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Education: Cultural Hegemony and Critical Consciousness The Lac du Flambeau Curriculum

Important Areas of Development for Pre-Service Teachers

Enable disproportionately white pre-service teachers to better understand how cultural hegemony and neo-colonialism have impacted Native communities–or see below the surface of our lives to find out what for them is normal natural and common sense, and ask if all communities have the same cultural realities, experiences and life chances—and WHY these differences exist.

Come to an understanding of what Cultural Hegemony entails. (Reminder: Cultural hegemony is process whereby people in positions of power persuade those in lesser positions that the norms, values and interests that serve the elite are normal, natural, and common sense.)

For example, the biological fiction of “race” is a hegemonic tool.

Learn about the on-going power of Neo-Colonialism. Students should learn to investigate their stereotypes and learn to think outside of binaries.

The world is much more complex than that. They should reflect on the enormous historical and current cultural strengths and positive identity formations of Ojibwe students, and well as understanding the colonial, cultural hegemonic, and racist  history of the United States and its traumatic impact on Native people.

Students should contribute to the development of this digital pathway to support enlightened community engagement and mutually beneficial relationships between UW-Stout and Lac du Flambeau (the participating communities), and address Wisconsin ACT 31.

Best Practices to Develop ACT 31 Literate Teachers

Digital Storytelling

Digital stories are short, participant-produced videos that combine photos, music, and voice. An indigenous process shows the ways that digital story serve as a platform for youth to reflect on and represent their communities, relationship building and achievements.

In so doing, youth use the digital storytelling process to identify and highlight encouraging aspects of their lives, and develop more certain and positive identity formations.

These processes are correlated with positive youth wellness and identity outcomes. 

Using a positive youth development framework, Mr. Jackson sees digital story telling as a way of promoting protective factors in the lives of Native American youth.

The stories serve as digital “hope kits,” a Civil liberties approach that emphasizes young people’s contemporary thinking/reflections on their own lives, and the civil liberty and civil rights barriers as well as the opportunities they are facing.

UW-Stout will not only be able to learn from the “hope kits” of the Lac Du Flambeau students, but have the opportunity of creating their own digital stories.

Virtual Reality

The virtual reality tool allows for the sharing of culturally respectful knowledge about American Indian culture, history, sovereignty and treaty rights.

This activity may begin with sharing some videos and readings with Native high schoolers and UW-Stout students, and then and engaging them in a dialogue about the historical and current barriers and opportunities they face.

They will be encouraged to look below the water of their lives to identify some of the contexts in which historical and current civil liberties and civil rights and barriers to these liberties and rights are embedded in the norms, values and practices at the Lac Du Flambeau Public School, UW-Stout, and in their wider lives.

Once identified, a student from Stout Online will film the context, which will become virtual reality, and lend itself to further dialogue and ideas for social change.