1. Melissa McMahon and Sadaf Khan, St Leo’s Catholic College.
Connecting Self to Other:
Indigenous Literatures across the world.
Melissa McMahon and Sadaf Khan, St Leo’s Catholic College.

2. Rationale
Connect students with the experience of Indigenous people, the experience of being othered.
Develop greater confidence teaching Indigenous Literature
Take Indigenous Literature from margins of English programs/S and S and give it more emphasis
Challenge binary oppositions that exclude, marginalise and contribute to establishing a discourse of inclusivity
Enhance students’ critical literacy skills

3. HOW?
By developing an understanding of the role that language has played in defining and shaping the relationship between the colonizer and the Indigene Other. The THREE roles of language are:
Language of exclusion – Your Story (texts that define, speak of and about the Indigene)
Language of protest, sorrow and loss - My story, my Self (texts by the Indigene)
Language of reconciliation and reconnection - Our story (texts that attempt to write a new story about Indigenous/ non- Indigenous relations)

4. UBD approach
Understanding by Design, Jay McTighe and Wiggins, backward mapping (knowing where you want students to end up before you begin)
What do I want students to understand and be able to do by the end of this unit?
Structured unit around a series of enduring understandings and essential questions. Each week is driven by an essential question that we want students to be able to answer. G and T students could be responsible for writing these questions.

5. UBD
Take a moment to think about the kinds of essential questions you would like to ask on an Indigenous Literature unit
What would you want students to understand?

6. Essential Questions
What is the relationship between language, culture and identity?
What is the relationship between literature and power?
How can literature be a voice for indigenous culture and identity?
How do indigenous peoples express themselves and their identity?
How do we define Aboriginal literature? Can it be defined?

7. Essential Questions How do we value indigenous literature?
What are the similarities and differences between the experiences of indigenous peoples?
How have indigenous peoples been represented in literature and the media?
How can we challenge and collapse the binary oppositions established in many representations?

8. The end product?
Class picture book Students will create a print or digital A to Z picture book entitled “Our Story”. Each student will contribute a page to the picture book and each page will represent the individual student’s understanding of the language of reconciliation and reconnection. Eg. A is for Acceptance, B is for Belonging, C is for… The page will combine images, written text, music (if digital). The form of the written text may be chosen by the student. Poetry, recipes, letters, descriptions…