EDU 211 Midterm 1

Aboriginal Education and Contexts for Professional and Personal Engagement

What are Competencies, according to TQS

Combinations of attitudes, skills and knowledge that students develop and apply for successful learning, living and working

What are the 6 TQS?

1. Fostering effective relationships

2. Engaging in Career-Long Learning

3. Demonstrating a Professional Body of Knowledge

4. Establishing Inclusive Learning Environments

5. Applying Foundational Knowledge about First Nations, Métis and Inuit

6. Adhering to Legal Frameworks and Policies

What does it say in the “Applying Foundational Knowledge about First Nations, Métis and Inuit”?

A teacher develops and applies foundational knowledge about First Nations, Métis and Inuit for the benefit of all students.

When was the Constitution Act passed?

In 1867

Why was Constitution Act created?

• Created the dominion of Canada

• It describes the basic structure of Canada’s government

• It creates provincial legislatures, the Senate, and the courts

• It describes how the federal and provincial governments divide their powers.

When was the Indian Act created?

In 1876

What made up the Indian Act?

It’s composed of separated colonial legislations, as the Gradual Civilization Act (created in 1857)

When was the Gradual Civilization Act created?

In 1857

What is the Gradual Civilization Act?

Sought to assimilate Indian people into Canadian settler society by encouraging “enfranchisement”

What is the Indian Act?

• A Federal law that governs the Indian status

• It governs the Indian Bands

• It governs the Indian Reserves

• It is a tool to assimilate Indian people’s traditions (terminate their cultural, social, economic and political) into Canadian life

• Treated Aboriginal peoples like child

What is Enfranchisement?

• The process in which a person ceased to be considered as Indian

• For example gaining a degree, serving army, marrying a non-aboriginal person

What is the Gradual Enfranchisement Act?

• The act for enfranchisement

• Created Superintendent General of Indian Affairs

• Control over status Indian

• Restricted band councils

• Regulated alcohol consumption

• Determined band and treaty benefits

• Created the gender-based restriction of status

Did the Indian Act restriction worked?

• No, they resisted oppression

• They started underground operations

• They created new ways to keep practices

When was the Potlatch Law created?

• In 1884,

• It was added to the Indian Act

What is the Potlatch Law?

• The banning of potlatch gatherings

• Lasted 75 years

• Cranmer Potlatch of 1921 most famous raid

What were the effects of banning the Potlatch?

• Prevented the passing of values

• Crucial role of redistribution of wealth

Who was the first settlers of Canada?

The Indian people.

They called it, the “Turtle Island”

Who were the colonizer of Canada?

• The French and the British

• The French in St Lawrence River area

• The British North of Hudson Bay

• They fought for St Lawrence area

• Interested in farm land and fur for trade

When was the term “Aboriginal Peoples” created?

• In 1982 it was added to the Constitution Act

• It comprises

  • First Nations people

  • metis people

  • Inuit people

What Aboriginal Peoples refers to?

• First Nations Peoples

• Inuit People

• metis Peoples

Who are the Metis?

They are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry

Who are the Inuit?

They are the people that inhabit the northern regions of Canada

What is the Indigenous Worldview?

• Everything in nature is interdependent and related

• Acknowledge of creator

• Mother earth

• Spirit as connector

• Land sacred

• Time circular

• Sharing wealth

What is the Eurocentric Worldview?

• Scientific oriented

• Only one truth

• Promotes private ownership

• Compartmentalized society

• Land for resources and extraction

• Time linear and future oriented

• More goals achieved, more successful

• Amassing wealth for personal gain

What is Ontology?

• It’s our world view, the way we exist and how we understand the world around us

• The study of being

• Of becoming, existing and reality

What is Epistemology?

• How we come to know what we know

• It is how Indigenous People get their knowledge

What is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

• A commission to investigate the full extent of the harm caused by residential schools, propose solutions, and prevent future abuse of Indigenous communities.

• It created a “94 Call to Action” petition to the government of Canada

What sections of the Call to Action cover Education and Language?

• Education section: 6 to 12

• Language and Culture: 13 to 17

How Indigenous People get their knowledge (epistemology)?

• Through Oral and Symbolic knowledge

• Transmitted through the structure of indigenous languages and passed on to the next generation through modeling, practice and animation.

• Example, sharing of stories

What is Identity in Indigenous People?

• Who I am, Who I identify as

• Draw their cultural identity and languages from the spiritual relationship they have with the land

• Indigenous People lack identity for colonization

What is Canadian Colonialism?

• Indigenous peoples being forced to disconnect from their land, culture and community (assimilation) by another power group trying to overcome the nation.

What is Anti-colonialism?

• Revisiting the era of colonialism, change it for the better to rebuild the culture

• Taking away colonialism

What is post-colonialism?

• When both sides come together and try to find a middle way to fix problems about colonization

• It is a broadly a study of the effects of colonialism on cultures and societies. It is concerned with both how European nations conquered and controlled "Third World" cultures and how these groups have since responded to and resisted those encroachments.

How was the Potlatch seen by colonizers?

• Sharing wealth and food = excessive and wasteful

• It interrupted assimilation tactics

• As a bad economic system of redistribution

What is the section 141 of the Indian Act?

• Created in 1920 to fight Indian pursuing land

• Section 141: Outlawed the hiring of lawyers and legal counsel by Indians

• It prevented Aboriginal Peoples from organizing political organizations.

When was the Indian Act first revised?

• In 1951

• Removed oppressive sections.

Do Metis people get status?

• There is not Métis status

• Hence, don’t receive Indian Status benefits

• They have a Métis card

What is the meaning of big “M” (“Metis”)?

• It is a social-political term

• It refers “mixture” of Europeans and Indigenous Women and Métis came to be

• Less focus on race

What is the meaning of little “m” (“metis”)?

• It is a racial category

• You are neither fully First Nation nor fully non-Indigenous

What is the “Road Allowance people”?

• Spaces where Métis people live in as free people

• They did not own the land or pay taxes

• No taxes = no public school or health care access

What is the “Powley test”

Basic criteria for determining who is accepted as Métis for the Canadian government

What is Métissage?

Means “crossbreading” = racial mixing and procreation

What is the second generation cut-off Indian Status?

• 6(1) = Registered Indian

  6(1)+6(1)= 6(1)

• 6(2) = Mixed Registered Indian

  6(1)+No-status = 6(2)

• Mixed + Mixed = Registered Status

  6(2)+6(2)= 6(1)

• Registered + Mixed = Registered Status

  6(1)+6(2)= 6(1)

• Mixed + No-status= No-status

  6(2)+No-status = No-status

What is the imposed Identity into Indigenous People?

• Imposed a new status (Indian status)

• Imposed language (residential schools)

• Ceremonies (not allowed to have them, potlatch and sun ceremonies)

• Religion (conversion to Christianity)

What is non-status Indians?

Indigenous individuals who either lost their status due to legislation or were never eligible because their ancestor lost it

What “band membership” refers to?

It refers to the membership that allows them to live on reserve, vote in band election and referendum, among others

What is “Indian Status”?

• A specific legal identity of an Indigenous person in Canada

• Also known as Registered Indian

What is and when was the “Bill C-31” created?

• Created in 1985

• To bring the Indian Act into line with gender equality under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

• End enfranchisement and gender discrimination

What is the significance of the Circle for Indigenous People?

• the circle is a dominant symbol in nature and has come to represent wholeness, unity, completion, the cycles of life and meaning of the universe.

• The medicine wheel is a famous circle

• Starts from east to west, like the sun

What the Medicine Wheel represent?

The spiritual, emotional, physical and mental aspects

What are the protocols for approaching elders?

• You approach them with good ethics of respect and reciprocity

• Consult with the elder what students are learning and the objectives of the visit

• Use traditional protocols when approaching, like handshake

• Offer tobacco to establish trust

• Gifting food, guns or horses

• Envelope with money or tobacco

• Coloured clothed or blanket

What are the Aboriginal Knowledge Systems?

• Those system of knowledge and information that are connected to physical locations or places

• There are 5 Indigenous knowledge types

What are the 5 types of Indigenous Knowledge?

1. Revealed knowledge: through dreaming

2. Received knowledge: through teacher and learner

3. Constructed knowledge: interacting with each other

4. Intuitive knowledge: though feeling and sensations

5. Experienced knowledge: through the practice

How do you get Aboriginal Knowledge?

• Elders

• Dreams /fundamental source of knowledge

• Relationship with land, forest, mountain and water

• Relationships with mother Earth

• Relationship with the sun

What does it mean: Preservation, Protection and Perspective?

• Preservation: preserve the lands and artifacts from further devastation

• Protect: sites and traditions

• Perspectives: of the Blackfoot people in a dignified way

What is Repatriation?

Is a process to take back what it was taking away to their fatherland, not just an event

Where were Blackfoot People located?

• In Alberta, from North Saskatchewan river to Elk river (Yellowstone)

• They were nomadic and mostly ate Buffalo between settlements.

• They didn’t believe in owning their land, but sharing it with Earth’s beings. As well as Cosmos and Underwater beings.

What are the sacred bundles / medicine bundle?

Contain gifts or objects used in ceremonies, given by the creator to hold people together.

When was the First Nation’s “Ceremonial Objects Repatriation Act” created?

In the year 2000 and started bringing first artifacts from Royal Alberta Museum.

What is the Blackfoot people’s Identity?

The close relationship to

• the land (Mother Earth),

• rocks,

• animals (birds, fish and reptiles),

• stars.

What problems Blackfoot peoples confronted?

• Removed from their territories to reserves

• Disease (smallpox “many dead” site),

• famine,

• massacre (Baker Massacre, 1870)

• Resources and people became “property” and their everyday things and sacred items became “artifacts”

What is the Baker Massacre?

• It happened Jan 23, 1870

• Heavy Runner’s men went hunting

• The United States Calvary attacked the camp and murdered 217 women and children

• Survivors fled to Lethbridge area

What is the Last Big Battle?

• Bison was over hunted

• Happened in 1870

• Blackfoot peoples fought against Cree people for resources

• Blackfoot peoples wanted to preserve the buffalo

• Cree people wanted to hunt the buffalo

What is the importance of ceremonies for Black Foot peoples? Example?

• It plays an important role in their life

• “Sun Dance” annual sacred ceremony

• Reaffirms spiritual beliefs about the universe

• Held midsummer

• Forbidden in the Indian Act of 1895

• Allowed again in amended Indian Act of 1951

What is the “Many Dead” site?

• Smallpox 1837 epidemic that lead many deaths

• Half population passed away

• Blood tribe members died contained inside a Tipi

• Many elders died so they had lots of loss of knowledge

• Circles of stones were placed in the sites, with no doorway, facing east

How was Treaty 7 created?

• Blackfoot peoples signed it to find peace for war

• Signed in 1877 by Red Crow and Crowfoot

• It gave little to no benefit as they were exiled to reserves

Treaty 7 disadvantages for Blackfoot people

• Reserve were miniature

• Indian Agents and NWMP restricted their movement off the reserves

• They lost access to sacred sites

What is the relationship between “Place and Identity” for Blackfoot people?

• Place helps paint the picture of many oral stories and knowledge that are passed down.

Can Inuit people get Indian Status in Canada?

No, there is not Indian status card

Are Inuit people subject to the Indian Act?

No, they are not

Are Inuit people considered Indians under Canadian Constitutional Law?

Yes they are

What are the Inuit identification disks?

• From 1941 to 1978 they were forced to wear them

• They were used to identify individuals because Inuit didn’t have last names.

• Inuit people were named “numbers” before the disk creation

• “Operation Surname” was used to force them to pick last names and deleted the Identification Disks.

What is the importance of Names for the Inuit culture?

• Very important, practical, spiritual and sacred

• They were genderless

• Given from an elder who die recently

• Name associated with skills the deceased person had

• Kinship ties and connection to the group

What is the definition of “two spirit”?

• Two Spirit individuals house both the male and the female spirit and that the degree of dominance of each spirit ultimately impacts the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual identity of each Two Spirit person

• It interconnects everything, identity, gender, sexuality, spirituality, culture and community

What is the definition of “berdache”?

• Adopted by European colonizers to refer to Aboriginal individuals who did not seem to fit conventional European definitions of gender and sex roles.

• To refer to Indigenous people who are lesbian, gay and bisexual.

• It is considered a negative and derogatory term,

• It has been replaced by the term “Two Spirit”

According to the Two Spirits video, what are the 2 types of people?

• Raw people

  • Born with, kids

• Cooked people

  • Become that after ceremony, and for the rest of your adult life

As Two Spirit person, what happens when you die?

Turn back to raw people

What is ethics?

• The study of what is morally right and what is not.

• Ermine: ability to do good or bad to another person

• Understanding others and knowing their boundaries and acting accordingly.

What is Ethicist?

• Someone who specialize in ethics

• Has clear understanding of ethics and conducts research using fundamental ethical principles such as on fairness.

Who is an “ethical researcher”?

Someone who critically looks at ethics as a part of their research practice.

What is “moral”?

• Set of standards that a community agrees upon and enable people to live cooperatively.

• e.g. not lying, killing, stealing, etc

What is “moral” according to Ermine?

A space where two groups holding different points of view come together to confront each other in order to resolve the differences.

What is an “ethical space”?

• A neutral zone between entities or cultures

• People will interact with appropriate, ethical and human principles

What are the Stages in the “Ethical Space”?

There are 5 stages:

1. The status quo

   Indigenous people and settlers coexisted but they don’t get along, lack clear engagement

2. The undercurrent

   Hidden interests, attitudes and assumptions that settlers took “under” Indigenous People. Nice top of river, but strong destructive undercurrent

3. Indigenous Gaze

   A memory of the past. Indigenous people colonization is seen as history

4. Emergent Rules of Engagement

   Rules created between settlers and aboriginal people. Like treaties creation

5. Reconciliation

   Try to re-define the Indigenous Rights from a legal perspective

How are the 2 worlds colliding?

• One world pushing colonialism and neo-colonialism

• One world resisting colonialism

  There is harm during the collision

What are the impacts of colonialism?

• it uses force and legislation to establish a single social order, restricting the diversity of human worldviews

• Erases the means of preserving and transmitting cultural knowledge

• To disconnect indigenous peoples from their traditional ways of understanding the world.

According the Little Bear, what are the sources of Indigenous Knowledge?

1. Traditional

   dynamic history of the ancestry, development, and accomplishments of Indigenous peoples.

2. Empirical

   -Result of diligent study of how living things interact with one another and their surroundings.

   -Evolving collection of knowledge, practise, and belief that has accumulated over time

3. Revealed

   Dreams, visions, and intuition can occasionally lead to the revelation of indigenous knowledge

In Jagged Worlds Colliding, What are the characteristics of Indigenous Knowledge?

1. Personal

2. Orally transmitted

3. Experential

4. Hollistic

5. Narrative

What “Indian Education” means?

• The education of Indians by non-Indians using non-Indian methods

• Constantly it involved assimilation objectives

What are the 5 different meanings of Indian Education?

1. Traditional Indian Education

2. Schooling for Self-determination

3. Schooling for Assimilation

4. Education by Indians

5. Indian Education sui generis

What is “Traditional Indian Education”?

• Differed from Nations

• Characterized by oral histories, teaching stories, ceremonies, apprenticeships, learning games, formal instruction, tutoring, and tag-along teaching

What are “Schools for Self-Determination”?

• School that allowed Indigenous people to flourish, they had native language, positive attitudes and emphasis on self-determination

What is “Schooling by Assimilation”?

• Education of Indians is carried out by Anglos using Anglo models to satisfy Anglo purposes

  • high failure rates in

    literacy and educational attainment

  • poor school-community relations,

  • negative attitudes towards Native cultures

  • prohibition or non-use of Native

    languages

What is “Education by Indians”?

Native people began to take an active role in the schooling of Native children as board members, teachers, administrators, and resource people.

What is “Indian Education Sui Generis”?

Indian education as 'a thing of its own kind, a self-determined Indian education using models of education structured by Indian culture

What are the “Six Directions Pattern” of Indian Education?

1. Spirit (center)

   Spirituality

2. North

   Winter, education

3. East

   Spring, identity

4. South

   Summer, affirmation, freedom

5. West

   Fall, education, service

6. Earth

   Our bodies come from and return to the earth

   Earth is stable throughout the changes

What is Pentimento in History?

• Complex process in which history is peeled in layers

• It becomes more convoluted when peeling of layers.

How is Indigenous People’s history a Pentimento?

• Aboriginal history before and after Europeans has been painted over by mainstream interpretation of “official history”

• Replace Aboriginal history with a new painting of new civilization

How Edmonton started and pentimento perspective?

• As a trading fort for the Hudson Bay company

• Indigenous people were misplaced and separated from the land.

• Pentimento: Story aboriginal people have vs story of non-aboriginal

What is metissage?

• Race mixing= mix race, culture, language, ethnicities, gender