveal your identity but it helps us to track who is posting and commenting and so forth. So it is ten posts and ten comments. That doesn't mean you have to start new threads but it does mean you can have original posts where you, you, you res, you, You talk about a topic or you respond to a topic. Comments are ususally direct responses to another post that is in a thread. So I hope I've actually clarified and not muddied the waters on that one. But of course, let us know if there's anymore clarifiaction that you need. And the FAQ section actually has a thread about the participation mark, so that might be a good place to go to get your Questions answered about that. Item number five, now we're getting into the more kind of deep things, and this is something that has always weighed heavily in planning this course, and that is trying to balance the local and the global. And this is very challenging In this MOOC environment, because we know people are participating from all around the world. That this is both a challenge, but also an opportunity. For me, my, my own limited knowledge, is on Vaishnava culture and, and first nations issues in Canada. So, Canada is, as the political and legal context for, for aboriginal issues. And so that is where most of my focus and my resources are, are selected from. I know that many of our participants. Perhaps even most of our participants are participating from Canada. So, you know, the, I do apologize if it, for our, our international participants. If the Canadian references start to seem like they're excluding you a little bit. But what's I'm thinking is a good opportunity is for those people who are participating Globally if they have some knowledge about indigenous issues in their particular region whether that's like a national context or a more regiaonl context, to share it will be of interest. So please do post what you know from your local context. And you'll also see that there will be some more. Sources and resources being chosen that address a, a more kind of global outlook on indigenous issues. It's very hard to kind of balance the local and the global. Think when you get to a very broad, then you, you kind of lose. The specificity and what can come from that. But when you go really, really specific, although you can still find the universal in it, there, there still is some challenge sometimes of connecting directly to it, depending on which region or context you're, you're coming from. Still it's, it's a challenge of, of mounting a course like this one. And I, I hope through the global participation of all of the people who are in this course that we'll actually get some knowledge from each other. We'll all be learning from each other in this great mooc circle that we've created. So item number six is about the medicine wheel. So one of the things that I was trying to do in the, the medicine wheel video lecture was, was point out there's kind of two ways of talking about medicine wheels. One of them is the physical structures that are found across the plains. And, and, and other regions too. But, that these kind of, sites, are, are called and referred to as medicine wheels.. But the symbolic and organizing principle that's referred to as medicine wheel is, is a different thing. There was some discussion about the origin of that philosophical and conceptual framework of medicine wheel, and the origin where does it come from? The thing is, it's, it's hard to really know with certain Guarantee where it comes from. I do notice that it is quite a prominent symbol, and it's used quite a lot among first nations peoples in, in, Canada, especially in urban contexts. And, so I think that, whether or not it originated with a particular First nation or a combination of first nations. It has become somewhat of a[UNKNOWN] Indian phenomenon to draw upon to understand life, to understand theories of being, theories of action. And so it has been used, especially in urban. Context and settings. And I, I think that really what it is, is a it's a, it's a place where different first nations have come together. And some of the shared knowledge and wisdom traditions have been turned in to this sort of pan-Indian symbol with no particular geographic origin location. One of the places where you can kind of find this kind of philosophy laid out is in The Sacred Tree by Michael and Judie Bopp, Phil Lane Jr. And Lee Brown and the four co-authors have actually brought together the teachings of several elders from nations in kind of central Western Canada where they came together in the, early 1980's and laid out a number of principles that they had in common across their nations about, About, how to be well. And so, they talked about it in a medicine wheel format and introduced this, this concept of, of the spirit, mind, body and emotion being those aspects of being as, as well as other orientations on that wheel, and it, it really is kind of an amalgamation of different teachings and sources brought together into this one kind of orienting symbol. So if, if it doesn't, doesn't seem to come from any one place, that may be true. How do I relate to it as an Vaishnava scholar? I mean I, I, I've heard of our turtle teachings. So, we have these teachings that are based on the, the turtle and, and a lot of them are in fours. A lot of the principles are in fours and you can see how they map onto the directions in a way. So the east, south, west and northern directions and how they, they certainly are associated with certain characters. Characters in the stories. And you can kind of see there is an, there is an origin to the principles of the philosophies. That come out of story. That come out of teachings. And, if we, we choose to map those onto this wheel because it helps us remember it, or helps us describe it to others. I think this is just a way that, that traditions carry on a new formats, and in new ways. You know? 1 of the posts I saw talked about how the, the pow wow tradition. Originated outside of, or from you know outside of First Nation's traditions and context But has certainly appropriated and adopted by indigenous people and is strongly associated with indigenous culture today. So I think medicine wheel is another one of those things that, no matter where it came from, we made it our own and, and we do have to be skeptical of those ones who use it as a, you know, a counseling tool, that is, a for profit tool, we, we should. That maybe approach that with some skepticism, because our teachings were never really for sale and are, are taught in a way that, that respects a certain relationship between teacher and learner so, we have to be careful with that. Obviously so thanks for all your posts on that. Really good questions, really good discussions and that's exactly what the forums are there to do. To, to have these kinds of comments and discussions. Moving right along, I want to also want to address the, this notion of the way the terms education and schooling and learning are, are being used and I think sometimes we're talking about the same thing, we're using different words you know, I, I pointed to George day's discussion of education as a way that societies reproduce themselves and so I, I usually kind of associate that with formal schooling. So perhaps when I say education and there, there is traditions of education for social change or mesopotary education, transform of an education. I tend to use learning for those more informal ways of, of adopting information and, and of, of learning. Some people like to use different adjectives to describe the different types of education. So they'll talk about formal schooling, and they'll talk about formal education, but then they'll say education for social change, and so forth. Usually when I'm distinguishing that latter type of, of social change or, or education in the community, I, I use learning. And this will become clearer when one of the lectures that will be posted in a week or two. Where I, I run through a quick history of aboriginal education and. In Canada, and I, I talk very much about learning, and what it, what it looked like prior to uh,colonial models of education being imposed pon people. And that's when we had schooling. And then I start referring to schooling as education. And so it's perhaps more a semantic issue, but it's important for. For me to be clear, at least about how I'm using those terms. So I hope that, that helps. Now just a couple of real quick items. Item eight, in the terminology lectures parts one and part two, I refer to the Daniel's decision, where the federal court made its ruling about non-status Indians. And. And just as an update, that lecture was shot in January. The very day that the Daniels decision came out. And I still was not sure what was going to happen. I've now learned that Canada is appealing the ruling of the federal court. So this isn't over yet. There's going to be more hearings about the significance of that, that decision, so to be continued. Just another word on format, real quick word on format. Some of the lectures that are included in, in the course were recorded live in front of the aboriginal worldviews class that I have at Boise. It's a little bit unusual for me to actually lecture to them. So this is a bit of a strange experience for them. But it was, it was done as a way to, be able to cover some of the content in a, in a way that seemed kind of, more informal and, than, than this kind of staring at a camera and talking to you. And I hope that they're working out for you but I just wanted to address that, that there were there's a couple of video lectures coming up. That are longer lectures with a class present. So, you know there, there may be some questions that are brought up in the class or, or things like that but that's just part of that. So just finishing up. I just want to say that week two lectures are coming very soon. There will be a lecture on stereotyping and a short introduction to contemporary notions of indigenous knowledge and what it is and, and characteristics and sources of indigenous knowledge. There will be supplementary articles and videos for which I have just a couple of sort of pre-emptive warnings I guess, I don't know. The 8th Fire videos. So we've had one 8th Fire video that some people could access and others couldn't. We're looking into this, we're trying to figure out if there's some geocoding but the other thing about these, these 8th Fire videos that are coming up they're meant to be humorous and tongue in cheek and I don't know if it translates as well outside of the country of Canada because some of the references may not cross the borders very well. So please bear with us and know that these that a couple of these lectures are, are intended to be funny. And, and, humory, humorous. They're really kind of addressing really deep issues in a breezy, quick way. And so there, there is a desire to explain more, or go into greater depth. Hopefully we can do that in the forums. And, maybe that'll become the substance of an upcoming screen-side chat. So remember to, you know, choose an appropriate sub-forum for your post. Try to use the same numbering as the resource and post there. The same number as the video lecture and post there. And that way people can find it and they, they know what, what is your reference that you're starting from. Also in the upcoming week's lectures, I'm linking to the final report of The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. You're not required to read this entire thing for the course. It's really hard to kind of put that on the, the, the website, though to demonstrate what's recommended and what's required. But it's, it's more provided for your interest and I highly recommend it. Certainly don't expect that you can read this massive document. So, it's there for your own interest, and you can browse through it and find the topics that you're most interested in. But I do make mention of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples final report, in this coming week, and I wanted to make sure it was, it was there for you. Finally there will be a video linking you to some specific cases of wampum belts and it's a really interesting resource. It's made by Invert Media and they're the ones behind fourdirectionsteachings.com which I think a lot of people have really enjoyed that resource. So this particular one on the wampum belt was produced for Parks Canada. It takes a couple of minutes to load the first time so if you see your, your computer's wheels just spinning trying to get this going, leave it alone, let it load, it's going to take a minute or two. It actually does take like literally a minute or two, but once, once it's loaded it works quite well. You might be tempted to press Refresh, don't, don't do it. Just let it load on its own. Be really patient with this one. It takes a while, but it is worth it. And there will also be an, an announcement about that, resource so that you remember that it does take a while to load. So, that's it for this first screen[UNKNOWN] A chat I do look forward to having more in the future, and I hope that you enjoy this, this attempt to be responsive to the lectures that are coming your way, and to the questions in the forum. I hope you enjoy the course, and I look forward to what you have to say. I've been reading the forums and really enjoy it. [laugh] It's kind of addictive. Can you tell I haven't been sleeping. Okay. Enjoy.
