Native Studies 10

What Shapes Your Identity?

Unit 1 Handout 1

Learning Goal:  I can explain what shapes my identity and describe how Indigenous identity is influenced by culture, community, and worldview.

Identity is the answer to the question: Who am I? It includes the values you hold, the relationships you belong to, the language you speak, the land you come from, and the stories passed down to you. Identity is not fixed. It grows and shifts throughout your life.

Factors That Shape Identity

Everyone's identity is shaped by multiple forces at the same time. Some come from inside you: your personality, your values, your beliefs. Others come from the world around you: your family, your community, your culture, and the history of the people you belong to.

•      Family: the people who raise you, the traditions they carry, the language they speak at home

•      Community: the place you live, the people around you, the shared history of that place

•      Culture: the practices, ceremonies, art forms, stories, and ways of knowing your people have developed over generations

•      Worldview: the set of beliefs that shapes how you understand the universe, your place in it, and your responsibilities to others

•      History: the events that happened to your people and how those events still shape life today

Indigenous Identity in Saskatchewan

For First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples in Saskatchewan, identity connects to the land, to kinship systems, and to ways of knowing that developed over thousands of years. These are not things from the distant past. They are living parts of who Indigenous people are today.

Indigenous identity has also been shaped by history in painful ways. Government policies worked to erase Indigenous languages, remove children from families, and replace Indigenous knowledge with European ways of thinking. Understanding that history is part of understanding identity.

Key Idea

In many Indigenous traditions, identity is relational. You are who you are because of who you belong to, where you come from, and what you are responsible for.

Identity Is Complex

People rarely have just one identity. You may be a student, a son or daughter, a member of a First Nation, a hockey player, and a Cree speaker, all at the same time. Indigenous people in Canada hold identities that are both ancient and contemporary, and those identities do not have to fit into boxes that others have created for them.

References

1.    Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. (1996). Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (Vol. 1). Canada Communication Group.

2.    Battiste, M. (2000). Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision. UBC Press.

3.    Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report. TRC.

4.    Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2002). Native Studies 10 Curriculum Guide. Government of Saskatchewan.

5.    Four Directions Teachings. (n.d.). Indigenous teachings and worldviews. Retrieved from https://www.fourdirectionsteachings.com