Indigenous Learning
Watch and read the following 3 news reports on mandatory Indigenous learning. While you watch and read, take notes on the following questions:
Is the news report objective? How do you know?
Is the source reliable? How do you know?
Does the source have a specific audience? Why or why not?
Does the source have a specific purpose? Why or why not?
- News Report 1 – City News: Advocates push for better, mandatory Indigenous curriculum
- News Report 2 – (Macleans) Making Indigenous classes mandatory
- Nancy Macdonald 11/19/2015
- Source:macleans.ca/education/making-history-2/
Some universities make students take a math course before they get an arts degree, just as some engineering students are now being schooled in the liberal arts. Starting next fall, undergraduate students on two Canadian campuses, the University of Winnipeg and Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., will be required to take a three credit course in Indigenous culture or history to graduate.
It’s a big, bold move meant to combat racism and foster reconciliation in cities where Indigenous residents continue to face discrimination and titanic barriers. “We’ve got a tough history in Winnipeg,” says Rorie Mcleod Arnould, a non-Indigenous student who is the past president of the University of Winnipeg Student Association (UWSA). “There’s a lot we need to take account of, and be aware of.” Last winter, the UWSA and the University of Winnipeg Aboriginal Students’ Council jointly submitted a motion to the University of Winnipeg Senate asking that students be required to take one of the university’s 100-odd Indigenous studies courses before graduation.
They include courses on race and justice, one on Inuit art, and one that examines encounters between Christian and Indigenous religious authorities. The approval came March 26, and followed months of emotional debate on race relations in Winnipeg, sparked by the murder of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine. The Indigenous girl’s remains were found last August in a garbage bag in the 1/2 Red River, just a few blocks east of the university. “Racism is unacceptable, and bigotry is unacceptable. This requirement is not a solution, but it represents a big step forward for the university, and for Winnipeg in general,” said Mcleod Arnould, 25.
Three years ago, the aspiring economist, who grew up in the white, middle-class Winnipeg neighbourhood of St. James, took a class on inner-city issues. He remembers “choking up” after hearing an Indigenous presenter describe a vicious beating at the hands of white police officers. “There was this entire side of Winnipeg I didn’t know about. Sometimes you need a bit of a push to look outside yourself, at what people around you are experiencing.”
In Canada, “we teach history from one perspective,” adds Kevin Settee, vice-president of the UWSA. “That missing information is continuing to have a negative effect on Indigenous people.” Indeed, there’s a lot the country’s creation stories currently miss: the withholding of food from starving people to force them to submit to treaties in the 1870s; the virtual imprisonment of Indigenous people under the pass system.
Not all North-West Mounted Police lived up to their Dudley Do-Right reputations. “Right now, all you’ll hear is that we killed the nice Pilgrims,” says Lakehead vice-provost Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, a member of the Chippewa of Georgina Island First Nation, on Lake Simcoe. “We’re simply asking students to consider other stories too.” She believes the Indigenous credit requirement will eventually spread to other campuses.
In June, after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded its work, University of Manitoba president David Barnard, the chairman of Universities Canada, published a powerful editorial in the Ottawa Citizen calling on universities to foster change at their “core.” “Where there is racism,” Barnard wrote, “we must challenge it.”
Both Winnipeg and Lakehead have had their decision questioned. Lakehead’s engineering students didn’t understand why they needed to learn about Indigenous culture until Wesley-Esquimaux explained that “those are the very doors you’ll be knocking on when you’re putting in new mining infrastructure in the North.” Indeed, there are 49 First Nations just north of Lakehead, with a population of 50,000.
The school’s graduates will require an understanding of treaties and the changing legal climate. Some business students in Winnipeg also expressed concern. For Settee, who is Anishinaabe and Cree and a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation north of Winnipeg, it’s important that business students, who might one day be charged with hiring, “know that we’re not lazy, that we do want to work, that they understand that these are stereotypes, and they continue to do a lot of damage.” “We tend to get stuck on how this will impact non-Indigenous people,” says Wesley-Esquimaux. “But consider how important this is to the Indigenous community. For the first time, they’re hearing: Your history is as important as ours.”
News Report 3
UNSAFE SPACE: THE DANGER OF MANDATORY INDIGENOUS STUDIES COURSES
Posted on February 18, 2016
In the last year, some Canadian universities have begun to make Indigenous Studies (IS) courses mandatory in order for their students to graduate. At first thought, this seems like a fantastic idea. It would be great if every Canadian with an undergraduate degree knew the history of colonization in Canada, including how colonial Canadian policies (the Indian Act, residential schools, the ’60s Scoop, the violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands via murder and starvation, etc.) impact First Nations communities, and how settler Canadians benefit from colonization. These are some of the topics that undergraduate students would analyze in a typical IS course. However, the policy to mandate these courses raises new concerns that should be addressed by any institution considering adopting a similar approach.
For the universities who are leading the way with mandatory IS classes, I assume that they already have well-qualified and experienced instructors teaching their IS courses, and that the instructors were consulted and supportive of the decision to make those courses mandatory. I assume this, because mandatory IS courses don’t just imply that privileged students with no background knowledge of Indigenous peoples and issues will become better informed. Mandating IS courses also means that Indigenous instructors and students now have to share the class space with students who probably wouldn’t choose to be there of their own volition. There arises a concern that has to do with the safety of the Indigenous instructors and students who are now mandated to engage with unsettling material in a potentially hostile and unsafe space with people who either don’t want to be there, or aren’t ready to acknowledge their own privilege or self location. In a worst case scenario, students who don’t want to be there or aren’t ready to learn the material may openly challenge the instructor and the experiences of other students in the class. To force Indigenous instructors and students into these spaces doesn’t seem entirely ethical.
If Indigenous Studies courses are mandatory, it’s important that instructors are prepared to recognize and appropriately address racism in the classroom.
Typically, Indigenous content is, or should be whenever possible, taught by Indigenous instructors. These are people who also experience racism and discrimination from its most outright to most nuanced forms. These are the people who will notice the subtly racist remarks or side comments in a classroom, and who know the potentially devastating consequences of leaving such instances unaddressed. Note that Indigenous instructors, no matter how professional, will also have emotional reactions to racism in the classroom, and there should be support mechanisms in place for instructors as well as students. If IS courses are mandatory, it’s important that instructors are prepared to recognize and appropriately address racism in the classroom, which is sure to occur since most Canadians are taught racism from an early age. In order to become less racist, people need to actively unlearn racism, which is a process that takes time, education, open-mindedness, and self-reflection.
As a Maskîkow undergraduate student just learning about colonization for the first time (years ago), I felt vulnerable, betrayed, and angry by the course content, but I also felt like the class was a safe space to discuss those feelings and work through the material because I knew that everyone wanted to be there, and the students who came to class were open to the content we were learning. As a facilitator and educator, I know it doesn’t take much to create feelings of uneasiness or doubt in a learning space. Just one inappropriate or malicious comment from one student is enough to shut down a robust group conversation. Is it fair to force students who don’t want to be there into a space where open-mindedness and open-heartedness are critical to the learning experiences of the rest of the class?
In any course that centralizes Indigenous content, there are several facts that many Canadians have trouble coming to terms with, but that should go unchallenged in order for the class to move forward with deeper and more meaningful analyses of the subjects at hand, whether they be environmental issues, economic issues, social issues, literature, or art. The fact is that colonization is unjust and ongoing; it is the root cause of the oppression and social suffering of Indigenous peoples, including gender-based violence; it dehumanizes both Indigenous and settler peoples; and settlers benefit from it. To teach an IS course properly, instructors need to be able to speak to these facts and illuminate them when they are questioned; to have the experience and tools to recognize and address racism in the classroom; and to be supported by their institution when engaging with difficult students becomes detrimental to their safety and that of the class.?
Photo credit: istockphoto/XiXinXing
Source: http://www.northernpublicaffairs.ca/index/unsafe-s…
Fill the tables below and fill them in using your findings. When you are finished, submit your work to your teacher.
Source
Question
If yes, explain why (with proof, examples, rationale)
If no, explain why (with proof, examples, rationale)
City News
Is the news report objective?
Is the source reliable?
Does the source display any bias towards the subject matter?
Does the website have a specific audience?
Does the website have a specific purpose?
Source
Question
If yes, explain why (with proof, examples, rationale)
If no, explain why (with proof, examples, rationale)
( 2) Maclean’s
Is the source reliable?
Does the source display any bias towards the subject matter?
Does the source have a specific audience?
Does the source have a specific purpose?
Source
Question
If yes, explain why (with proof, examples, rationale)
If no, explain why (with proof, examples, rationale)
(3) Northern Public Affairs
Is the source reliable?
Does the source display any bias towards the subject matter?
Does the source have a specific audience?
Does the source have a specific purpose?
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