Reflections on Five Years In Indigenous Education
Photo: Tammy Denomme and Tyler Waddilove
Written by Tammy Denomme, formerly of London District Catholic School Board
My Backstory
My name is Tammy Denomme. In June, 2023 I retired from the position of Indigenous Education Lead for the London District Catholic School Board. I was the Board’s Lead for 5 years, from 2018 to 2023.
Prior to being the Lead for the Board, I was a secondary teacher of English and History for 26 years—I taught 16 years at Regina Mundi and 10 at Catholic Central. In the summer of 2015, I was working with a team of educators from across Ontario writing an online Grade 12 Canadian History course. I guess I caught my boss’s eye on that job because, unbeknownst to me, she forwarded my name to a person at the Ministry of Education who was undertaking the huge task of revising the Ontario curriculum so that it properly included the story of the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit.
When I got the call asking if I wanted to be a part of the team revising the curriculum, I asked, “Why me?” I was thinking, “I have no particular expertise in this area.” My future boss said, “We have people with the Indigenous knowledge required. We need experienced teachers who know the curriculum well enough to sit on the teams revising grades 4, 5, 6 Social Studies and grade 7, 8, and 10 History.” It was a strange call, but I leaned in on a basic philosophy I live by which is to say “yes” unless you have to say “no”. Taking a complete leap into the unknown, I accepted a job that would change the course of my career and, it is no exaggeration to say, my life.
The teams revising the curriculum met in a hotel in Toronto in July 2016. I was assigned to the grade 10 History table. We introduced ourselves and I learned that there were only two non-Indigenous people on our team. Thus began my re-education in Canadian History. The curriculum is divided chronologically into 4 periods: 1914-1929; 1929-1945; 1945-1982; 1982-Present. We went through the 4 periods one at a time and the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people at the table told us what happened to their people during those times. I was flabbergasted. I was disbelieving. To tell the total truth, I was quietly checking what they were saying against various online sites because I just couldn’t believe it. It was all true of course.
My world was turned upside down. I had spent 26 years proudly teaching my students to be critical thinkers. I told them never to immediately believe anything that they read. I told them they always needed to check their sources. I tried to bake skepticism into them so they would not become victims in our digital world. Slowly, I realized that I was the one who had been accepting a certain version of Canadian History without knowing anywhere close to the whole story. You have to remember that this was 2016. Residential school awareness was in its infancy at the time. What I knew was so little. What I learned that week in Toronto was life changing.
At my table everyone was either a residential school survivor, or the product of a residential school survivor. I learned about the Sixties Scoop for the first time from a Sixties Scoop survivor who had been born (we later discovered in conversation) one day before I was born. I learned about the RCMP Nunavik Dog Sled Slaughter from the Inuit person sitting at my table. I knew nothing, and I was a veteran Canadian History school teacher. There were other, more pedestrian things I didn’t know either. For example, when I innocently (stupidly?) said “I’ve barely taught any Indigenous students”, I was met with silence, then they gently explained to me that there were always plenty of Indigenous students in my classes, they just weren’t announcing it to me. I later learned that this was also true.
If every Canadian got to do what I did, I feel like it would change their whole perspective. The revision went on for a couple of years and when I went back to the classroom, my teaching changed. When a professional development opportunity came up to tour the infamous Mohawk Institute, I jumped at the chance. It was on that trip that I met the Superintendent of Education who would later hire me as Indigenous Education Lead. I was casually chatting with her, and I mentioned my curriculum revision work. She said, “Wow, have I got a job for you.” After months of agonizing about leaving the classroom, something I never dreamed of doing, I came to the realization that this thing was bigger than me. Even though it terrified me and I loved teaching with all my heart, I felt I had to take a chance and try my hand at being the Indigenous Education Lead for the Catholic School Board in London, so that is what I did.
The Follow Through
What happened in Indigenous Education at the London District Catholic School Board in my 5-year tenure as Indigenous Education Lead? I’m going to put humility aside and say that our team put Indigenous Education on the radar for the educators of our Board. However, it was one bumpy ride that took a lot of learning.
When I arrived at the Board to take up the job of Lead, Ray John Jr. of Oneida Nation of the Thames was already a part-time cultural teacher with us. He was working 3 days a week doing various teaching in K-12 classrooms and PD for the teachers. In my mind, my job was to get the revised grades 4, 5, 6 Social Studies and grade 7, 8, and 10 History into the hands of teachers and students, and, even more important, ignite their hearts and minds to why this revision mattered so much.
I knew that sitting at the School Board and sending out emails and even resources wouldn’t achieve the level of uptake I was after, so Ray and I started to travel from school to school together. I would talk curriculum to teachers or teach lessons from the revised curriculum and Ray would do his teachings. When I got a chance, I would sit in on Ray’s teachings. When I watched the students react to Ray, realization started to dawn on me. I could teach an absolute killer History lesson and that was good, but what really mattered was the learning students could get from Ray. His voice, his way, his teachings—they were not something any non-Indigenous person could duplicate.
Also, as Ray and I traveled, my secondary, more important education was taking place. The London District Catholic School Board is huge. We travelled in London, yes, but we also traveled to Woodstock, Aylmer, St Thomas, Strathroy, Lucan, Dorchester, Parkhill, Delaware, Glencoe, and Ingersoll. During all those drives, Ray was patiently trying to help me understand not only his teachings, but what it was to live the life of an Indigenous person in this country. He let me ask anything, and never rebuked me for my questions. He also let me make a lot of mistakes and never told me why I was wrong. When I eventually understood that I was wrong, I would discuss it with him and he would smile and say, “Yes, that’s right.” This was one of many ways of living in the world that I learned from Ray: let your students learn from experience and then they will really own that lesson.
I understood then that what we needed was more Indigenous voices in the classroom. Ray brought me more teachers. Now when we showed up at a school, we showed up with an entire team and spent the entire day there. I limited myself to History lessons and teaching on the Canadian Geographic’s Indigenous Peoples of Canada Giant Floor Map—a map the size of a gymnasium which, rather than showing provinces and territories, showed Indigenous nations, residential schools, and treaties. I began to live by the idea that I could teach content, but not culture. We worked on helping teachers to understand that this was their role in Indigenous Education—to cover the plentiful content that needed to be taught, but to leave the cultural teachings to the Indigenous teachers. We started to get popular. Teachers were buying in.
When I started in 2018, Orange Shirt Day (now the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation) was a tough sell. I had to gently finesse it into the schools—our team suggested schools do an “Orange Shirt Week” rather than Orange Shirt Day--as we got complaints that the day conflicted with a long-standing and also worthy tradition: Terry Fox Day. A measure of how far our team came and how far Canada has come is that by the time I retired, it would be unthinkable to not honour Orange Shirt Day on September 30. Some people might have criticized our gently coaxing style, but Ray and I were in complete agreement on this. Better not to kick down the door. Better to win people over. Better not to preach. Better to teach. Ray’s greatest gift in fact was that he never got offended. He once said to me, “I know who I am. I cannot be offended because I know who I am. Every incident—good or bad-- is a moment to teach. There’s no time to be offended.”
Happily, Ray’s role evolved from part time cultural teacher into the London District Catholic School Board’s full-time Indigenous Cultural Advisor. He still taught, but more importantly, he helped us understand what we could not understand, and he advised us on everything, especially our #1 most important job: caring for and celebrating the Indigenous students in our Board. I had been blind to the Indigenous students in our Board as a classroom teacher. I was only thinking about curriculum. Without Ray, these students would probably not have come forward. Ray conceived of an idea: gathering the students into a Grand Confederacy Council. This is what we did, and it went from a few students in the beginning to our greatest Board-wide achievement. With their easily identifiable purple hoodies, Indigenous students went from invisible in our schools to being honoured, celebrated, seen, and when needed, helped.
Further Growth
Indigenous Education got so popular and so busy in the London District Catholic School Board that we hired a second full-time Indigenous teacher in November 2021.
Tyler Waddilove, a member of Munsee Delaware Nation, had gone to school with my brother at Regina Mundi. They had been friends since high school and Tyler was talking to my brother about interviewing for an Indigenous Education role in a different Board. He knew I worked in that field, so he asked if he could contact me to run some questions by me. When he called, we instantly connected. I knew his philosophy would mesh with Ray and me. Also—huge bonus—he was very nostalgic about his time as a student in the London District Catholic School Board. This meant that I now knew two Indigenous men who liked and would be willing to work with a Catholic School Board. (Ray liked the Catholic Board because of its emphasis on spirituality. He would talk to students about his spiritual teachings and encourage them to treasure and practice their faith as essential to their wellbeing.) Since about 70% of residential schools had been run by the Catholic Church, there was understandably not a lineup of Indigenous people who necessarily loved the idea of working for a Catholic Board. I knew I had to hire Tyler. I ran the idea by Ray, and in November 2021, we hired Tyler as Indigenous Student Support in our Board.
I learned a whole new set of things from Tyler. For example, now when we had meetings with Indigenous parents, Tyler would always be invited. The difference in those meetings was palpable. When an Indigenous parent walked into the room and Tyler was there, they were much more relaxed. All the non-Indigenous people in the room could be as kind and wonderful as could be, but there was a bridge there that was not crossable by us. I came to understand that the sheer weight of what had happened to Indigenous people in this country—all of those terrible things stemming from residential schools and the Indian Act--was something that every Indigenous person is burdened with all the time. Non-Indigenous people could be kind, sympathetic, and helpful in the present, but there was just too much past there that most of us could never understand. When the parents saw Tyler, they knew that someone was sitting there who understood. It was like a kind of shorthand. It was pure magic. It helped so much.
Tyler supported students in ways I never could have. He had always straddled both worlds—he grew up and lived on reserve but had gone to high school and college in the city. Whether the students lived in the city or on reserve—he could connect with them. He often knew their families. He wouldn’t hesitate to show up at their homes, meet the parents or grandparents, and let me know what we needed to do to provide support. The kids loved him. Our effectiveness grew by a hundred-fold.
Tyler also made meetings with Ray a regular part of his education on how to be effective in his role. Ray became important to Tyler as a spiritual mentor, an emotional support, and a knowledge-sharer. This wasn’t just a job for Tyler…it was something that he had always wanted—a job that made a difference in people’s lives and a place where he could grow and flourish as a person.
At one point early in his tenure with us, I asked Tyler if he wanted to do a teaching in a secondary classroom. He was a natural. The kids loved this young, hip Indigenous man, covered in tattoos and wearing (what I later learned) were an incredible variety of amazing running shoes. (Apparently running shoes matter A LOT to teenagers.) Tyler branched out and taught everything from Kindergarten to Grade 12 and he also did PD for teachers. Our Indigenous Education Team was flourishing.
By the time I retired in 2023, our team was kind of famous. I had learned to put my own ego and importance to the side as teachers politely greeted me but ran to embrace Tyler and Ray, who brought them things I could not bring them and who moved through the world in a whole different way from the way I moved through the world. We didn’t just have Indigenous voices in our Board, we had recognizable, loved, and respected Indigenous voices. The Indigenous students were supported and recognized in a way they never had been before. I had learned so much. The world looked completely different to me after walking through it for 5 years with two Indigenous colleagues who were always kind and supportive of me and my learning curve. Also, getting to know the Indigenous students made me see everything in a new light too. Instead of bemoaning all I hadn’t done for all those years I was a classroom teacher, in the end I focused on feeling gratitude that I learned and helped in my own small way in my last five years.