The issues:
How to teach important, as-yet-untold local history in and with a school garden? How to involve the community with school classes in learning fraught histories towards social justice?
The story:
In collaboration with UBC History Professor Dr. Henry Yu, we decided to explore the history of Chinese immigrant market gardens on Indigenous reserve lands in the Pacific Rim — specifically at Musqueam in Vancouver….
Invitation to consider possible extensions:
- Twinning the school garden with a garden in partner communities
- Experimenting with growing foods, fibres and medicinal herbs that were traditionally grown and foraged
- Creating a film, website or book collaboratively with partners
- Starting a regular storytelling meeting with elders and kids in the garden
How could this work in your school garden? Some guiding questions:
- What are some of the untold histories that are central to your place and communities?
- How could you engage community leaders, elders, young people and others in exploring these histories?
- How might food play into it?
- How to work with the controversial subject matter that will arise?