Porcupine Goes to the City: Porcupine Quilling and Urban Land-Based Learning
The Indigenous Women and Youth Resilience Project and the Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research teamed up with Edmonton’s Indigenous Artist in Residence MJ Belcourt Moses to create NS380 Porcupine Goes to the City: Quillwork Teachings.
The course took place this spring 2019 and placed land-based learning to an urban Edmonton environment. In addition to providing access to land-based learning to more students, the goal of this course was to create a framework that places the Nêhiyaw (Cree) and Otipemisiwak (Métis) concept of wâhkôhtowin in conversation with urban land-based education, and quillwork more specifically. Elders and knowledge keepers Doreen Wabasca, Dwight Paul, Bonny Spencer, Ehtsue Lamothe, and Dorothy Thunder helped instructor MJ Belcourt Moses to create a syllabus that reflected the relationship between wâhkôhtowin, porcupine quilling, and education. The course also included a survey to get student input on land-based learning courses and what they would like to see in future.
