Write a research essay, formatted in APA (7th edition), on the following: What are the implications of Indigenous ways of knowing, in light of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commi

Design/methodology/approach–Using Ontario’s secondary school curriculum as a point of analysis, this paper draws from critical race theory and a whiteness lens to identify how cultural and race identities are positioned in contemporary health education documents. The curriculum document and its newest strategies for teaching are the focus of analysis in this conceptual paper.

Findings–Within the curriculum new teaching strategies offer entry points for engaging students in learning more about culture and race. In particular, First Nation, Métis and Inuit identities are noted in the curriculum.

Specifically, three areas of the curriculum point to topics of race and culture in health: eating; substance use, abuse and additions; and, movement activities. Within these three educational areas, the curriculum offers information about cultural practices to teach about what it means to understand health from a cultural lens.

Social implications–The HPE curriculum offers examples of how Ontario, Canada, is expanding its cultural approaches to knowing about and understanding health practices. The acknowledgment of First Nations, Métis and Inuit health and cultural ways of approaching health is significant when compared to other recently revised HPE curriculum from around the globe. The teaching strategies offered in the curriculum document provide one avenue to think about how identity, culture and race are being taught in health education classrooms.

Originality/value–First, with limited analysis of health education policy within schools, the use of critical theory provides opportunities for thinking about what comes next when broadening definitions of health to be more inclusive of cultural and race identity. Second, curriculum structures how teachers respond to the topics they are delivering, thus how HPE as a subject area promotes healthy practices is highly relevant to the field of health education. This paper provides an important acknowledgment of the educative work being undertaken in the revision of HPE curriculum.

KeywordsCulture, Race, Health education, Curriculum, Schools, HPE Paper typeConceptual paper Introduction Health education officially joins physical education in the school curricula of many countries.

The USA, New Zealand, Scotland, Australia and Canada, for example, have combined the subject fields into one area where curriculum documents formally outline how the subjects are to be taught (Fitzpatrick and Tinning, 2014). This paper focuses on the recently revised Ontario, Canada, health and physical education (HPE) curriculum to explore how meanings of race and culture are presented in the document as curriculum informs pedagogy and shapes the knowledge, skills and experiences gained about health in school settings.

Although not completely aligned, the overarching emphasis on the body, human movement and health seems to unite the fields. Both health education and physical education aim to provide knowledge and skills that enable young people to learn about their bodies while at the same time take responsibility for their health practices. It would seem Health Education Vol. 118 No. 2, 2018 pp. 144-158 © Emerald Publishing Limited 0965-4283 DOI 10.1108/HE-11-2016-0059 Received 12 November 2016 Revised 19 April 2017 25 August 2017 9 November 2017 15 November 2017 18 November 2017 Accepted 20 November 2017 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/0965-4283.htm The author would like to thank the reviewers and acknowledge support from the funding agency. 144 HE 118,2 that society would benefit from the goal of providing individuals with the tools to take care of themselves. Currently, the dominant processes of self-care emerge as a form of health consciousness whereby attentiveness to the body, its form and function, simultaneously support an individualist approach with the additional goal of alleviating any undue pressure on the health care industry (Ayo, 2012; Crawford, 1980).

With an individualist model and an economic focus, it is not surprising that the two fields historically and currently have investments in biomedical approaches to health intervention (Gibney, 2015; Thomson and Robertson, 2014; Singleton, 2009).

Historically, physical education has operated in the militaristic training of bodies, encouraged mass fitness regimes, and promoted sport participation, all the while touting the virtues of regular physical activity and other health practices to enhance everyday healthy living (McCuaiget al., 2013; Quennerstedtet al., 2010). Similarly, as a tool for disease prevention, beginning in the 1970s health education was focused on stopping the spread of non-communicable disease through a series of behavioral change approaches (Nutbeam, 2000).

Today, scholars would suggest that both physical education and health education use behavioral change approaches, and many behavior modification programs have gained recognition specifically through their pioneering efforts in schools (Nutbeam, 2000; Thomson and Robertson, 2014). Vertinsky (2017) suggests“across the twentieth century until today, ways of knowing associated with the active body/human movement and related forms of professional training have relied in different measure upon both the gymnasium and the laboratory”(p. 140).

Behavioral models aim to measure specific health-related practices to demonstrate some sort of positive change. The current messages in HPE in schools ultimately shape how people come to learn about, see and experience health. The more recent and explicit curricular emphasis on the development of personal, social and political aspects of health aims to promote a holistic and inclusive approach to educating the population about their own health and the health of others (Nutbeam, 2000).

Through school-based educational opportunities, HPE strives to engage all students in learning how to become a healthy, active and engaged citizen. It is the notion of engaging all students that becomes an important entry point to consider how race and culture are conceptualized in HPE curriculum as a means of providing an inclusive approach within educational policy. Nutbeam (2000) asserts“to promote greater interdependence and empowerment among individuals and communities we work with–we will need to acknowledge and understand the political aspects of education”(p. 267). With HPE curricula across the globe moving toward engaging and promoting healthy living as a resource for lifelong learning about the body and well-being, the exploration of how diversity and culture figure into contemporary curriculum documents is a valuable path to consider.

Students’cultural and racial background informs how they engage with and participate in physical activity and how they come to understand health (Pang and Macdonald, 2016).

Within some of the most recently revised curricula, such as in Ontario, Canada, the emphasis has shifted from preventing illness and disease to health promotion strategies that aim to build hope and resilience in youth so that they can“thrive in an ever-changing society”(Health and Physical Education (HPE), 2015, p. 6). With the move away from disease prevention to intervention, health education messaging is also shifting (Hoffman-Goetzet al., 2014). Healthy ideals are no longer just about surviving in a healthy body; the messages now focus on thriving in a complex world. Within this approach, who thrives better than someone else and how diverse people interpret an ever-changing world remains underexplored in health education research. As health education and physical education unite within schools, attention can be given to the ways in which culture appears in curriculum as our“ever-changing society”influences understandings of health. 145 Race and culture in the HPE curriculum There is no doubt that being healthy and understanding concepts that constitute health is important to thriving in a dynamic, changing society. As many societies shift to consider the diverse cultural, heritage and race backgrounds of people, strategies of inclusion are being adapted to the realities of population growth, migration, immigration, and First Peoples (Dei, 2012; Kanu, 2014).

Research in the areas of religion, race and culture in sport and physical education settings, using critical race theory, has documented the contestable nature of what is considered inclusion and specifically how strategies for inclusion play out for young people in different contexts (see Azzarito and Hill, 2012; Bennet al., 2011; Stanecet al., 2016).

Minimal research attention, however, has been given to cultural aspects of curriculum in school settings. Aside from Dowling and Flintoff (2015), who examine how cultural traits, behaviors and attitudes are expressed in physical education policy texts, there is limited examination of how curriculum documents open or foreclose ideas about culture in health education within schools.

Curriculum documents are important sites of examination as the policies they represent influence teachers and the school community. Educational policy scholar Stephen Ball (1994, 2012) chronicles how curriculum constructs what educators do, how they think and how they teach. The curriculum is a textual representation of struggles, compromises and interpretations (Dowling and Flintoff, 2015). In many ways, teachers are supportive and creative enactors of policy (Ballet al., 2011) as they interpret documents presented to them.

Yet, educational curricula are legal documents that influence the construction of a learning context. Thus, curriculum becomes a powerful site of analysis as teachers are guided by curricular expectations when delivering health education to today’s students.

Exploring how race and culture are written into curriculum in specific areas while leaving race and culture unspoken or removed from others becomes a relevant point of inquiry, as the premise of educational policy is to inform, guide and direct educational learning. Policy analysis enables an examination of what is included within texts as well as what remains overlooked (Ballet al., 2011). This paper turns a critical lens on the healthy living messages within the Ontario, Canada, HPE curriculum, looking specifically at how health information is constructed in relation to race and culture. Seeing curriculum this way provides a lens to explore how race and culture are used in erasing or recognizing health and health practices. Identifying how curricular knowledge and skills either exclude or include diverse social and cultural backgrounds of students is a focal aspect of this paper.

Highlighting the ways in which culture is a prominent component of HPE enables a perspective that is more attentive to the ways in which social categories of race and culture are positioned in all educational spaces (Darder, 2002, 2010; DeCuir and Dixson, 2004).

Places like the gymnasium, classroom, pitch and arena are spaces where HPE comes alive, but these are also locations where students, with varying backgrounds, heritages and experiences, come to learn and understand societal values, beliefs and expectations about health and subsequently healthy bodies (Burrows, 2004; Burrows and McCormack, 2011).

This paper focuses on the policy text of the secondary school curriculum to explore how language and culture combine“operat[ing] to silence and deny certain experiences, histories and identities”(Dei and Doyle-Wood, 2006, p. 16) while enabling other stories to dominate.

It expands upon the recent scholarship in HPE studies that interrogates race, whiteness and ethnicity in educational settings (see Azzarito, 2009; Bennet al., 2011; Hylton, 2015) and more specifically expands the critical analysis of curriculum documents (Dowling and Flintoff, 2015).

Critical race studies in HPE To date, there are notable but relatively few Canadian studies that examine HPE curriculum using critical race theories (Millingtonet al., 2008; Vertinskyet al., 1992). Millingtonet al.(2008) examined the experience of Chinese Canadian males in HPE to find the myths of Asian men’s 146 HE 118,2 physicality and weakness as exclusionary practices in the organization of school sport and HPE classes. Vertinskyet al.’s (1992) study revealed that if Indo-Canadian secondary school girls choose not to participate in HPE, the explanations provided by administration and educators perpetuated stereotypical views of Indo-Canadian women as being weak, repressed and traditionally conservative. The young women in the study noted that many girls of diverse cultural backgrounds withdrew from HPE in secondary school. For these young women, the binary cultural practices of HPE were not always exclusionary or incongruous with traditional beliefs, but the institutional racism of the HPE experience suggests the undercurrents of racism have ripple effects with the school.

Both the Indo-Canadian and Chinese Canadian community provided organized sport opportunities for the young men and women in these studies, thus exemplifying how individuals will turn to cultural communities when racist ideologies limit their opportunity.

In these Canadian studies, racism and racialization persists and suppresses the opportunity for equal participation in a subject area designed to promote engagement. Racism often results when groups of people are defined by their skin color and treated unfairly and discriminatory.

Racialization ascribes particular characterizations to a group that leads to unequal treatment of people usually with one group being positioned as superior to another.

Different groups are affected differently by racialized processes. For example, white people are racialized but this often goes unnoticed or remains invisible such that white people do not see themselves as part of race but still have the authority to name and racialize others.

Both racism and racialization work because of power imbalances occurring both at an individual and cultural level.

Internationally, there is a burgeoning body of research examining issues of how racialization and racism operate in overt and covert ways in physical education and school environments (see Azzarito, 2009; Fitzpatrick, 2013; Flintoffet al., 2015). In an effort to highlight how race functions in HPE, these scholars point to the increasing recognition of cultural difference and identity; however, such recognitions often result in a homogenization of difference. In this process, the binary logic of“us”vs“them”unfolds, re-entrenching the marginalized other while simultaneously re-establishing dominant cultural practices of health as the norm, and thus only recognizable, version of health education. For example, Azzarito and Hill (2012) show how young British Asian women move in and out of spaces with difficulty as their understandings of health shift between home and school. The young women in their study asserted that physical activity was important and valued in their lives, but how the information was presented in school challenged some of their family’s beliefs about health and wellness. Not seeing themselves as sporty, the young women expressed how they felt alienated in school physical education classes.

Dagkas (2014) also points to the intersections of social class, racialization and health.

Using epidemiology data from British black and minority ethnic groups, Dagkas identifies the ways“United Kingdom Asian populations are joined together to include groups as diverse as Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi”which ignores the cultural diversity and heterogeneity of these groups (p. 78). Ethnic categorization can become an organizing technique. If this organizing technique is then associated with disease or ill-health the homogeneity of the group is not only false it may cloud other issues of health status such as social class, economic instability and job security.

Ahmad and Bradley (2008) assert that health data can be presented in ways that associate biology and culture with an inferior ranking of some ethnic minority groups. Yet, other researchers indicate the value of cultural identity being vital to the health and well-being of young people (Kirmayer, 2015). The inclusion of difference or the homogenizing of a culture’s belief system without an accompanying rich and meaningful unpacking of these tapestries may inadvertently result in tokenistic and stereotypical representations of culture, which risk further straining of students’experiences of schooling (Kirmayer, 2015). 147 Race and culture in the HPE curriculum Marginalized youth navigate difficult terrain as they move between western worlds of schooling and diverse cultural understandings of identity and knowledge (Nakata, 2005, 2010).

Research in physical education and sport suggests youth navigate their understandings of health from multiple perspectives (Hylton, 2015). Within the western context, the position from which identity and knowledge is constructed is often in relation to ideologies of whiteness.

Whiteness Whiteness“is a dominant cultural space with enormous political significance”such that “white people are not required to explain to others how‘white’culture works, because‘white’ culture is the dominant culture that sets the norms”(Frankenberg, 1993, p. 21). Whiteness is not a color but an ideology.

For HPE, whiteness benefits those who are positioned in such a way that the dominant approach to healthy living befits traditional, Eurocentric values and skills. Basic ideas, beliefs, values and perceptions are part of the everyday occurrences, and for those who directly share these same approaches to life, their daily activities and choices align. It is as though these common, everyday encounters are raceless and cultureless. These sometimes benign everyday choices are seen by some to be healthy, but for others these choices and options are not part of their values or belief system, thus not a component of their everyday approach to health.

According to scholars, who help point to the ways education engages with race relations, the mono-cultural references to minority populations or the lack of identification of race and culture in schools preserve the supremacy of whiteness (Rollock, 2012). If cultural groups, or race, are associated with specific traits or when biological illness is combined with these ascribed traits, dominant ideologies and mythologies form. In HPE, whiteness benefits those who already engage with Eurocentric practices of health, share similar values about healthy living, and more generally follow western practices of physical activity, leisure or sport.

Those who are not part of a white cultural ideal, who may practice health differently, are in need of explaining their actions and justifying their values and beliefs in ways those who follow dominant white health practices do not.

An individual’s connection with cultural values and beliefs shapes how they learn to care about themselves and others (Kirmayer, 2015). Ideologies of“racelessness”shape expectations about health and physical activity. But healthy living is not a mono-cultural notion, even though dominant Eurocentric notions of health underscore the concept. Health ideals, like educational policy, are not neutral or value free.

Within HPE, the teachers, curriculum and pedagogical strategies are generally embedded within a white privilege ethos characteristic of dominant groups in Eurocentric societies. In post-secondary institutions, senior roles in faculties of HPE tend to be dominated by white bodies (Douglas and Halas, 2013), and racial minority youth experience their HPE secondary school classes in relation to dominant ideologies of whiteness (Fitzpatrick, 2013; Flintoffet al., 2015; Stride, 2014).

Recent research by Dowling and Flintoff (2015) found that whiteness remains an invisible assumption within the physical and health education curricula of England and Norway.

In particular, Norway’s identification of physical cultural practice ignores the Indigenous people of Scandinavia, the Sami and their traditional practices within Norway’s culture.

Similarly, the Euro-Western physical education programs of England follow a sport-based model in which the activities and skills primarily promote white, middle-class, heteronormative ideas of sport culture dominant in the UK (Dowling and Flintoff, 2015). An analysis of curriculum documents in HPE from Australia and Scotland (McEvillyet al., 2014) revealed how students’socio-economic and cultural identities are discounted within recent curricular reform.

The intersections of race, culture, social class and gender are significant contributors to individuals’experiences in school health. Limited but valuable research captures how policy, teachers’interpretation of curriculum and students’experiences are plagued by the 148 HE 118,2 implicit whiteness that erases conscious awareness of white privilege from health practices.

The erasure of identity happens even though there is a concerted effort and commitment to social justice within HPE. Whiteness is maintained through dominant ideologies of race and ultimately difference, such that unconscious or conscious racial positioning continues unnoticed. In the next section, attention will be given to the ways in which identity plays out in educational policy.

An analysis of Ontario’s HPE curriculum Education is a provincial jurisdiction in Canada, and the province of Ontario’s latest curricular change in 2015 is based on a vision of providing students with the knowledge and skills to help them develop the competency, capacity and commitment to live in a complex world. Objectives of the Ontario HPE curriculum were bold; thus, the document became a controversial government approach. There was much discussion over the sexual health education content; specific concerns aimed at the inclusion of masturbation and consent occurred much earlier in the curriculum than previous iterations (Bialystok and Wright, 2017; McKayet al., 2014).

Issues of culture and identity are not at the forefront of curriculum, but in regards to the knowledge presented to students about healthy living cultural and racial identities figure centrally into the promotion of health initiatives.

Learning outcomes in Ontario’s HPE curriculum Curriculum is organized by grade level in Ontario, Canada. Within each grade level, there are a series of intended learning outcomes. These outcomes might also be considered grade-level expectations and are referred to in the document as specific expectations. The specific expectations found in all grade levels are broken down into three broad areas: active living, healthy living and movement competence. Active living expectations focus on physical activity, fitness and safety. Healthy living expectations focus on three areas: understanding health concepts, making healthy choices and making connections for healthy living.

Movement skills, concepts, principles and strategies comprise movement competence.

Teaching tools embedded in curriculum To support the implementation of specific grade-level learning expectations, the HPE curriculum contains teaching strategies that aim to enhance student learning and prepare teachers to deliver curricular content. Teachers specifically requested these teaching strategies during policy development. The teaching tools are called Teacher Prompts and Student Reply and they act to showcase“more depth and complexity to the specific expectations within each grade as deeper knowledge and skills”(HPE, p. 92). Teacher Prompts are framed as questions that can be posed to the class. Following a Teacher Prompt, a student response, Student Reply, is offered to illustrate the types of follow-up points students might make or discussions that may transpire.

In this following section, particular attention is given to the narratives presented in the Teacher Prompts and Student Reply teaching tools. The examples illustrate how these new teaching strategies and the curriculum itself enables some things to be seen, said and heard, with other contextual details remaining unseen, unspoken and absent.

Student identity within the curriculum Together, the Teacher Prompts and Student Reply teaching tool aims to provide deeper understandings about curriculum policy expectations and support the delivery of content.

In total, there are 212 Teacher Prompts and Student Reply examples within the grade 9-12 levels of the policy. Of the 212 Teacher Prompts and Student Reply examples, the race or 149 Race and culture in the HPE curriculum ethnic identity of students are described 14 times and all 14 of these references identify First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit, with no other ethnic or racial identity specifically identified.

Indeed, the representation of First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit identity to the exclusion of all other racial or ethnic identification gives the distinct impression that the other 198 Teacher Prompts and Student Replies are raceless and cultureless, an impression that is decisively resisted in this paper. Rather, the lack of race or ethnic diversity represented in the Teacher Prompt and Student Reply examples point to the way in which dominant and normative cultural knowledge tends to masquerade as universal knowledge (Dei, 2012). Given the lack of identity recognition beyond specific groups of people, this is an example of how whiteness or “racelessness”works. In this regard, the underpinning assumption is that many physical cultural practices and dominant health knowledge are devoid of cultural meaning.

Macdonaldet al.(2009) suggest that the dominant views of physical activity, health, fitness and exercise are divorced from the meanings and values of diversely situated students. Yet, these examples illustrate how the Teacher Prompt and Student Reply tool used in the curriculum assumes identity is only relevant in specific instances, while in the majority of instances the knowledge, skills and attitudes represented about student learning are situated as being homogenous and cultural-less activities. It is these examples of how and when student identity is marked within curriculum that illustrate the privilege afforded to Eurocentric knowledge about healthy living, physical activity and health practice while simultaneously only marking culture through the recognition of First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit students in the curriculum. This marking of students’identities within the Teacher Prompt and Student Reply draws attention to some bodies at specific moments, whereby other bodies occupy unmarked positions. Furthermore, students are the only group identified by their cultural and race category as teachers remain race- and cultureless.

Eating and food-related practices In the healthy living learning expectations, students are taught about eating patterns and how to make the best choices possible. The policy overviews and emphasizes the social and environmental impact of food and its subsequent influence on individual health. For example, one of the specific expectations, in healthy living, is that students learn to“analyze the influence of social and environmental factors on food and beverage choices (e.g. financial status, culture, religion, media influence, peer influence, family food traditions, accessibility of different kinds of food, restaurant choices, proximity to where food was produced, environmental impact of food production methods)”(p. 104). The following is an example of a Teacher Prompt and Student Reply to support teachers in meeting this expectation: Teacher prompt:“What are some social and environmental factors that affect a person’s food choices?” Students:“Families in which the adults work long hours may have less time for meal planning and preparation. It can be harder to make healthy choices when you have less time and less money.” “Things like food production, transportation, and packaging can have a serious impact on the environment. To reduce my carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, I try to choose local fresh foods.”“I belong to an Inuit family that lives in the city. I haven’t grown up eating traditional foods such as game and arctic char. Because these foods are important to our culture, I would like to learn about them and ways of preparing them.”“Food choices may not be the same in every part of Ontario because of differences in the kinds of foods that can be produced in or easily shipped to different areas, like the Far North, rural areas, or cities”(p. 106). The breadth of material offered in this example expands students’understanding of the socio-ecological aspects of health. Economical, environmental, ecological and cultural factors influencing and impacting healthy food choices are used to illustrate the factors that enable and constrain choice. The cultural example of Inuit traditional food practice and its significance to culture acknowledges something important. The inclusion of cultural identity 150 HE 118,2 and the impacts of living in a location far from traditional lands and land-based food practice is a noteworthy acknowledgment of the realities facing many of Canada’s First Peoples. This entry point does have limited explanation when compared to other descriptions offered in the same example. The recognition of traditional foods denotes a value placed on traditional food harvesting and food access, but the example offers limited insight into what traditional foods actually mean from a health and healthy living perspective.

Other examples provided in the Student Reply offer some explanation of the geographical location, transportation challenges and environmental impacts of food processing, which is welcome. Thus, it seems that the introduction of cultural practices of health with limited elaboration or context shifts the educational possibilities of the type of knowledge being recognized in the Student Reply. By contrasting the environmental aspect of this example with the culturally relevant food of Inuit people, the excerpt illustrates how the cultural component of the passage remains vague in comparison to the environmental or ecological components of food, food systems and choice. In this regard, the possibilities of teaching values, beliefs and practices related to cultural health are limited even though cultural identification is recognized.

Another healthy living, healthy eating example further illustrates an attempt to teach about cultural practices and health behaviors; a cultural approach is referenced through the identification of Canada’s Food Guide[1]. Students are expected to“demonstrate the ability to apply health knowledge and living skills to make reasoned decisions”(p. 105). Knowledge and skills can be acquired from any number of sources, but the recommended resource noted by students in the Teacher Prompt and Student Reply is the national document for food and nutrition information,“Canada’s Food Guide”: Teacher:“Where can you get information that can help you develop your healthy eating plan?” Student:“Canada’s Food Guide is one of the most useful sources. It has been translated into many different languages (e.g. Arabic, Punjabi, and Spanish), and there is also a version for First Nation, Inuit, and Mé tis users. In addition, I can get a lot of good information from registered dietitians, the local public health unit, and credible and accurate nutrition websites.” In this example, the cultural variations of Canada’s Food Guide are identified with language translations for Arabic-, Punjabi- and Spanish-speaking individuals. Having access to health information in multiple languages will enhance teachers’work. Researchers in food science have suggested that Canada’s Food Guide is helpful but offers no information about the symbolism or cultural aspects of food and eating which are pivotal to healthy lifestyles for many people (Lillicoet al., 2014). Canada’s Food Guide becomes an example of how whiteness works in presenting food information in ways that are indeed cultural but often not visible to those who follow dominant food consumption practices (i.e. follow western food grouping and eat foods typical of western diets).

Thus, it seems that by translating the information into different languages, the assumption is that diverse cultural groups will adapt their traditional eating practices to Canada’sFood Guide and its systematic classification of foods. What seems implied in the Student Reply component of this example is the transfer of other cultural contexts into a Eurocentric food consumption practice. By changing the language only, cultural foods and food preparation are ignored in favor of transferring“Canadian”knowledge into a different language.

In the Student Reply, it is noted that“There is also a version for First Nation, Inuit, and Mé tis users.”Canada’s Food Guide is not translated into Indigenous languages, but the format and organization of the Guide is altered to reflect First Nations food harvesting, cultivating and eating practices. The First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit version of Canada’s Food Guide identifies traditional foods but in relation to the systematic organization of food grouping and eating patterns presented by the Canadian Government. Thus, the organizational structure of food consumption remains the same. However, the Canada Food Guide does identify the importance of traditional practices and how these have 151 Race and culture in the HPE curriculum changed in current times or how people’s lives are affected by cultural eating practices.

Unlike the language translation versions of the Guide, the First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit version of Canada’s Food Guide is a model that offers information about culture and cultural foods. For example, the Guide identifies how to categorize the wild game, fish and berries within the existing Eurocentric approach to food categorization.

From one perspective, identifying the First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit Food Guide is a progressive approach to providing information about culture, food and healthy living.

The First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit Food Guide do review traditional foods and food harvesting processes in ways that are culturally responsive and different from the Eurocentric document. However, the food and land practices of diverse First Nations, Mé tis and Inuit are lost with the Guide offering limited information about Nation-specific food harvesting practices or local, place-specific foods. It would seem that the referral to the Canada’s Food Guide is helpful for educators, and more could be offered to guide educators to local or regional resources to learn more about healthy food consumption of various Canadians. Even mentioning this trajectory as an option would be helpful within the Food Guide. The value in the Teacher Prompt and Student Reply rests with its direction for expanding healthy food discussions in the classroom.

From another perspective, the translation of Canada’s Food Guide into other languages denies an opportunity to learn further about the cultural and social significance of food within diverse cultural groups. The assumption seems to be that language is the only translation piece needed for some racial or cultural groups to identify with healthy eating in Canada. For teachers, implementing the knowledge provided in the curriculum about why, how or what might be different for specific groups remains absent, let alone the diversity within these groupings, as the directive offered in the curriculum in the Student Reply emphasizes the identification of an additional resource only. Learning more about cultural food practices, protocols and food preparation could further build social relations between cultural groups and expand ideologies of healthy living within school settings.

Substance use, addictions and related behaviors Within healthy living expectations, substance use, addictions and related behaviors is another sub-theme or learning area. Students are required to“demonstrate an understanding of the impact of substance use and addictive behaviours on all aspects (e.g. physical, emotional, cognitive, spiritual, social and economic) of a person’s health and well-being”(p. 121).

Substance use and its effects on health and wellness are addressed at the individual and community level. In this sub-theme, across all grades, culture continues to be only recognized in relation to First Nations, Mé tis and Inuit. In this area of the curriculum, the association between cultural identity and addictions is problematic. For example, as a response to addiction behavior, what is represented in the curriculum is a cultural approach to healing.

But in order to learn about healing processes and practices, students are given examples in the curriculum that position First Nations, Mé tis and Inuit people as a homogenous group who have relationships with addictions. The following example illustrates this perspective: Teacher prompt:“First Nation, Mé tis, and Inuit cultures often consider the broad-based community impact of addictions in their approaches to healing and treatment. What are some dimensions of healing in these cultures?” Student:“Having an understanding of who you are and being proud of your heritage are an important part of being healthy and are also important in healing. Elders and/or traditional healers from within the community and often from other communities and regions provide support for individuals, families, and the community to help them heal. The idea is that one person’s healing connects to the well-being of the community. Songs, dances, games and activities, stories, prayers, and ceremonies are some community-based healing methods that are used”(p. 122). 152 HE 118,2 The Teacher Prompt and Student Reply open by directing attention toward and acknowledging the community approach to understanding addictions. Here, culture is used to illustrate holistic and communal approaches to ill-health and stresses the importance of individual healing within the broader community context. Through movement-related activities (i.e. song, dance, games and ceremony), the importance of a holistic approach to health becomes evident. Also, the Student Reply opens with a strong sense of identity and its importance for health. This example is similar to the findings presented by Kirmayer (2015) where culture is identified as an essential component to developing a sense of wholeness and health.

Addictions are complex phenomena resulting from a complicated web of factors both individual and structural, and we might reflect on why the only example and detailed illustration of First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit cultural practices are organized in relation to addictions. Why is the stereotypical image of First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit communities as experiencing addictions the entry point to speak about cultural healing practices?

Indigenous scholars have noted that when it comes to Indigenous peoples, health interventions are almost always premised on a deficit model (deLeeuwet al., 2010), where the objective is to“close the gap”between the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples (see Hokowhitu, 2014).

Although a seemingly benevolent objective, such a framing ultimately reifies the gap itself, thereby naturalizing the binary construction of the non-Indigenous norm defined over and against the Indigenous other. This binary is further entrenched in three significant ways. First, by focusing on the“cultural”healing practices of First Nations, Mé tis and Inuit, western biomedicine is implicitly rendered cultureless. Second, in framing culture in relation to addictions, culture comes to be understood as a cure in the western biomedical sense, and not an integrated and holistic aspect of life and everyday practice of living well. Third, First Nations, Mé tis and Inuit addictions are written about as isolated health problems that First Nations, Mé tis and Inuit people have. This serves to obscure the historical and ongoing role colonialism has played in the destruction of Indigenous societies and the associated consequences this has had for Indigenous health and well-being. By framing the discussion on Indigenous health in binary terms, Indigenous peoples are marked as thoroughly cultured, and thus identifiably different from the unmarked and cultureless norm of whiteness, at the same time that the ongoing legacy of colonialism is erased from the narrative.

Concluding reflections The province of Ontario and the curriculum writers should be commended for the direction the HPE curriculum is moving and the specific addition of the cultural identification of Canada’s First Peoples. The new Ontario curriculum has provided a doorway to learn more about students’culture in relation to health. McEvillyet al.(2014) who identified a lack of student identity in curriculum reform documents from Sweden suggested that this disconnection between identity and health continues to alienate students from seeing themselves as healthy, thus limiting their involvement in HPE classes. The specific acknowledgment of holistic approaches to health and the physical cultural practices of Canada’sFirstPeoplesalso separates this curriculum from others in Norway and England (Dowling and Flintoff, 2015).

Not uncommon within the health field, the acknowledgment of unhealthy activities and their association with First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit identity is a narrative that continues within western bioscientific medicine; thus, with the starting point coming to be a pathologization of Indigenous peoples, the justification for health interventions ensures (deLeuuwet al., 2010).

In this way, in health education, dominant Eurocentric practices are positioned as being more evolved or advanced, subsequently minimizing the meaning of Indigenous culture and cultural health practices (Hokowhito, 2014; Norman and Hart, 2016). 153 Race and culture in the HPE curriculum Healing practices are indeed central to Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, and with more information offered in the curriculum or a reorganization and expansion of the information offered in the curriculum, more could be done to disrupt and challenge dominance of Eurocentric approaches to health and well-being. Cultural practices that aim to foster positive health and well-being are part of a daily practice for some people, thus mentioning cultural practice as a form of healing meanings and understandings of the value, belief and actions of various cultures remain less understood.

The overall integration of First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit culture is moving toward a culturally relevant and responsive approach to teaching, which specifically includes cultural references in aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings, 1994). Curriculum is an official government policy, thus the province of Ontario’s acknowledgment of First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit is a valuable move to recognize the culture of Canada’s First Peoples. While the effort is applauded, the recognition of culture and cultural practices are divorced of a larger contextual framing by the selective identification of cultural practices in which some cultural groups may continue to be seen as inferior to others and other groups remain absent all together.

The limited entry points to dialogue offered in the Teacher Prompt and Student Reply could potentially turn into broader discussions about how health practices have historically and contemporarily been altered or erased by dominant, white, Eurocentric ways of approaching and understanding health. For example, historically the Canadian Government forbade sun dances, potlatches and sweat lodges, traditional Indigenous healing protocols for various Nations across the country (Battiste, 2013). More could be shared about this within the teaching tools to give context to the narratives offered in this curriculum.

However, the province of Ontario has now officially recognized traditional First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit culture and ways of living, which is commendable. Further incorporation of these teachable moments will require more supports for educators.

Ontario’s HPE policy writers should be lauded for their attempt to expand cultural references to First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit. Disrupting the dominant trend of what is culture and how cultural bodies are markedand represented in the HPE curriculum is paramount to fracturing the cultural assumptions within education documents.

The examples included in this paper are reminiscent of Macdonaldet al.’s (2009) research, which contends that exercise andphysical activity are culturally loaded behaviors, and the sooner understandings of health shift to consider the social relations involved in health enhancing activities, the stronger our teaching and learning practices can become in supporting cultural diversity. Identifying the specific moments when culture is made visible in the education document illuminates how often culture remains invisible. The whiteness that frames how health is conceived, delivered and taught becomes more apparent when culture is only recognized in relation to student identity.

Analyzingwhatispresentedandhowthisinformationisframedinrelationtocultural practices of health suggests that there is no simple or straightforward path to follow.

The ways in which culture and race operate as unspoken identity categories in much of the Ontario curriculum speak to the dominant view of bodies in HPE, but also the predominant perspective from which healthy behaviors are promoted.

The limited race and cultural examples in the Teacher Prompt and Student Reply teaching tools illuminate the form whiteness takes in these educational spaces. Schools are filled with diversely situated learners; thus, by failing to explicitly identify how race and culture work in HPE, whiteness remains invisible, the“norm to which other races are judged in the construction of identity, representation, decision-making, subjectivity, materialism, knowledge production and the law”(Moreton-Robinson, 2006, p. 388). These comparisons and judgments become apparent in Ontario’s HPE curriculum as the document only addresses the culture of First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit students at specific moments. In some moments, these references emerge from a deficit-based orientation and in others, entry 154 HE 118,2 points are offered to recognize the social relations involved in eating and food knowledge, aspects of substance use and abuse and movement activities. Yet, the racial and cultural identities of any group other than First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit remain absent in the entire curriculum document. This analysis of Ontario’s HPE curriculum reifies the work of other educational scholars in highlighting how dominant notions of health education in school settings are deemed more universal than varied (Azzarito, 2009; Macdonaldet al., 2009).

Moving forward The Ontario HPE curriculum is working to interrupt the“racelessness”of curriculum (Dowling and Flintoff, 2015) with its references to First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit identities.

With more efforts aimed at disrupting the reductionist references to culture in pedagogical practice and continuously interrogating how whiteness operates in HPE, even more can be done to enhance ideas of healthy living. Research with youth in physical education suggests that more positive learning about the self and others occurs when culture is recognized and can be seen by students (Fitzpatrick, 2013). Culturally relevant teaching has a legacy in other curricular areas (Ladson-Billings, 1994), thus building these educational approaches into HPE will advance the field. Currently, dominant health practices are promoted, and thus naturalized in curriculum fashioning a construction of healthy living that disguises its own cultural underpinnings of health as the norm from which health knowledge and actions can be understood. The analysis indicates that some bodies and healthy practices become more visible than others within educational policy.

Kirmayer (2015) asserts that mainstream approaches to health, especially in relation to youth, should be endorsing cultural practices to assist youth in strengthening their cultural identities and, consequently, theirhealth. The Ontario curriculum takes up this call. In education settings, Battiste andYoungblood Henderson (2009) assert that the supports for diverse approaches to education that recognize Indigenous knowledge are long overdue. However, a simple integration of Indigenous health practices will not be sufficient. Generations of Indigenous scholars have been working in this area for decades, identifying how traditions and ceremonies are part of an educational process that is meaningful, occurs in various settings and across the life span:“Indigenous scholars and educators have been working to affirm and activate holistic paradigms of Indigenous knowledge to reveal the wealth and richness of Indigenous languages, world views, teachings and experiences, all of which have been systematically excluded from Eurocentric knowledge systems”(Battiste and Youngblood Henderson, 2009, p. 5).

Health education could be activated in taking up a rich approach to healthy living.

Moving beyond exclusion of Indigenous knowledge is a strength of the Ontario HPE curriculum, and with the inclusion of First Nation, Mé tis and Inuit identities more knowledge about food, food harvesting, active living, understandings of physical, social, emotional and spiritual health can expand to legitimize and validate diverse understandings of healthy living within educational spaces.

To conclude, the current Ontario HPE curriculum acknowledges culture and does identify cultural practices of health. The effort to recognize diversity in the educational setting, Teacher Prompts and Student Reply cultivates an awareness of some bodies and their cultural practices, shifting the messages in health education from illness and disease beyond health behavior change to more proactive health engagements. Providing teachers with guidance to support students’abilities to thrive in a complex world are evident within the policy document. From this framework, more recognition of the positive health enhancing components of cultural practices and diverse cultural ideologies of health can unfold. In thinking about the future of health education and culture, Dei (2012) reminds us that the dominant approach to education“is not about bringing people into what already exists; it is about making a new space, a better space for everyone”(p. 12). 155 Race and culture in the HPE curriculum Note 1. Canada’s Food Guide is produced by Health Canada, an agency within the Federal Government of Canada.

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Corresponding author LeAnne Petherick can be contacted at: [email protected] For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:

www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm Or contact us for further details:[email protected] 158 HE 118,2