Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education by Yvonne Poitras Pratt

Author:Yvonne Poitras Pratt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Recommendations for Community-Based Storytelling Workshops

With three workshops now completed and with plans to continue this storytelling journey through the sharing of Métis digital stories with educators, I am motivated to outline a list of recommendations for similar community-based digital storytelling workshops. As a first recommendation, I would endorse the two-workshop model where the youth are involved in making their own digital stories as a first phase, and then paired with an Elder/community advisor in the making of a second story. As Rob predicted, we had youth who were not fully engaged in the process because they did not see the benefits to themselves—at least in the beginning stages. If costs are a concern, then a smaller two-day workshop with the youth as a preface to the intergenerational pairing would suffice. As I see it, the investment in empowering and validating our community youth is priceless.

Secondly, because of the extra work involved in negotiating the story’s nuances with two participants, I would highly recommend extra facilitators, along with a workshop assistant, at these multi-generational workshops. The latter might be a community member who has taken part in a previous workshop or someone who has the requisite technology-related skills. Or it could be a willing and interested person willing to learn and support storytellers, and could represent job training readiness, if need be. The provision of extra support staff would also allow for additional learning activities beyond the scope of the workshop. For instance, a software program that I came across during my time in community called Memory Miner allows a person to digitally identify people in photos and then map the connections from that person to others in the community. This type of application seems highly relevant to the digital vision of the Fishing Lake community members who see kinship connections as integral to their identity, yet there simply was not enough time and energy to explore this interesting software.

As a third point, and if possible, I would like to see key community decision-makers and perhaps even potential funders take part in a digital storytelling workshop so they can more fully appreciate its benefits. While we try our best to articulate the challenges and the benefits of this type of learning format, it is the experience of being involved in a workshop that highlights the transformative learning that can be undertaken through this workshop format.

Fourthly, I would recommend the provision of a dedicated space where storytellers could settle into their learning, and where the community’s precious photos and artefacts could be kept safe. Needless to say, the workshops must be delivered on-site so a dedicated space for this community-based educational work would ease much of the worry around being uprooted on a daily basis. The dedicated space would also signal to the community how important the involvement of all community members in lifelong educational pursuits is for the health of the community.

As a final recommendation, I believe the impact of digital stories are amplified by the number of times they are viewed and shared with others.

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