Becoming ‘real’ Aboriginal teachers: attending to intergenerational narrative reverberations and responsibilities

Abstract

Our paper, and the inquiry from which it emerges, is situated in world‐wide concern to increase the numbers of Aboriginal teachers in schools. In Canada, the population of Aboriginal young people is rapidly increasing. Yet, at the same time, the gap between the attainment of a university credential in Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal populations is widening. Set against this background and these urgencies, our paper focuses on an experience resonating across the lives of six Aboriginal teachers in Canada of being excluded or silenced by dominant historical, institutional, and social narratives positioning them as not ‘real’ teachers. As we inquire into these experiences in each teacher’s life, we pay attention to the responsibilities revealed in each teacher’s story. These responsibilities become visible by attending to intergenerational narrative reverberations, reverberations that maintain the historic narrative of colonization imposed on Aboriginal people and, reverberations poised to counter, to interrupt this dominant narrative, seeking to heal, to support and to sustain current and future generations of Aboriginal teachers as they compose their lives inside and outside of schools and universities.