Wolves, Ptarmigan, and Lake Trout - Critical Elements of a Northern Canadian Place-Conscious Pedagogy

Oct 15, 2026

This paper examines how remote winter wilderness travel and homestead living, paired with reading, writing, and listening to personal narratives from the expedition region, can strengthen place-consciousness. Using a co-taught interdisciplinary university course as a case study, the study details how experiential pedagogy develops both practical skills and a mindset for living directly with the land. The paper also addresses uncommon, potentially controversial practices in the program, including fishing, hunting for food, and observing wolf skinning, and analyzes tensions between stated philosophies and actual practices.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages9

Reading Time23 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Program Overview

Wolves, Ptarmigan, and Lake Trout: Critical Elements of a Northern Canadian Place-Conscious Pedagogy Morten Asfeldt & Ingrid Urberg, University of Alberta, & Bob Henderson, McMaster University, Canada Abstract This paper explores the pedagogical benefits of combining remote winter wilderness travel and homestead living with reading, writing, and listening to personal narratives from the expedition region. A co-taught interdisciplinary university course will be used as a case study to demonstrate the ways in which this approach aids in developing place-consciousness—an awareness of storied landscapes—as well as the skills and mentality required for directly living with the land. It is our hope that the interdisciplinary content and experiential pedagogy employed in this course will enable students to re-establish vital relationships with nature that have been lost in our increasingly urban and technologically dominated lives. We will also discuss the use of uncommon and potentially controversial practices in our program such as fishing and hunting for food, and observing the skinning of wolves, that we believe are important elements of becoming genuinely place-conscious in the region of the Canadian north we study and visit. Tensions between our stated philosophies and actual practices are also revealed and examined. Résumé Cet article analyse les bienfaits pédagogiques, de combiner un voyage en hiver dans une région sauvage reculée, et la vie de campagne avec la lecture, l’écriture et l’écoute de récits personnels de la région de l’expédition. Un cours universitaire multidisciplinaire co-enseigné servira d’étude de cas pour démontrer de quelle façon cette approche favorise le développement dela conscience du lieu—une sensibilisation à ce que les paysages racontent—aussi bien que les habiletés et la mentalité requises pour vivre directement avec la terre. Nous espérons que le contenu multidisciplinaire et la pédagogie expérientielle de ce cours permettront aux élèves de rétablir des liens vitaux avec la nature, liens perdus dans notre vie de plus en plus urbaine et dominée par la technologie. Nous discuterons aussi de pratiques rares, potentiellement controversées, dans nos programmes, comme lapêche et la chasse de subsistance et l’observation du dépouillement des loups. Nous croyons que ce sont des éléments importants pour devenir vraiment conscients du lieu dans les régions du Nord canadien que nous étudions et visitons. Aussi, nous révélons et examinons les tensions entre nos énoncésphilosophiques et les pratiques actuelles. Keywords: place-consciousness, personal narratives, wilderness travel , storied landscape, interdisciplinary, writing, direct living, human-nature relationships. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 14, 2009 33 Introduction We live in a time when most of us are largely disconnected from those aspects of the natural world that provide the primary elements that sustain our lives (i.e. , water, food, shelter, and heat) . As outdoor and environmental educators, we often ask our students if they know where the water they drink comes from, where it goes when they flush it down the toilet, and where their food originated. Often students have no idea, affirming Leopold’s (1949) claim from long ago that “your true modern is separated from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets. He [sic] has no vital relation to it” (p. 223) . Leopold labeled this disconnection “landlessness.” As educators, we believe that this state of landlessness contributes to many of the environmental, cultural, and social maladies that we are experiencing today. We hope to create “landfullness” in our students by re-establishing a vital relationship to the world so that they may play a responsible role in their local and global landscapes. The goal of this paper is to share the pedagogical practices and intentions of our co-taught university course that combines the study and writing of pe

FAQs

What educational approach does the paper evaluate?

The paper evaluates an interdisciplinary course that combines personal narratives with remote winter wilderness travel and homestead living to develop place-consciousness.

How does the course develop place-consciousness?

It is developed through reading, writing, and listening to expedition-region narratives, alongside sustained experience living and studying in a sub-arctic environment.

What controversial or uncommon practices are discussed?

The paper discusses practices such as fishing and hunting for food, and observing the skinning of wolves, as elements linked to becoming genuinely place-conscious.

Oct 15, 2026

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