Category — Module 3

In this article Cornel Pewewardy a member of the Comanche-Kiowa, Oklahoma, points out the many stereotypes promulgated in the movie Pocahontas.  The Hollywood movie portrays Pocahontas whose real name was Matowa (1595-1617), as a demure princess, deeply committed to the white man.  The legendary woman, however, is viewed by Native Americans as a sell-out, a traitor, who supported the invading settlers.  The reality, Pewewardy points out, is that Matowa was a politically important person who often served as an interpreter for both the Native Americans and the settlers.  She was kidnapped by the British, forced to convert to Christianity and later married John Rolfe, a British Colonist.  She traveled with her husband to England where she met King James I, but later died and was buried in England, far from her native home.

Pewewardy points out that when schools do not affirm identity of Indigenous students, these students adopt the negative identities of the dominant culture:  drinking, carousing, using drugs.  They do this because they do not want to be viewed as trying to be white, or middle class.  But, by engaging in these activities, their tribes view them as abandoning their heritage and the struggles of their people, and joining the enemy.  Although the movie portrays a sanitized view of Indians, it does show a defiant side of them, which was highly unrealistic for the period in which the movie is set.  Matowa is depicted disobeying her father’s orders and setting out to visit Captain John Smith in secret.  The movie makes little reference to the racism, deceit, and greed that characterizes the relationship between Native Americans and European settlers.

The movie features a song called, “Savages, Savages” which Hollywood had hoped would neutralize the effects of overt racism of previous centuries.  Unfortunately it has had the opposite effect because Native Indians take offense at the song, and it causes Indigenous children a great deal of distress when their school mates poke fun at them by singing the song.

References

Peweward, C. (1996/97).  The Pocahontas Paradox:  A cautionary tale for educators.  Retrieved from http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/pewe/writing/Pocahontas.html

The paper explores resilience created through reclaiming cultural identity and spirituality lost through colonialism as a means of addressing and overcoming issues facing Indigenous communities today.  The trauma of colonialism, characterized by attempts at ethnocide, have left deep scars in these communities, weakened families and left in its wake a culture of codependency manifested in behaviors such as alcoholism among Indigenous groups. Traumatic events include loss of hunting grounds and traditional lands, and rituals and religion, and this has resulted in a loss of traditional (and proven) survival practices and a breakdown of social cohesion within these communities. The authors do a good job in analyzing the psychological reasons behind negative, self-destructive behaviors among Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples were forced to live on reservations, or attend Residential Schools, and at the same time denied the privilege of practicing their religion and rituals that would help them overcome the trauma of their situation.  In short “Aboriginal peoples not only had to endure trauma, but they were at the same time deprived of the tools of resiliency (beliefs, rituals and institutions) which usually help traumatized societies to reconstruct their identity.”  The trauma which Indigenous peoples in Canada and the US endured is presented here .  The idea behind the Residential Schools, at least, was to “kill the Indian but save the child.”

The authors define resilience as “the capacity of a distinct community or cultural system to absorb disturbances, reorganize while undergoing change, retain key elements of structure and identity that preserve its distinctness.”

The authors maintain that cultural identity, the revival of cultural practices and rituals are important for resilience, and can stem the tide of alcoholism and suicide tendencies.

An example of reviving cultural identity, building resilience, and ultimately bringing about healing took place in the Innu-Montagnais villiage of Nutashkuan on the shores of the St. Laurence River.  Over 200 participants converged on a 10-day nature camp on ancestral hunting grounds.  The camp was led by a team of traditional healers from the tribe as well as clinical psychologists.  This is a great example of using traditional knowledge to bring about healing to a tribe.  One of the central issues that were addressed was the painful memories that participants had of Residential Schools.

References

Tousignant, M., and Sioui, N. (2009).  Resilience and Aboriginal communities in crisis:  Theory and Interventions.  Journal of Aboriginal Health, November:  43-61.  Retrieved from http://www.naho.ca/jah/english/jah05_01/V5_I1_Resilience_03.pdf

The Ontario Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs website provides information on Aboriginal policies and programs and provides many links to Ontario government programs, services and information. They also provide a document on the Ontario First Nation, Metis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework. They outline the strategic policy context where they intend “to close the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students in the areas of literacy and numeracy, retention of students in school, graduation rates, and advancements to post-secondary studies” by 2016.

Improving Education on Reserves: A First Nations Education Authority Act is a paper that examines why the current and traditional education system is not working for aboriginal students living on a reserve. It stresses the importance and outlines strategies for creating a new educational system for these students that transforms all schools on reserves and not just one-off developments.

While education for all Canadians is supported by the Government of Canada, the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) is responsible for members of First Nations communities located on reserves. They work with the First Nation leaders and the members of the communities to strengthen the educational programs for young people attending school, in addition to providing funding for elementary and secondary school programs in addition to helping cover tuition and travel costs.

The Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative (MAEI) provides educational projects that support Aboriginal Canadian students. Some of the projects created are aboriginal-focused textbooks and teachers’ resources that reflect aboriginal students and were created by Aboriginal teachers who have taught grades 11 and 12 programs. Another initiative is trying to improve the quality of education in elementary schools on reserves to improve literacy and numeracy.

The Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) website promotes and supports research on lifelong learning in Canada.  Their Aboriginal section provides a variety of links to information on Aboriginal learning through videos and reports, articles on lessons in learning, as well as holistic lifelong learning models. One article in particular identifies how Aboriginal communities measuring success in learning and despite their diversity. They share a common vision of learning, which is that it is lifelong and engages all aspects of an individual including emotional, physical, spiritual and intellectual, and the community.

This article examines the identity created for Indigenous peoples by the Europeans, and ways in which Indigenous peoples can reverse the devastating effects of colonialism.  The term “Indian” for instance, came from the Europeans.  Decolonization involves shedding the identity imposed upon Indigenous people by outsiders.  Indigenous Peoples and First Nations are acceptable terms to tribal people, and some tribes are now going back to their original names, such as Diné instead of Navajho.

The author summarizes the push towards decolonialism when he states: “For too long now, the native peoples of this hemisphere have remained passive while the European invader does away with all of the ancient place-names, and then comes up with new names for the native people and their land … This land is not Indian and we are not lndians….”

Many tribes had forgotten the origin of their native names, many of which were sacred in nature.  This self-naming is a human, natural process that is based upon self-determination.  It allows Indigenous peoples “of saying, not asking the world who we were.”  Unfortunately the practice persists.  Non-Indigenous researchers and government officials continue to provide Anglicized names for Indigenous locations towns, languages.  There’s a problem with the term “Indigenous” because it tends to lump all non-white peoples into the same mold, regardless of experiences under colonial occupation.

Written cultures are highly suspect to Indigenous peoples because of the many treatises that were signed and broken.  This explains why some indigenous educators, such as Tasha Beeds, are calling for using traditional stories as the basis for promoting literacy.

This paper is useful to place-based learning because it promotes rhetorical sovereignty:  the use of traditional names for Indigenous peoples, places, and objects.  Place-based learning is vital to Indigenous contexts because it expresses and defines their worldviews.  “Tribal language has a vital relationship to the philosophical thought process—cognizance of one’s worldview; it is our tribal identity in action and self-defining.” Where names given to Indigenous peoples by whites are adjectives, that describe their skin color, or other physical features, or their location, traditional names describe political standing, “numerical status” and social class.  It describes a tribe’s strength wealth, and power.

The non-Indigenous names that were given by the Europeans were intended to create individuals of tribe members, and in so doing destroy the tribes and assimilate Indigenous peoples into the mainstream culture.  That was the plan.  The author distinguishes between race, ethnicity, and culture.  Race is the arbitrary description of people based upon physical appearance.  Culture the set of beliefs and practices of a population, while ethnicity is the subgroups one often finds within a culture.  Race has no place education; some races are not more intelligent than others.

The paper examines the notion that Western cultures consider themselves more superior to others, and that those with the superior intellect have a moral obligation to dominate the lesser intellects.  That has been the justification all along for dominating Indigenous peoples, even in the feeble attempts to represent them, as in the film Nanook of the North.  Westerners view themselves as logical, and it is their job to control nature.  They view Indigenous peoples as one with nature, the very entity that must be controlled.

The author concludes that the issue isn’t so much race; that is, Indigenous people’s so-called inferior intellect, skin color, and beliefs.  The real issue is white European hegemony that has suppressed the history, stories, rituals, beliefs, and practices of Indigenous peoples.  The antidote to this malady is to infuse indigenous education with tribal stories, names, and histories instead of perpetuating the hegemony of the dominant society by forcing Indigenous peoples to follow and learn their own curriculum.

References:

Beeds, T.  Finding a place to stand:  Indigenous education through oral and written narratives.  Retrieved from http://blog.fedcan.ca/2011/03/23/finding-a-place-to-stand-indigenous-education-through-oral-and-written-narratives/

Pewewardy, C. Renaming ourselves on our own terms:  Race, tribal nations and representation in education. Retrieved from http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/pewe/writing/Rename.html

Plugged in: Remote Australian Indigenous Youth and Digital Culture
(http://caepr.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/Publications/WP/WP69_0.pdf)

Description:
Plugged in: Remote Australian Indigenous Youth and Digital Culture is a paper put out by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University.  In this paper there are themes and examples in which Indigenous youth have utilized digital technologies thus creating a sense of “fitting in” to the globalised youth culture.  The paper also discusses how technology is allowing Indigenous youth in remote regions of Australia to acquire new skills and new roles in their communities.  The apparent overtone of the paper is positive with respect to Indigenous youth and the use of digital technology.

~ Ryan

Information Technology and Indigenous People

Description:

Information Technology and Indigenous People is a book by Laurel Evelyn Dyson, Max A. N. Hendriks and Stephen Grant.  All three are from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.

One particular section that I found worthwhile is Section II on Technology in Education.  In this section it talks about how Indigenous people are using CD-ROMs to preserve the rich cultural history of story-telling.  Technology is providing them the opportunity to not only preserve this part of their history and culture but also preserve it the voice of their elders.  Preserving the stories on CD-ROM will allow future generations to share and hear the stories (in some cases) from those of a generation(s) past.

~Ryan