Curriculum Integration Newsletter: April 8-12 | Curriculum Integration | Seneca Polytechnic

I will start with a story.  

In 2006, I was hired as Seneca’s first Indigenous employee; my title was Manager, Aboriginal Student Services (thankfully we didn’t use an acronym).  

The start was rough and hard. Seneca was figuring me out and I was figuring out Seneca. I suspect all of you had similar feelings when you started. I did feel an added burden of being the “first”, and that burden was to ensure I was not the last. 

In those early days, people would drop by my office to welcome me and what I presumed was to check me out (you know being the first). What they found I suspect didn’t live up to expectations: a white passing guy, strange last name, no braids, no beads and well, not very Aboriginal looking. Interestingly, some came with strange gifts. Over my first six months, about four headdresses appeared from various areas at Seneca including the President’s office and the Athletics department. I also found a box of another two or three in the Aboriginal Student area.  

As a new employee, I worked up the courage to ask what these were and why there were so many of them. I was told that they were the Seneca Peoples’ headdresses and Seneca had commissioned a hundred of them. I emphatically said that it was not what the Seneca People wore.  

The headdresses are exactly what you picture when you think of headdresses. They were beautiful, there was significant artisanry in their making; they were, however, fake both in the “not a Seneca headdress” but also in the “not an authentic headdress” way.  

The Seneca people wore a Gustoweh pictured here.  The eagle feathers on the fake ones were dyed goose feathers, the bead work was plastic beads and so many other signs to the trained eye.  

The second part to the story was that the headdresses were given to dignitaries and people of note who visited Seneca. That practice ceased when Seneca’s Athletics team changed their name from the “Braves” and “Scouts” to the “Sting”, but there were still these “leftovers” lingering around. 

I carried these headdresses from office to office as I was fortunate to serve Seneca in different capacities. They were valuable, they were made by an Indigenous artisan but for a non-Indigenous audience or customer, it was like an albatross hanging on my neck as a burden I carried.  

I talked to several elders over the years about what to do with them. They didn’t have an opinion. Finally, I realized the solution was metaphoric. We buried them under the foundation of Odeyto. We built a place of reconciliation on top of these symbols of racism, misinformation, and ignorance.  

My work at Seneca occurred during a fortunate time of change. I look back and see how far we have come, yet I know there is much more work to be done and we have just started.  I honestly lose sleep over the work that remains, the mountain that we must climb to make us brave.   

Curriculum Integration is one of those changes towards bravery. It is a way to make lasting meaningful changes informed by the past for the future. We must  hope for the upcoming generations to do better by setting examples and modelling behaviours. This is what I have always known our faculty to do. 

Our students and communities expect us to keep up, to build up and not fall behind. Curriculum Integration is a retro fit, a way for us to update and represent all voices at the table, ones that were absent or omitted.  It is a way for our students to see themselves within our lessons and programs.   

There will be a time when there is push back in this work.  We will face questions. Why is this important?  When is “Straight” month? Were Residential Schools that bad? And any number of other challenging questions.   

Know that our Equity denied colleagues face those questions daily or weekly.  I have a simple answer that may be too simple.  Those questions are unoriginal, they have been asked and answered hundreds of times.  They lack courage and a willingness to try to change.  They simply lack love and empathy.  Those questions are safe, not brave and not Seneca.   

Letters like mine often go unanswered, yet seeing the work, meeting the faculty and knowing Seneca, I believe we are up for the challenge.