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Aboriginal education needs change: academic
by Ginny Collins
Central Bureau
REGINA (CUP)–Cultural Revitalization is a “double-edged sword” when it comes to Aboriginal education because it holds Aboriginal people responsible for the downfall of their own culture, according to an academic from the University of Saskatchewan.
Dr. Verna St. Denis, coordinator of Aboriginal Education at the U of S, is critical of the way Aboriginal culture is being integrated into the school system.
“Cultural Revitalization blames the victim for colonization,” says St. Denis in a speech at the University of Regina on Thursday.
Aboriginal teachers and elders are being blamed for not retaining their identity and culture, she added.
In 1967, the Canadian Government conducted a survey of the contemporary Indians of Canada called the Hawthorn report. The report found that Indian children and their parents were feeling “different” all the time and not fitting in when it came to the education system. The solution was then presented that if Indian people could retain their cultural pride, they could benefit from schooling. This was called Cultural Revitalization.
St. Denis says that although this solution seems good in theory, it ignores the fact that Aboriginal people have been forced to assimilate in the past so they have not retained much of their culture.
“Our parents and grandparents have not forsaken us,” she says. “They were told to speak only English before, now they are told to speak only their native language.”
When the Canadian government placed Aboriginal children in residential schools, beginning in the late 1800s and throughout most of the 1900s, they were taught to speak only English, both at home and in school.
By the late 1900s, due to studies like the Hawthorn report, the government decided it would be beneficial for Aboriginals to retain their culture. By this time most of it had been lost. In her research, Dr. St. Denis, a woman of Cree and Métis heritage, interviewed several Aboriginal educators in the Canadian school system. Many of those interviewed say they did not speak their native language because their parents and elders had not taught them.
“They would be almost apologetic,” says St. Denis, adding that although many Aboriginal teenagers are eager to learn their culture and language, their teachers often can not teach them.
When asked if there was a way educators could teach Aboriginal content correctly in their classrooms, St. Denis replied that the greatest concern should be about the treatment of Aboriginal students. “It’s not only the content, it’s the interaction,” she says.
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