Umbay Nagamon—Come Sing with Us: A Community-Based Approach to Reconciliation Education in Rural Canada

There is a growing awareness that reconciliation efforts must be built on the strengths of relationships, the telling of truths, and an attentiveness to the particularities of place, history, identities, and contexts. In Canadian education, as K-12 schools and postsecondary institutions take up the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, educators and administrators are grappling with a teaching force that has largely not received the requisite education to decolonize its pedagogy and feels unprepared and unqualified to integrate Indigenous knowledge, cultures and histories into their classrooms. While reconciliation must be front-center across Canada, rural places with their tightly-knit communities and land-based industries offer unique contexts with not only distinct challenges but also opportunities for supporting reconciliation. This mixed-methods, community-based study follows one Canadian rural school division’s enactment of its vision for reconciliation. It explores the impact of a workshop, Umbay Nagamon, which means ‘come sing’ in Ojibwe. Umbay Nagamon was first and foremost a call to action for each individual it reached to become more informed; to use their new knowledge of Indigenous histories and cultures to explore their place within reconciliation and to work towards more equitable and just space for all. The research details the positive impact on teachers’ personal and professional knowledge and confidence to Indigenize their curriculum and classrooms. It explores in depth how the people and processes of the project inspired the work of reconciliation and the impact of Umbay Nagamon on the community.