External resources

Thèse

Urban Indigenous youths’ perspectives on identity, place and place-based learning and the implications for education.

This a study centered on a non-formal place based learning program delivered to ten First Nation and Metis urban youth during the summer and fall of 2006. I used Cajete's (2000a) notion of curricula as maps, the growing body of literature associated with place-based learning (Gruenewald, 2003), and understandings of place as known by Indigenous Elders and academics (Kawagley & R. Barnhardt, 1999) to initiate a program that sought to teach at the intersection of knowledge and nature. Place-based education has special significance in contexts where Indigenous people have developed a deep, longstanding relationship to the place in which they have lived for millennia. Newhouse & Peters (2003) importantly point out that when Aboriginal people move into cities, unlike other urban in-migrants, very often they are travelling within their traditional territories.The intent of the study was to garner an understanding of how urban Native youth experience identity, place and education in the early twenty-first century. I employed both a conventional and visual research approach to data collection, the latter helping to privilege the frequently silenced voices of Indigenous youth. The use of a visual research method along with critical race theory (CRT) in qualitative research (Parker & Lynn, 2002) allow for greater emphasis on the 'voice' of participants, male and female, fourteen to sixteen years of age. Made explicit through their voice is that race and racism heavily influence their sense of Indigenous identity and experience of place on the Canadian prairies. Using CRT in education (Ladson-Billings, 1999), I highlight the contradictions produced by an ecology-focused place-based learning for urban Native youth. I argue that an uneven emphasis on environmental, rural, and outdoor learning in place-based education, at times tied to the discourses of authenticity and neo-primitivism, obscures ongoing oppression and a full analysis of the ways in which identities are constructed and maintained in the domination of peoples, places, and knowledges. Suggested by this research is an alternative conception of place-based learning that is concerned with the local environment in ways that resonate with anti-racist education and the noncompartmentalized ways of knowing available in Indigenous knowledge systems.

Chapitre

Voices from the land (Boyer lectures).

Livre

Voices of resistance and renewal : Indigenous leadership in education.

Western education has often employed the bluntest of instruments in colonizing indigenous peoples, creating generations caught between Western culture and their own. Dedicated to the principle that leadership must come from within the communities to be led, Voices of Resistance and Renewal applies recent research on local, culture-specific learning to the challenges of education and leadership that Native people face.Bringing together both Native and non-Native scholars who have a wide range of experience in the practice and theory of indigenous education, editors Dorothy Aguilera–Black Bear and John Tippeconnic III focus on the theoretical foundations of indigenous leadership, the application of leadership theory to community contexts, and the knowledge necessary to prepare leaders for decolonizing education.The contributors draw on examples from tribal colleges, indigenous educational leadership programs, and the latest research in Canadian First Nation, Hawaiian, and U.S. American Indian communities. The chapters examine indigenous epistemologies and leadership within local contexts to show how Native leadership can be understood through indigenous lenses. Throughout, the authors consider political influences and educational frameworks that impede effective leadership, including the standards for success, the language used to deliver content, and the choice of curricula, pedagogical methods, and assessment tools.Voices of Resistance and Renewal provides a variety of philosophical principles that will guide leaders at all levels of education who seek to encourage self-determination and revitalization. It has important implications for the future of Native leadership, education, community, and culture, and for institutions of learning that have not addressed Native populations effectively in the past.

Chapitre

Warrior Scholarship : Seeing the University as a Ground of Contention.

What is “Indigenizing the academy?” To me, it means that we are working to change universities so that they become places where the values, principles, and modes of organization and behavior of our people are respected in, and hopefully even integrated into, the larger system of structures and processes that make up the university itself. In pursuing this objective, whether as students attempting to integrate traditional views and bring authentic community voices to our work, or as faculty members attempting to abide by a traditional ethic in the conduct of our relations in fulfilling our professional responsibilities, we as Indigenous people immediately come into confrontation with the fact that universities are intolerant of and resistant to any meaningful “Indigenizing.”

Livre

Ways of knowing. Experience, Knowledge and Power among the Dene Tha.

The creative world of a northern Native community is revealed in this innovative study. Once semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers, the Dene Tha of northern Canada today live in government-built homes in the settlement of Chateh. Their lives are a distinct blend of old and new, in which more traditional forms of social control, healing, and praying entwine with services supplied by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a nursing station, and a Roman Catholic church. Many older cultural beliefs and practices remain: ghosts still linger, reincarnating and sometimes stealing children’s souls; dreams and visions are powerful shapers of actions; and personal visions and experiences are considered the sources of true knowledge.Why and how are such striking beliefs and practices still vital to the Dene Tha? Drawing on twelve years of fieldwork at Chateh, Jean-Guy Goulet delineates the interconnections between the strands of meaning and experience with which the Dene Tha constitute and creatively engage their world. Goulet’s insights into the ways of knowing among the Dene Tha were gained through directly experiencing their way of life rather than being formally taught about it.

Article scientifique

We’re Going Slowly Because We’re Going Far. Building an Autonomous Education System in Chiapas.

Since the armed Zapatista uprising in 1994, the Zapatista communities in the south-east of Mexico have endeavoured to govern themselves, and to do so autonomously. When the Mexican state decided to ignore the demands of millions of indigenous people by failing to approve the Indigenous Law – a product of the 1996 dialogue between the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the government – the Zapatista communities decided to put their dreams into practice and make autonomy a reality in their territories. From a position of resistance, the region’s indigenous peoples began to implement health, education and marketing systems and to organise their own autonomous authorities. They decided to do this, and turn their back on the state’s so-called social development programmes, until the collective rights of indigenous peoples were recognised. The autonomous education system that is described below is the concrete result of the organisational process, and the importance of having an autonomous education system that increasingly trains members of the Zapatista communities to face up to the enormous tasks of self-government is obvious. In this regard, it is the objective of the education system that it strengthens autonomy at all levels and recovers languages and cultural values and customs. It would be impossible to relate here the wealth of experience that the last ten years of work on autonomous education in the three zones has provided. Instead, we will focus on analysing the relationship between education and buildind autonomy.

Livre

When literacy empowers: Navajo language in print.

Ethnographic research requires many acts of faith. Above all, those being researched must believe that there is something to be gained from the observations and questions put before them by the ethnographer.

Article scientifique

Where Are We? Finding Common Ground in a Curriculum of Place.

Article scientifique

Witamowikok, « dire » le territoire atikamekw nehirowisiw aujourd’hui : territoires de l’oralité et nouveaux médias autochtones.

Depuis trente ans, les Nehirowisiwok sont engagés dans un processus de revendication territoriale avec les gouvernements québécois et canadien. Cet article vise à documenter l’une des voies privilégiées de leur démarche de résistance, d’autodétermination et de reconnaissance de la souveraineté : celle du discours. La prise de parole est considérée comme un acte créatif à l’intérieur duquel s’exprime toute la capacité d’agir des Nehirowisiwok. Des récits récoltés lors de recherches de terrain réalisées depuis 2000 en territoire atikamekw nehirowisiw, ainsi que la production audiovisuelle atikamekw nehirowisiw du projet Wapikoni Mobile, constituent différentes sources permettant de relever les conceptions et les préoccupations des Nehirowisiwok d’aujourd’hui à l’égard de leur territoire. Avant de s’intéresser aux modalités d’appropriation des nouveaux médias par les autochtones, en particulier par les jeunes Nehirowisiwok, les auteurs ancrent d’abord leur propos dans des éléments de continuité de la tradition orale, pour ensuite valoriser le « dire » que des aînés témoins des transformations du territoire adressent aux nouvelles générations de Nehirowisiwok et aux non-autochtones.For 30 years the Nehirowisiwok have been engaged in a land claims process with Quebec and Canadian governments. This article aims to document one of the significant routes of this resistance, self-determination and recognition of Nehirowisiwok sovereignty: discourse. Storytelling is considered to be a creative process for the Nehirowisiwok in which can be expressed the capacity to act. The stories collected during field research in Atikamekw nehirowisiw territory since 2000 and the audiovisual Atikamekw nehirowisiw production of the Wapikoni Mobile project are the different sources used in this paper to outline the conceptions and concerns with respect to their territory. Before looking at the modes of appropriation of the new media by Aboriginal people, in particular by the young Nehirowisiwok, the authors will first establish the continuity of the oral tradition. Then they will promote the ‘telling’ of the elders, witnesses to the transformation of the land. Their messages are addressed to new generations of Nehirowisiwok and to non-Aboriginal people.Desde hace treinta años los Nehirowisiwok llevan adelante un proceso de reivindicación territorial ante los gobiernos de Quebec y de Canadá. Este artículo busca documentar uno de los medios que priorizan en su proceso de resistencia y de búsqueda de autodeterminación y de reconocimiento de soberanía : la vía del discurso. Tomar la palabra es considerado un acto creativo al interior del cual se expresa toda la capacidad de acción de los Nehirowisiwok. Los relatos recogidos en investigaciones de campo realizadas desde el año 2000 en territorio atikamekw nehirowisiw, así como las producciones audiovisuales atikamekw nehirowisiw del proyecto Wapikoni Mobile, constituyen fuentes que permiten una aproximación a las concepciones y las preocupaciones de los Nehirowisiwok de hoy en día en lo que respecta a su territorio. Antes que interesarse en las modalidades de apropiación de los nuevos medios de comunicación por parte de los indígenas, particularmente de los jóvenes nehirowisiwok, los autores basan sus objetivos en elementos que conciernen la continuidad de la tradición oral, para enseguida destacar el “decir” que los ancianos, en tanto testigos de las transformaciones del territorio, dirigen a las nuevas generaciones de Nehirowisiwok y a los no indígenas.

Article scientifique

Workshops as teaching learning environments.

Yolngu educationalists at Yirrkala have been actively researching into the development of a curriculum and a pedagogy for "both ways" education since 1985. When we talk of "both ways" we do not have an idea of dualism. We view "both ways" in terms of Yolngu word "garma". This is an open word used by both Yirritja and Dhuwa clans describing the format where a Yolngu learning environment begins. Garma} implies negotiation between the two moieties - the Yirritja and the Dhuwa, and the coming to agreement about what will happen in the teaching and learning in the garma episode. Some Balanda2 still deny that this sort of "both ways" education is possible. They deny that it can be applied when we are in the process of its application.