ABSTRACT
My Indigenousness does not lay in the earrings, the regalia, the moccasins, or the wampum I may use for ceremony and ritual, nor does it lay in the tobacco I burn as words are recited of thanksgiving for all of creation. It is a deeper knowledge of who I am that has been taught to me through a cultural belief system that recognizes the relational and spiritual powers of the universe. This chapter theorizes spiritual encounter as understood within an Indigenous context and through the relationality experienced as currere. Provoking spiritual curriculum encounters offers an opportunity to journey deep into one’s self, examining, comparing, and sifting through what is meant to bring light and clarity to the human journey, and which I explore here, as a Kanien’kehā:ka (Mohawk) woman of the Haudenosaunee (people of the longhouse), through a woman’s dance. In going beyond the external curricula, this chapter represents an opportunity for a deeper reflection of one’s self in relation to the encounter, especially important in an Indigenous context given the colonial legacy of curriculum studies.
