Collaborative Indigenous Learning Bundles

In 2016, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada made several calls to action to address systemic racism in Canada’s language and culture, child welfare, health care, judicial, and education systems. In the recommendations for reconciliation specific to higher education, the commission called for post-secondary institutions to increase the integration of Indigenous knowledge into the classroom. Carleton University’s Collaborative Indigenous Learning Bundles were conceived by Kahente Horn-Miller as a way to gather Indigenous ways of knowing and make them available to the Carleton learning community without overburdening Indigenous experts, or expecting Bundles’ users to be experts in these topics. The Bundles are for instructors to use within credit classes.

What’s in a Bundle?

Designed as both a resource for instructors and learning tool for students to use in the classroom, the Bundles provide the necessary factual and theoretical basis for understanding Indigenous history and politics in Canada, while also prompting students to consider how this knowledge might be applied in their area of study.

Each Bundle, produced and delivered by Indigenous experts, is formatted as a Brightspace module, addressing issues and topics relevant to Indigenous peoples. These modules can be imported into any Brightspace course site.

Most Bundles include a lesson from an Indigenous expert, followed by an audio or video interview with an Indigenous Knowledge Keeper. Each Bundle also contains several interactive Knowledge Checks, Suggested Readings and Resources, and Instructor Resources (with class and assessment activity ideas).

Bundle Topics

The Bundles offer essential factual and theoretical grounding in Indigenous history and politics in Canada, while encouraging you to apply this learning within your area of study. The goal is simply for instructors to model a willingness to learn and to connect the Bundles’ content with their own areas of knowledge. What’s most needed isn’t specialized academic expertise, but a genuine openness to learn and engage with Indigenous content.

Bundle topics include:

• The First Peoples: A Brief Overview
• Decolonization is for Everyone: Identity Formation in the Canadian Context
• Engaging with Indigenous Communities
• Indigenous-Canada Relations
• Cultural Conceptions of the Life Cycle
• The Inuit Story
• Maternal and Child Health
• Determinants of Health
• Indigenous Law and Conceptions of Human Rights
• Contemporary Indigenous Arts in the Gallery
• Ethics of Research with Indigenous Peoples
• Accessible Information: Library-based Research and Indigenous Communities
• Ongoing Colonialism: An Advanced Overview
• “Our Original Instructions”: Engaging with Lands and Waters
• Indigenous Sciences: Shifting the Paradigm in Western Science
• Three-Eyed Seeing in Science | Weaving Knowledge Systems
• NEW! Kitcikisik (kīcikīsik) The Great Sky: Indigenous Star Knowledge

How You Use the Bundles

The Bundles can only be integrated into a Brightspace credit course site, and at an instructor’s request. If you are an instructor interested in using one or two Bundles in your class(es):

We’ll reach out to schedule a meeting with a TLS learning specialist to determine what activities you can integrate into your class around the Bundle.

Submit your request in advance of your course term (see the link and instructions at the bottom of this page). We will then enrol you on a site where you can review the Bundles in detail and determine how they fit into your existing course content and outcomes.

Once you’ve decided which Bundle(s) you’d like to incorporate, please respond to your original request detailing which Bundle you would like to incorporate.

An Introduction From Kahente Horn-Miller

Feedback from Students

•  “From this Bundle, I learned a lot of important concepts, including, Indigenous ceremonies, rituals, the difference between their approach to health and the rest of society’s approach, storytelling, rites of passage and the variety stages in life.”
• “I’m so intrigued by the differences in understanding of treaties by Indigenous Peoples and the government. Up to this point, I had very little understanding about what a treaty actually was… Learning more about Indigenous philosophy – relationships to each other, extended family, community, nation, non-human beings like land, water, and animals – explains so much about the ways that Indigenous Peoples govern, and the issues that they may take with the way our world is being governed now.”
• “By completing this Bundle it gave me a greater understanding of how being able to conduct research depends greatly on the relationship between the researcher and the group they wish to research. It gave me examples to understand some of the issues in the research from the past that has negatively affected the relationship that the academic community has created with the Indigenous one.”

Project Team

We would like to acknowledge the contributions of Kahente Horn-Miller, Naomi Bird, Renata Chiaradia, Mikayla Paton, Daphne Uras, Chloe Jones, and the many others who have collaborated on this project. Carleton University’s Collaborative Indigenous Learning Bundles are a joint initiative of the Office of the Associate Vice-President Indigenous Teaching, Learning and Research, the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, the Office of Quality Initiatives and Teaching and Learning Services.

If you have questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to share them with us.

Bundle Request Form

If you’re interested in using a Bundle in your course, please submit your request via the TLS Support Portal.