Guelph students among Canadian kids learning math concepts through Métis beading practices

An elementary school initiative that explores math concepts while incorporating Indigenous practices is making its way into classrooms across Canada.

The Métis-math collaboration is part of a larger collection spearheaded by mathematics education researcher Ruth Beatty of Lakehead University in 2012. It's called First Nations and Métis Math Voices. 

"One of the main reasons we started this was so that First Nations students could see themselves reflected in classroom practice, particularly around math," said Beatty, an associate professor in Lakehead's faculty of education.

"We recognize that there's so much mathematics that is part of Métis cultural practices and First Nations cultural practices. So we wanted to use that as a way of contextualizing math, making it meaningful for First Nations and Métis students, but also giving other students a chance to form relationships with community partners."

The Wellington Catholic School Board recently hosted the second half of its Métis-math collaborative project at St. John Catholic Elementary School in Guelph, Ont.

Grade 6 students created bracelets using loom beading — a First Nations art form — and three Métis knowledge keepers led the class through the beading process.

During the first session in November 2023, students replicated a bracelet featuring a Métis-styled flower designed by Leslieanne Muma, one of the knowledge keepers. 

On March 6, students designed their own bracelets and carried out the loom-beading exercise. 

"We gave them some basic parameters of how many colours, or how many rows or coloumbs the bracelet should be," said knowledge keeper Alicia Hamilton.

"The rest was from their imagination and creativity."

Students used math concepts such as transformations, ratios and rates to plot their bracelets before physically making them.

"The neat thing about this second half is that we have changed the size of the beads, which means they have to recalculate all of their math again. We will be measuring their wrists again because it will be different," said Jennifer Parkinson, another knowledge keeper who helped the children.

"So it really reinforces everything they've been learning all year."

Hamilton added: "We even did math this morning with how many beads are in quarter teaspoon so they could come and say, 'I need two quarter teaspoons or one-eighth of a teaspoon — things like that. So it's really cool to see how you're doing math without doing math.