The Assignment
This assignment challenged us to select searchable educational history-related works, search the texts for representations of Indigeneity and Indigenous people, and explain the potential impact of the text on educational history and/or teacher professional development.
For my document, I chose to download the Canadian Plains Research Centre’s (now called University of Regina Press) The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan entry titled “Education,” written by Ken Horsman. I was interested in this text because it attempts to provide an overview of public education in the province from before confederation to the present day. Before reading the entry, I started thinking about education “before confederation” and wondered how the author would describe it. Unfortunately, there was less than a paragraph discussing the traditional education of Indigenous youth before colonization. The rest of the document was dedicated to describing the evolution of schools. In fact, that single paragraph about traditional education ended with a sentence that jumped forward in time to 1840 with the creation of the first school in Cumberland House.
The Question
Realizing that the document was written from a Western perspective, I endeavored to see if the language used throughout would give clues as to the relationships between Indigenous people and western education in Saskatchewan between 1840 and 2006 (the date the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan was published). I searched the document for occurrences of the following words and phrases: First Nations, Indian, Native, Indigenous, Aboriginal, Métis, and then Cree and Dene as two of the major Indigenous language groups in Saskatchewan.
The Results
| First Nations | Indian | Native | Indigenous | Aboriginal | Métis | Cree | Dene |
| 20 | 16 | 4 | 0 | 6 | 11 | 1 | 1 |
Initially, I was surprised to find the word Indigenous was not used at all. However, I recall that as recently as 2018 the University of Saskatchewan officially used the term Aboriginal for any programming aimed at First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students. I believe it has been only the past few years that people in Saskatchewan have adopted the widespread use of the term Indigenous, and considering the text was written prior to 2006, I understand why the word did not appear.
The words Cree and Dene each appeared only once, both in the same sentence that mentioned language courses offered as a part of the Northern Teacher Education Program (NORTEP). The term Native produced only 4 search results, all in the context of either courses in Native Studies or as part of the name of educational programs or schools (e.g. Saskatchewan Native Teacher Education Program and Saskatoon Native Survival School). The author used the word Aboriginal six times, sometimes in the context of non-Aboriginal. It seems to be used as a general term throughout to differentiate students of Indigenous ancestry from those of settler ancestry.
The most-used search terms were First Nations (20 times), Indian (16 times), and Métis (11 times). First Nations was used throughout to refer to specific groups of Indigenous people and individuals from those groups. Indian was used once in reference to the title of an 1879 report about “Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-breeds,” once in reference to Indian residential schools, once when the town Indian Head was mentioned, and the rest of the time to indicate legal entities (e.g. Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations). Finally, the word Métis was used throughout, often in the context of “First Nations and Métis students,” seemingly to include all students of Indigenous heritage.
Limitations
In hindsight, the major limitation to answering my question with the word search was the medium that I chose. My initial reasoning of choosing an encyclopedia entry was to have a searchable document that spanned educational history over more than a century in my home province. However, I failed to take into consideration the fact that an encyclopedia entry is authored by a single person at a certain time in history. This means that wherever possible, the document was written with the most appropriate terminology at the time and does not reflect how language changes over time.
Analysis
Although my methodology was flawed, I still got an overall impression from this document of the changing nature of the relationship between Indigenous groups and western education. The overall trend was a long history of settlers “othering” Indigenous people and attempting to assimilate their children through the teaching of western ideals, most often in church-run boarding schools. Over time, Indigenous youth began to be recognized as students with individual needs and values, but unfortunately this is a recent development in the overall and the church still had a residential school in operation as recent as the 1990s. Finally, Indigenous people can work towards reclaiming control over what and how their children learn, and western educational institutions are starting to work towards a pedagogy that is inclusive and welcoming for Indigenous children. However, there is much more work that needs to be done to unlearn too many years of systemic racism in education.
Conclusion
If this encyclopedia entry is any indication of what kind of educational history is being taught to teachers in training, I think that it may be doing a disservice to our future students and educators. While the historical documents written by settlers from the 1800s onwards are important to study (after all, we need to know about residential schools so that we can work towards reconciliation), it is also important to acknowledge the hundreds of years of educational traditions that were happening in what is now called Saskatchewan before colonization. I think that to produce culturally sensitive learning environments, we as teachers need to be willing to consult with both Indigenous knowledge keepers and engage with western educational history.