Lesson 2: First Nations Education

 Course’s FOUR approaches

o History
o Philosophy
o Sociology
o Cultural Studies
 The THREE levels addressed in the course
o 1) Individual: individual efforts, desire, hopes, etc.
o 2) Institutional/organizational: availability of rewards (housing, jobs, grades, university
entry, etc.) and the social rules for their distribution. These social rules include both written
and unwritten rules and procedures and organized patterns of behavior
o 3) Symbolic: intangible, language, social beliefs, attitudes, thinking, etc.
 Why are you in this program? Because you possess something called BA/BSc (at least)

History of the Present: First Nation Education (FNE)

 What is History?
o Looking at a clock: When does the present end, and when does the past begin?
 Defining history
o History is not a passé, something that happened and done with. History is the “history of
the present.” What happened in 1945 or 1749 influences our present day ideas, ways of
living and being. History is an interpretation, which depends on who writes it and from
whose vantage point. What we teach and how we live our lives are both products of history.
o The history of education in Canada began as a very simple story: Teach the Scriptures and
develop a religious community. (The main premise was religious)
o This had direct implications on how we conceive education today, and especially for First
Nation Education (FNE).

 Welcome...
o To the "Kichesippi" - the Great River
o To the Bytown
o To Adàwe ('to trade')

 The Politics of Labeling/Naming - Hampton

o “The right of people to define themselves and choose their own name is basic,” however,
“no name encompasses a people, and none is truly accurate” (p. 8).
 o Indians, Natives, First Nations?
o Voluntary vs. involuntary minorities (John Ogbu) - What does it mean to be foreign in one’s
own land?
 Voluntary: those who choose to come from elsewhere (e.g. Immigrants) - tend to
outperform Canadian-borns
 Involuntary minorities: those who find themselves in the minority and they didn't
choose to be (e.g. African Americans, First Nations"
o "Naming"
 Aboriginals OR First Peoples
 First Nations, Inuit, Metis
 Aborigines (Australia)
 Maori (New Zealand)
 Facing “it”
o The his(her)tory of First Nations’ education is a long and conclusive history of failure
o However, “The failure of non-Native education of Natives can be read as the success of
Native resistance of cultural, spiritual, and psychological genocide.”
o What do you think?
 Defining FNE
o It is a bi-cultural enterprise and can be defined in FIVE ways:
o 1) Traditional Native Education: oral history, stories, ceremonies, learning games,
apprenticeship. Teaching is in context, in person,relational, and through observations and
role models
o 2) Schooling for self-determination: think about the Mohawk Nation!
o 3) Schooling for assimilation: residential schools, which are characterized by: poor school-
community relations, negative attitudes towards Native cultures, prohibiting Native
language use.
o 4) Education by Natives (vs. of Natives): it is yet to be materialized as a project since most
educational structures, systems, methods, content and teachers are still non-Native
o 5) FNE as a sui generis (a thing of its own kind). It is distinctive, mostly practical and
inductive: “Ceremonies are something we usually do more than talk about” and “As humans
we always know far more than we can say.”
 The Circle
o P. 17: Spirit, Earth, North, South, East, West
 The TWELVE Standards
o 1) Spirituality: “It is through me no less than anyone else that my people live.” But who are
“my people”? Family, friends, relatives, Native people, other humans, animals, “the earth
 itself and everything that is.” The individual is centered as the life of the group and her
community members are her relatives
o 2) Service: The “economy of gift.” You serve because it is the right thing to do, so we are
advised, “Today’s educated Indian (sic) is a triumph of Indian people over a school system
that in most senses is the enemy.”
o 3) Diversity: of tribes, styles of learning, and community-based education
o 4) Culture: ways of thinking, learning, teaching and communicating
o 5) Tradition: dynamic, changing, negotiated, historical and shifting
o 6) Respect: “White teachers of Native students would do less harm if they recognized their
status as enemies (not personal, but cultural) of their students” and “If educators realize
that they are agents of cultural brainwashing rather than altruistic helpers, much that is
otherwise incomprehensible becomes self-evident
o 7) History or herstory
o 8) Relentless (aka resilience): “Native education cannot be understood without the concepts
of oppression and resistance”; “The war is not between Indian and white but between that
which honors life and that which does not”; “colonization brings misery and societal
dysfunction”; Native oppression is made up of mostly unconsciously process (and with the
best intentions), which includes:
“1) a perverse ignorance of the facts of racism and oppression; 2) delusions of superiority,
motivated by fear of inadequacy; 3) a vicious spiral of self-justifying action, as the blame is
shifted to the victims who must be ‘helped’, that is, controlled for their own good; 4) denial
that the oppressor profits from the oppression materially.”
o 9) Vitality: “suffering begets strength. We have not vanished.”
o 10) Conflict: acknowledging historical conflicts: “The educator who sees education as
culturally neutral is similar to the spouse of an alcoholic who denies the alcoholism.”
o 11) Place: the land, the earth
o 12) Transformation (personal and societal)
 Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) - Stairs
 A) Isumaqsayug (Inuit): knowing by observing and doing; mistakes are expected; “backwards
chaining” (the end is left undone); deductive; contextual/unabstract; experiential; mostly non-
verbal; interpersonal; interactive; cooperative; evaluation is left open; integrates the affective and
perceptual with the intellectual. Here, the teacher is an insider and cultural broker:
 CRP
 “Most basically, non-Native teachers identify primarily with the formal education system and
strive to bring the community into the school, while Native teachers identify with their
communities and strive to make the school a significant part of the students’ community life.”
 B) Ilisayuq: It is NOT what A is.

 Aboriginal Legend Pedagogy - Friesen & Freisen

 A way to transmit cultural knowledge and preserving and interpreting truth. It has FOUR
typologies:entertainment, teaching, moral and spiritual
  Wholistic, emphasizing societal and individual change, and requires different evaluation system
 (the Lazy Jack story)

Breakout Session
 Pg. 60 in coursepack: Principles of Judaeo-Christian morality
 Pg. 54: Authority and obligations of parents; compulsory attendance
 Pg. 55: When are students excused; compulsory immersion of special needs students
 Pg. 56: Suspension or expulsion; only the principal has this authority; 23.1.1; 23.1.2
 Pg. 57: Liabilities of parents or guardians
 Pg. 59/60: Membership in Ontario college of teachers 30.1;
Teacher's duties (read one by one), A, B, C
 Pg. 62: Student's records - 1, 2, 3