This article discusses the development of a methodological metissage that combined Indigenous and interpretive traditions. This metissage was developed during a doctoral study conducted with Canadian environmental educators who incorporate Western and Indigenous knowledge and philosophy into their ecological identities and pedagogical praxis. It…

In an effort to figure out what it means to educate "ecologically," I decided to track down some of the stories that I was living, telling and making as an educator. I ended up lost in the house of environmental education, stuck within the rooms of ecological science and political advocacy. Outside on the lawn sat the story of place based…

This paper explores the pedagogical benefits of combining remote winter wilderness travel and homestead living with reading, writing, and listening to personal narratives from the expedition region. A co-taught interdisciplinary university course will be used as a case study to demonstrate the ways in which this approach aids in developing…

In this article, the author examines some of the ways in which art and literature converge upon the site of the Canadian landscape, generating an "ekphrastic" conception of place which reminds everyone constantly that every framed, static view of a landscape represents a story house, a repository of narratives concerning all those peoples who have…

A Blackfoot woman, caught in the act of adultery, was condemned at this site to have her nose cut off as a penalty for her actions. People do not know her story. The tribe cast it on the ground. And so She, Nose Hill, was named. John Laurie Boulevard holds her mound in a circlet of asphalt, defining the map of her "terra incognita." She is a park…

In this essay, the author recalls several of her experiences in which she successfully pulled her boats out of river holes by throwing herself to the water as a sea-anchor. She learned this trick from her senior guides at a spring training. Her guides told her, "When you're stuck in a hole, take the "C" train."" "Meaning?" The author asked her…

The lake is blue black and deep. It is a glaciated finger lake, clawed out of rock when ice retracted across Nova Scotia in a northerly direction during the last ice age. The lake is narrow, a little over a mile long, and deep, 90 to 190 feet in places according to local lore, off the charts in others. The author loves to swim there, with a sense…

Sailing, a harnessing of wind with canvas to propel a sailboat across distances of water, in winds shaped by landforms, airflow and temperature, requires constant renegotiation by skipper and crew in response to the wind's changeable presence. In a choreography of movement, sails secured by sheets are loosened or reined in by hand to allow wind…

This environmental autobiography outlines my process of repositioning the natural environment as a primary character in my life. By exploring moments in my childhood when I made instinctive connections with my surroundings, I have come to better understand the person I am today and where I am going. Throughout this autobiography I address the…

In this narrative essay, I explore some fundamental assumptions in my understanding of environmental education. Questions are raised concerning the nature of perception, experience, and the interplay between the world and ourselves. The narrative is based on a recent trip down the Coppermine River in the Barrenlands of Canada's Arctic. The…

For a generation or more, environmental education discourses have been constructed around persistent Cartesian dualisms of modernist thought that divide an "othered" category of being from that of a constituted homogeneous human identity. During the same period, both feminist and poststructuralist theorizing has acted to destabilize the…

Explores the ecological and pedagogical images hidden within a tale of the author's returning to the place where he grew up and going for a birding walk with some old friends. Contains 18 references. (DDR)

Presents environmental education as a sharing of contested stories about the relationship between humans and nature. Suggests that the best storytelling occurs in nonformal and informal educational settings. Employs ethnographic research methods. Contains 19 references. (DDR)