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Celebrating National Indigenous Peoples Day: The First Nations Métis Math Voices Project

June 21, 2023

Guelph, ON — Today is National Indigenous Peoples Day. A day to recognize and celebrate the cultures and contributions of the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Indigenous peoples of Canada.

Today the Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) wants to recognize the incredible work done by The First Nations Métis Math Voices Project to integrate an Indigenous-focused lens to the math curriculum in schools. 

The project is under the leadership of Colinda Clyne – Coordinating Principal of Indigenous Education at the UGDSB – who is from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg nation. The research for this project has involved bringing together an extensive network of community and academic partners, particularly Anishinaabe and Métis leaders, artists  and educators, as well as non-Indigenous educators. 

The First Nations Métis Math Voices Project has been chosen as the recipient of the CBR Canada Excellence in Community-Campus Research Award for their work. 

“We want people to see that there is math inherent in Indigenous technology and art,” said Clyne. During the project Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and educators would do this by breaking down the math components (transformational geometry, proportional reasoning, measurement, ratio, spatial reasoning, etc.)  in Indigenous art such as: hairpipe bracelets, loom beading, beaded medallions, beaded peyote stitch keychains and finger weaving. 

Clyne outlined that the overall goals of this project was to build community relationships and to explore different ways of knowing and understanding math. Clyne and her team expressed that they wanted to implement an Indigenous-focused revised math curriculum that wasn’t tokenized or stereotypical. 

When they brought the idea to Indigenous community members and knowledge keepers, who knew how to do these styles of art, it was with the intention of seeking out what they thought they could bring to the project to better help students. 

“The artists that we hired didn’t see themselves as mathematicians at first, but it was our job to figure out what inherent math was there,” said Clyne. 

Through this project, Clyne and her team wanted to give back to the community by implementing this Indigenous-lens of mathematical curriculum into First Nation school communities as well as the UGDSB. 

One of the biggest challenges of this project has been finding and recruiting more Indigenous community members that know how to do the style of beadwork to teach to the schools that have wanted to implement it in their curriculum.

There are ten schools – and counting – across the UG that want to implement it into their curriculum but not enough Indigenous artists to station at schools to teach the project. A working solution at the moment for this challenge is creating hubs in the community that students and educators can gather to be taught this curriculum. Clyne and her team have been awarded a grant that would aid in implementing a hub at Willow Road Public School. 

Clyne observed that during the process of teaching this different approach to math there was a great deal of collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators to bring together both their understanding of mathematical concepts and beadwork in ways that the students could understand. 

The First Nations Métis Math Voices project has been able to complete over 250 projects in primary, junior, intermediate, and secondary classrooms (over 6500 students) across Canada, so far. 

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