Indigenous Storybooks
General Resources
Audio
Video
- Dr. Jo-ann Archibald: On Indigenous stories and their framework - Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald (Q'um Q'um Xiiem; Sto:lo Nation) provides a framing for Indigenous stories and storywork within educational contexts. Notably, she emphasizes the importance of metaphor, the plurality of understandings, and the open-ended process of storywork.
Curriculum
- Authentic First Peoples Resources: K-9 - This rich, detailed guide includes annotated listings of currently available authentic First Peoples texts that students can work with to meet provincial standards related to literacy as well as a variety of specific subject areas. The guide includes detailed information regarding each text. Published by the BC First Nations Education Steering Committee and First Nations Schools Association.
- In Our Own Words: Bringing Authentic First Peoples Content to the K-3 Classroom - A BC teacher resource guide that offers guidance about how to incorporate authentic First Peoples materials into K-3 teachers’ instruction and assessment practices. This rich resource provides lesson plans, curriculum connections, assessment resources, and suggested texts. Published by the First Nations Education Steering Committee and the First Nations Schools Association. Units 3, 6, 8 are focused specifically on stories.
- Walking Together. First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Perspectives in the Curriculum: The Oral Tradition - This publication from the Alberta Ministry of Education provides an overview of oral traditions. It is an excerpt from Nelson’s Aboriginal Perspectives.
- Storyguide: Beginning the Journey - See pp. 35-58 of this teacher’s resource First Nations Journeys of Justice: Building Bridges of Understanding Between Nations - Grade Three for an overview of the storywork approach, stories for classroom settings, and lesson ideas.
Books, articles, and blogs
- Digital storytelling and reconciliation - Dr. Jan Hare and colleagues address the ongoing challenges for educators, communities, and policy-makers in exploring the extent to which digital innovations can promote a multilingual Canada in the era of reconciliation.
- Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit - Dr. Jo-ann Archibald worked closely with Elders and storytellers, who shared both traditional and personal life-experience stories, in order to develop ways of bringing storytelling into educational contexts. Indigenous Storywork is the result of this research and it demonstrates how stories have the power to educate and heal the heart, mind, body, and spirit.
- American Indians in Children's Literature - This blog, continuously updated by Debbie Reese, provides critical perspectives and analysis of Indigenous peoples in children's and young adult books, the school curriculum, popular culture, and society. Scroll down for links to book reviews, Native media, and more.
- Unsettling fictions: Disrupting popular discourses and trickster tales in books for children - In this academic article, author Judy Iseke-Barnes discusses the importance of stories and storytelling along with reasons why appropriation of stories is problematic.
- Potlatch as Pedagogy: Learning Through Ceremony - In this book, Dr. Sara Florence Davidson and artist Robert Davidson, present a model for learning that is inspired by Haida ceremonial practice and is holistic, relational, practical, and continuous.
Resource Evaluation
- Oyate - How to Tell the Difference - Based on the book, How to Tell the Difference by Doris Seale, Beverly Slapin, and Rosemary Gonzales, this resource explains Oyate’s basic criteria for evaluating books about First Nations peoples, or that engage in First Nations themes.
- Oyate - Additional Criteria for Evaluating Material - An accompaniment to How To Tell the Difference, Oyate provides additional criteria for educators to consider when evaluating resources.
- Learning Resource Evaluation Guidelines - Published by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, the appendices of this document provide helpful guidelines for the evaluation of authentic resources.