Understanding the Education of Indigenous People (Essay Sample)

Indigenous Education Essay
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Storytelling
For generations, Indigenous peoples have valued storytelling as a means of sharing history and knowledge within their families and societies. Rather of being told or recounted by others, storytelling allows you to reclaim and own your story. Aboriginal educators working with indigenous youth and young adults will be tasked with enabling the storytelling process and how people construct new narratives in their own unique way, depending on their cultural values. Therefore, sharing stories in this way will be a cultural and political act (Dyk & Weese, 2019). Indigenous storytelling allows aboriginal people to learn critical lessons about values, history, significant events, and sacred stories while also allowing them to make sense of the world. The essay discusses indigenous storytelling in order to better comprehend what distinguishes aboriginal instruction from fictitious entertainment.
According to Andrews et al. (2010), storytelling is a method of teaching that uses analogies (p17). Storytelling creates conceptual connections between students' personal experiences and new information. It is a core communicative pattern for teachers. They utilize tales as an example to describe relationships with people and the natural world, just as their forefathers did. Meaning is at the heart of all learning, according to analogy. To make sense of something outside of our experiences, we match it with something familiar. Nonetheless, one element is not substituted for another; rather, a meaningful pairing is established. Indigenous educators "practice contextualizing material in a culturally sensitive and holistic manner." Because Indigenous students are often raised in an oral culture, orality is given greater weight. It's odd to utilize books as "authorities," because it's usually the elders or older people who are counseled on matters requiring authoritative responses. Therefore, if you needed information in an Indigenous community, you would go to a person rather than a book. Grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles would always tell a story to set the scene, teach lessons, or communicate expectations. Their stories "contextualized" implicit themes like loyalty, responsibility, and respect—qualities that aided Indigenous peoples in living worthwhile lives.