Education: A Dene Perspective

Teacher Resource Manual

B. Why Teach Dene Kede?

• Helping to Develop the Dene Perspective

• Survival

• Cultural Pride and Healing

• Language/Culture

      Return to Part 1: Orientation to Dene Kede

1. Helping to Develop the Dene Perspective

In the developmental stages of the Dene curriculum, the elders advised that the schools can somehow be made to help Dene students to develop the Dene perspective and to become the capable Dene they are meant to be. To be capable means having responsible, skillful and respectful relationships with the spiritual world, with the land, with other people and with themselves. It was with this goal in mind that the Dene Kede Curriculum was developed.

2. Survival

Being a capable Dene means being someone with integrity. There is faith on the part of the elders and the developers of this curriculum that this type of integrity is what will be needed to take the Dene and indeed all humankind into the future. Thus the curriculum serves the very broad goal of "survival".

3. Cultural Pride and Healing

It is recommended that these relationships be developed in the context of what is culturally and geographically familiar to the students. The thematic units which are a part of the curriculum are a suggested context in which to teach the four relationships. As the students are helped to become capable and self-aware in their familiar environment, it is movement not simply toward our future survival, but also movement toward cultural pride and healing.

4. Language/Culture

The Dene language provides access to much of how the Dene understand their spirituality, their land, their relationships with one another and themselves. Learning the language is therefore a necessary tool for true Dene education.