Culture, Creation Myths, and the Canadian Indian Residential School System in the Intercultural Context of Virtual Team Teaching

Abstract

This chapter presents work encompassing culture, creation myths, and the Canadian Indian Residential School System in the intercultural context of Virtual Team Teaching (VTT). It should be mentioned here that chapters 11 and 12 show that VTT projects often take various forms. VTT allows mostly anglophone sociology students from Vanier College in urban Montreal to meet mostly Francophone humanities students from Cégep de Sept-Îles (almost 900 km north-east of Montreal) where one third of students claim an indigenous heritage. This VTT project was designed to help students understand the idea that we are a product of our culture, that language and creation myths affect our ways of being in the world, and that an outside agency can undermine minority language and culture and ideas about our place in the world. Such considerations evoke what Canadian authorities did to First Nations Peoples in Indian residential school policies per the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission (NCTR) in 2015. The consequences of these residential schools continue to have devastating ramifications for their victims and their descendants. This chapter reports on how VTT allows students to explore these issues in the Canadian context. VTT is a great option when face-to-face interactions are not feasible. This is an especially important consideration for teachers and students who live in remote regions of Quebec where the cost and time considerations make “live” student exchanges difficult. The VTT encounters demonstrate that multidisciplinary collaborations can work well. The work done by the students in this microcosm of interaction went on to have repercussions in the larger world, where students were spurred on to share ideas and information with their families, their communities, and through social media. Gaps in knowledge become visible; differences in worldviews become apparent. In VTT, students come together and realize their similarities and differences, creating new spaces for dialogue.