FIRST READING: B.C.’s public school teachers told to ‘queer’ outdoor education

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Nevertheless, Polukoshko tells the reader that this view of the natural world may “inadvertently affirm colonial discourses.”

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“Colonization has offered a pseudo-science narrative of binary gender, as exemplified by the saying ‘birds and bees’ to analogize gender and assigned sex at birth and assumptions of sexual orientation,” reads the Queering Outdoor Education curriculum guide.

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Polukoshko’s article states that outdoor education was always intended to be a “decolonial tool,” but that it’s imperative for teachers to now use it to shatter “cis-heteronormative assumptions.”

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This is framed as a political reaction to the “the current backlash against SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity).”

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Particularly in Alberta, there has been growing pushback against SOGI policies in the public school system.

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Not just in terms of the curriculum, but in school board regulations that require teachers to immediately affirm any gender identity chosen by their students — and even to conceal the identity from parents upon request.

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While this remains the policy across B.C., in 2024 Alberta introduced the Education Amendment Act which, among other things, required schools to obtain parental consent before allowing any students under age 16 to choose a new name and pronouns.

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According to Polukoshko, the SOGI backlash is why B.C. teachers must be increasingly active in bringing SOGI and other “anti-colonial” narratives to everything they do.

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“It’s essential that we demystify and move SOGI work out of the silos of humanities and physical health and into our day-to-day teaching, inclusive practice, and relationship building,” she wrote.

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IN OTHER NEWS

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B.C. continues to be riven by controversy after a court declared in August that a section of Richmond, B.C., henceforth belongs to the Cowichan Tribes First Nation. OneBC, a dissident offshoot of the Conservative Party of B.C., has been particularly vocal in its reaction to the decision, declaring Truth and Reconciliation a “scam” and adopting the motto of “Canada was built, not stolen.” On Monday, OneBC leader Dallas Brodie tabled a list of all the MLAs who own property in B.C., urging them to sign the title over to the nearest First Nation in order to “be the change they want to see in this world.”

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Ottawa and Alberta are reportedly finalizing the terms of a “memorandum of understanding” regarding a new oil pipeline to the West Coast. Although the Carney government retains extraordinary powers to speed any pipeline proposal past all the usual regulatory delays, the agreement throws up a potential new delay by requiring that Alberta secure the “sufficient conditions” to have the project approved by B.C.

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B.C. Premier David Eby, of course, has actively vowed to oppose any plan for a new pipeline to the coast, even as he’s called on Prime Minister Mark Carney to be “relentless and remorseless” in pursuing new resource projects. At a press conference on Monday, Eby said he’d just had a call with Carney, where he’d been assured that a pipeline deal hadn’t been “finalized.”

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As to what the pipeline might look like, it’s not clear whether it would follow an entirely new route to the Northwest Coast, or whether it would simply be another addition to the existing Trans Mountain line. It’s also not known whether the project would be funded by outside investors, or taken up as a piece of government-funded infrastructure.

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