Finding the Context You Didn’t Know You Needed
Remember the Inquiry Question Bank you started building in the last lesson?
Some of your questions probably feel straightforward. A quick search or a conversation with someone knowledgeable might point you in the right direction.
Others may feel much harder.
Maybe you’re not sure where to begin. Maybe you don’t know which voices you should be listening to. Or maybe you’ve realized something even more important:
What if you’re missing the most important question because you don’t yet know enough to ask it?
That’s completely normal.
Learning isn’t just about finding answers. Sometimes it’s about discovering the questions you didn’t even know existed.
Don’t panic. We’re here to help!
The Unknown Unknowns
There’s a saying:
‘We don’t know what we don’t know.
It sounds like a tongue twister, but it’s one of the biggest challenges in learning.
Every person sees the world through the experiences they’ve had, the people they’ve met, and the stories they’ve heard. That means every one of us has blind spots.
The goal of inquiry isn’t to eliminate those blind spots overnight.
It’s to become curious enough to notice them.
Often, we lack the knowledge because we didn’t even know that we didn’t know it. Which sounds like a riddle, but really isn’t: To know what we don’t know we don’t know, we simply need explore the stories of this land.
Part One: Start With the Stories of This Land
If we’re going to think carefully about the future of Canada, we first need to understand its past, and the people who have lived on this land since time immemorial.
Indigenous Peoples hold knowledge, histories, legal traditions, relationships with the land, and lived experiences that many Canadians were never taught in school. Understanding these perspectives doesn’t tell you what to think. It gives you more context to think with.
As you explore these resources, don’t worry about memorizing everything.
Instead, ask yourself:
- What surprised me?
- What assumptions did I have before?
- What stories have I never heard before?
- What new questions do I have now?
There are countless resources – many specific to where you live – but we’ve selected a few tools to help you start learning and exploring the stories we often overlook, yet need to hear.
National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation
Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada
Rights and Indigenous Peoples in Canada | Canadian Museum for Human Rights
21 Things You May Not Have Known About the Indian Act
Reconciliation | Government of Canada
Part Two: Keep Looking Beyond Your Comfort Zone
Don’t stop now! Solving the riddle – learning about what you didn’t know you didn’t know – is all about self-exploration.
The stories you need aren’t limited to one topic.
Explore issues you’ve never considered before.
Read perspectives you don’t usually encounter.
Listen to people whose lives are very different from your own.
The goal isn’t to agree with everything you read.
The goal is to understand why people think the way they do.
Every new perspective helps reveal another piece of the puzzle and often leads to better questions than the ones you started with.
Use these tools to search out stories that will spark your curiosity to know more about subjects, experiences and ideas that you never even knew existed.
Part Three: Grow Your Inquiry
Return to your Inquiry Question Bank.
After everything you’ve explored, ask yourself:
- Which of my original questions still matter?
- Which ones need to be rewritten?
- What entirely new questions have emerged?
- What information am I still missing?
- Which perspectives do I still need to understand?
Then revisit the central question for this unit:
How should we—locally or nationally—balance the needs of people and nature?
Has your answer changed?
It doesn’t have to.
But your understanding should be growing.
Keep adding new questions to your Inquiry Question Bank as you move through this course.
The best inquiries are living documents. They evolve as you do.
Pro Tips: What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do
Every researcher, journalist, scientist, teacher, and policymaker eventually reaches a point where they don’t know what to do next.
That’s not failure.
That’s inquiry.
When you get stuck, try one of these strategies:
- Revisit your notes and look for ideas you may have overlooked.
- Highlight unfamiliar terms and research them.
- Ask your teacher or classmates what they think.
- Break one big question into several smaller questions.
- Find another source that explains the topic differently.
- If possible, contact the organization, researcher, or expert behind the information.
- Talk with family members, Elders, Knowledge Keepers, mentors, or other trusted members of your community.
- Learn a new skill – mapping, interviewing, statistics, or media literacy can all open new ways of thinking.
- Listen to podcasts, documentaries, public lectures, or academic talks.
- Search for reputable essays, research papers, or news coverage.
- Participate respectfully in online discussions or forums to hear different perspectives.
- Take a break. Sometimes your best ideas arrive after you’ve stepped away.