The primary objective of the Curriculum team, which is led by Doris Wolf, is to develop resources for educators to support the use of the Six Seasons picture books and apps in formal and informal educational settings and to provide training for educators in culturally competent pedagogies. The resources will provide a basis for land-based education activities, Cree-language teaching, and the teaching of curricula in and across the areas of Science, Social Science, and English Language Arts. The resources will include models of Indigenous pedagogy; be correlated to Manitoba curriculum frameworks; and be adaptable for use across Canada. The team is supported by an amazing group of people and institutions, including Margaret Dumas, a Grade 5 teacher at Wapanohk School in Thompson, MB and long-time member of the Six Seasons team; and Dr. Dawn Sutherland, who specializes in Indigenous Science Education in UW’s Faculty of Education; the Indigenous Inclusion Directorate (IID); the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre (MFNERC), and University of Winnipeg’s Faculty of Education-Access program, especially its Community-Based Aboriginal Teacher Education Program.
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Doris Wolf
Team Leader
Doris Wolf is an Associate Professor in the University of Winnipeg’s Department of English and Faculty of Education- Access Program. She researches and publishes in the areas of Canadian Indigenous children’s texts and Indigenous content in early and middle years education and curriculum. Wolf has collaborated on the Six Seasons project since 2014 when she organized an intensive, week-long Summer Institute how to use Pīsim Finds Her Miskanow in Early and Middle Years classrooms.
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Margaret Dumas
Co-applicant
Margaret Dumas is a woman of Cree and Austrian ancestry. She is a mother to four children and a grandmother to thirteen grandchildren. Margaret was born in Churchill, Manitoba but was mostly raised in a little Cree and Métis town along the Hudson Bay line called Pikwitonei. Margaret has lived in the North most of her life and has been an educator in both the North and South for over 30 years.
Margaret has a 5-year Bachelor of education degree from Brandon University. She received her grade 12 from Frontier Collegiate at Cranberry Portage and later received her TESL (Teaching English Second Language) certificate from KCC which is now UCN. Margaret was and is still very involved in the revitalization of the Cree language and with the development of the Cree language curriculum and community school in Thompson and throughout other parts of Manitoba. Her interests have always been with Indigenous education, with the reform, and in the revitalization of the Cree language and culture. Margaret is a Cree Bilingual teacher at Wapanohk Community School with Mystery Lake School Division. She hopes to pass the importance of the language and culture to all the youth she teaches and hopes that her children and grandchildren will carry on her work in the future.
In her free time, she also enjoys working on committees and facilitating workshops on Cree culture and worldview. In addition, she loves to play her guitar and sing in both Cree and English, often performs at local coffee houses, and as well enjoys cooking, baking, writing and camping.
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Dawn Sutherland
Co-applicant
Dawn Sutherland is currently a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Winnipeg. She was the Canada Research Chair in Science Education in Cultural Contexts from 2006-2016. Her research covers areas related to the influence of culture while learning science, self-efficacy of First Nations youth in science related career development and educators’ perceptions of culturally relevant science teaching. She has worked with First Nations communities to develop science education programming that incorporates Indigenous Knowledge and currently works with the Boys and Girls Club of Winnipeg to create after school learning experiences in engineering and science.
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Philip Baker
Collaborator
Philip Baker is currently the Executive Director of the ACCESS programs for the Faculty of Education, University of Winnipeg. This is a family of ACCESS programs such as WEC (Winnipeg Education Centre), CATEP (Community-based Aboriginal Teacher Education Program), ITEP (Immigrant Teacher Education Program), and IKPB (Indigenous Knowledge Post-Baccalaureate Program). He has previously been a classroom teacher, resource teacher, special education teacher, school principal, school psychologist, school consultant, and a special education coordinator. He has also taught at Brandon University, the University of Manitoba, the University of Winnipeg as well as Red River Community College. Phil has taught post-baccalaureate courses in the USA, Thailand and Brazil as well as presented around the world (Russia, England, Germany, Turkey, Israel, China, Portugal). He has been published in several books and journals. He has co-created and continues to teach in the EADP (Educational Assistant Diploma Program) for the University of Winnipeg. Phil has taught in three school divisions over thirty-one years in the province of Manitoba and has been at the University of Winnipeg full-time for the past nineteen years.
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Kevin Lamoureux
Collaborator
Kevin Lamoureux is faculty at the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba, and a well-known public speaker. He has recently served as the Associate Vice-President, Indigenous Affairs at the University of Winnipeg and Education Lead for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation on secondment. Lamoureux has also served as co-Chair for the Provincial Task Force on Educational Outcomes for Children in Care, scholar-in-residence for several school divisions, and education consultant throughout Manitoba and across Canada. His writing has been featured frequently in newspapers and many academic journals. Lamoureux is working towards his PhD in the University of Manitoba’s Wellness and Sustainability cohort. He works closely with schools throughout Manitoba in support of Indigenous education and the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives; enrichment and talent development, and works with troubled and disengaged students.
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Brent Murray
Student
I am currently a student at the University of Winnipeg, attaining my Bachelor of Arts degree (Honours) in Geography. My focus has been in the areas of Geomatics and the Human Environment. I am currently working on my Honours Thesis in which I am looking at using Synthetic Aperture Radar for biomass measures of a rainforest in Queensland, Australia. When not in school I have been working with underprivileged youth from the centre of Winnipeg, where we provide them the opportunity to go on a wilderness experience either canoeing, backpacking, hiking, snowshoeing, or backcountry camping.
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Haley Pauls
Student
Haley Pauls is a student at the University of Winnipeg in the MA in Cultural Studies Program. Growing up in Winnipeg’s inner-city and dabbling in the world of non-profits has contributed to her growing interest in art as resistance, particularly in a settler colonial context. She is interested in identity, space/place, affect, and world-making, and hopes that the theoretical basis provided to her by the Cultural Studies MA might be a starting point from which to embark on more creative projects in the future.
She looks forward to her involvement with the Six Seasons project might and the ways it will contribute to her understanding of the work that is being done to decolonize pedagogical methods in Manitoba.
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Miriam Sainnawap
Student
Miriam Sainnawap is Anishinini and originally from a community called Kingfisher Lake in northwestern Ontario. She has grown very fond of the prairies, and made Winnipeg home for number of years now. In 2018, Miriam joined the Six Seasons of the Asiniskaw ĪthiniwakProject working under the guidance of Dr. Doris Wolf, which helped contribute to her understandings and perspective as an Anishinini ikwe. She is a recent graduate of the Young People’s Texts and Cultures stream at the University of Winnipeg.