I was an indigenous child once a long time ago. I would like you to come with me on a journey and imagine the experience of the indigenous child. You arrive at school with a rich cultural background and find yourself facing an expectation that you should have accessed pre-school education, but, of course, you had no access to such things-even access to basic education is a luxury.
On your first day, you find that the teachers do not speak your language; in fact, they don’t even want you to speak your language. The teachers don’t know anything about your culture. They say, “Look at me when I speak to y o u ” – e v e n though in your culture it may be disrespectful to look at adults directly. Day by day, you are torn between two worlds. You look through the many textbooks and find no reflections of yourself or your family or culture. Even in the history books your people are invisible-as if they never existed or were “shadow people” or worse. If your people are mentioned at all, they are mentioned as “obstacles to settlement” or simply as “problems” for your country to overcome.
But children are tough and somehow you survive in this environment. You notice as you reach secondary school, however, that many of your indigenous brothers and sisters have dropped out. Did they fail school or did the school fail them? By senior high school, when you are the only one left, the teachers say, “You are not like the others.” In your heart, you know that you are. Magga 2005
The effects of colonization are rampant within Canadian schools. Before students even sit in a desk they are faced with a Eurocentric approach to learning. Gone is the millennial old place-based, experiential, real–time learning, and in its place are structured westernized lessons in a formal setting. The majority of Canadian urban schooling still “postulates the superiority of Europeans and their descendants over non-Europeans, founded on a false polarity between ‘civilized’ and ‘savage,’ and ‘center’ and ‘marginalized’ peoples (Battiste, 1998, p. 31).” This Eurocentrism and continued colonial education is devastating to Indigenous students and is represented in the low numbers of high school graduation.
Educational colonialism has taken various forms in Canada. According to Paulo Friere, colonizers inacted a cultural invasion by “penetrating the cultural context of [Indigenous People], in disrespect of the latter’s potentialities; they impose[d] their own view of the world…and inhibited the creativity of the invaded by curbing their expression” (Friedel, 1999, p. 140). The most devastating example of educational colonialism in Canada and imposition of the Eurocentric worldview resulted from residential schools. Residential schools continue to have a negative impact on Indigenous people. Multiple generations were forced to assimilate into western culture and rid themselves of their Indigenous identity including their languages and learning traditions. Today, the negative impact of residential schools is evidenced in low parental involvement (Friedel, 1999), absent parenting skills, low self-concept, lacking social cohesion, and the loss of language and culture (Ball, 2004). Formal schooling, residential schools and current public schools, have devalued Indigenous knowledge and learning systems, demoralizing generations while stigmatizing Indigenous students. Schools and teachers must take responsibility for this colonial history, by honouring Indigenous culture, communities and experiences, while providing skills and strategies for academic success (Wotherspoon and Schissel, 1998).