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Reconciling Epistemological Orientations: Toward a Wholistic Nishnaabe (Ojibwe/Odawa/Potawatomi) Education.

The education of First Nations people has been used primarily for assimilation purposes. The last 30 years have witnessed the beginnings of First Nations’ control of education with the primary impetus being selfdetermination. Achieving self-determination through education has been hindered by the social and cultural problems associated with colonization. To combat colonization and effect healing, the concept of wholistic education has been offered. Wholistic education describes the pedagogical approach that develops the whole First Nations child: intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. A wholistic education is compatible with traditional tenets of Native peoples’ conceptualizations of well-being and the good life. The standardized Ontario provincial curriculum obstructs selfdetermination by interrupting the transmission from Elder to child of Indigenous knowledge, and understanding of the earth, omitting Indigenous perspectives on history, presenting Indigenous world views as irrational and unscientific, and not using Indigenous languages. Wholistic education can effect cultural survival by providing an education that affirms Indigenous world views and traditions, restores the role of the land and Nature as teachers, teaches history from a Native perspective, restores the Elders to their rightful place as transmitters of Indigenous knowledge, reconnects the generations, and uses Native languages as the medium of instruction.