Thresholds of Possibility—Mindful Walking, Traditional Oral Storytelling, and the Birch Bark Canoe

Abstract

The chapter explores the relationships of the material and discursive in an afterschool arts space devoted to creating an “ideal city” out of recyclables. Intrigued by the making of a homeless shelter by a Grade 5 student and a teacher candidate, the author turns to intra-activity as a theory—and ethic-onto-epistemological framework—through which to read and analyze the intra-actions between the human and nonhuman, the material and discursive and the natural and cultural factors in the practices of designing and making the home. For this literacy researcher, this required a methodological and ontoepistemological re-orienting, a poststructuralist move to enter into the theoretical threshold and to produce knowledge differently. Drawing on three thresholds—mindful walking, traditional oral storytelling, and the making of the birch bark canoe—the author suggests new possibilities for thinking with intra-activity as a theory in the study, illustrating how Indigenous ways of knowing and being have always included an ethics of living in relationship with the natural, spiritual and physical forces of the material world. This process opens up new insights and questions about the ways of knowing that inspired and informed the creation of the “home for the homeless”, as well as new considerations about the ontoepistemological frameworks used in literacy research.