My name is Michael Koops. I will be your teacher. I am the descendent of immigrants to Canada. My mother is Dutch and my father Japanese.
 | 
(That is me and my mom to the right and above is my daughter and I in Japan. Below is my Japanese grandparents and a photo of me at Stevenson, B.C. where my Japenese grandmother is from). |
(Above is a picture of me with my students who I do the Blanket Exercise with)
I have been teaching for 25 years, 5 years in a fly-in reserve in Northern Saskatchewan, 2 years at Montmarte, Saskatchewan, and 18 years in Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan. So you have the son of immigrants teaching Native Studies 30, which is a little weird. However, what I can offer is that I have a Masters in Education with a focus on Social Justice. |
I have facilitated the Kairos Blanket Excercise, a number of times with students. We are going to look at Canada and examine its relationship with First Nations people. This relationship has a history that explains some of our current dilemmas. However, this is not exclusively a history class. |
We need to understand Canadian History to understand the relationship between Indigenous people and settler descendants in this land. But this class is more about concepts, like culture, worldview, ethnocentrism, and "Truth & Reconciliation"
Thank you for being a part of this learning and I am sure we are going to learn things together.
