Decolonizing Education - Part One

Hello, you absolutely amazing person, you. Welcome to my channel. If you've been here before, welcome back. If you're new here, you should know that this is Indigenous centered space. What I mean by that is here on my channel we discuss all things Indigenous, Canadian reconciliation we share from an Indigenous perspective. Whether it's me sharing in a video or Indigenous followers commenting in the comments. And non Indigenous people are welcome here to learn without the power to cause harm. And yes, I just got a new microphone and it seems like every video I'm hitting it. I used to yawn in every video. Now I beat up my microphone. I am not polished. I am real. I trip over words. I make up new words. But we discuss important things here in a friendly conversational way. So welcome. Now, today I am choking on a Ferrero Rocher that I got for my birthday on the weekend. Maybe I shouldn't eaten one just before I shot a video. But I digress. Every now and then I have followers to my channel reaching out to me. Either they have a question that they want answered or they are suggesting a topic for a video. And I love that. I love that I don't do this for myself. This is what I do for a living. I know this stuff. But if I can help you understand why something is a conflict or why people aren't getting along, whatever it is, I am happy to help. And a while back someone reached out to me. I think it was actually via my Facebook page, but they suggested I talk about education and from my perspective, more specifically, decolonizing education. The education system does not work for Indigenous peoples, Indigenous youth, period. The stats have backed that up forever. If there's one thing that blows my mind when it comes to reconciliation, and you've heard me say this before, it is that in every other arena in life, if you're doing something and it's not working, you recognize it's not working and you change it. But when it comes to working with Indigenous peoples, that methodology has not been applied. The same things are happening over and over that have been happening 20 years ago. They're still not working. They're not working. So the stats are not changing. Now, I could go as far as saying the education system doesn't work for any youth. We could definitely go off on that tangent. I think there's a lot of reasons for that. But I'm going to specifically look at Indigenous youth and I'm going to do it from an Indigenous centered lens, which means I'm not going to comment on mainstream. I'm going to share with you what an Indigenous centered education system look like. And you can figure out why the mainstream doesn't work. So let's talk about it. Sam. Foreign. Hi everybody. My name is Andy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine River First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory in Northern Ontario, Canada. And as I mentioned, today we're focusing on decolonizing education or more what a decolonized education looks like. So many of my elders say we have to remember who we were before the others came. And that's what I'm talking about today. What did an Indigenous centered education system look like? And then as you hear these points, you can compare it to the mainstream system that our kids are being subjected to. I don't think it's going to be a surprise for, for anyone that it isn't working. Now, friend of mine, Chief Tony Alexis of the Nakota Sioux Nation out West always says it starts with intent. What is your intent? What is now? The intent of an Indigenous education system was that the youth survived, that they had everything they needed to go on without their elders or teachers. My mom repeated that on a regular basis. My job is not to be your friend. My job is not to be the person that gives you all the answers. My job is to teach you everything you need to know with to so you're able to go on without me. Because as she said, she knew that one day I would have to that the only person that was going to be with me for my entire journey was me. So keeping that in mind, I wanted to touch on now I do a whole seminar on this and I have this handy dandy handout that I give to my participants that we discuss a pre colonial education system. And then I get them to look at the mainstream system, see where it's failing to meet these needs and, and what can we do to tweak it and adjust it so Indigenous students and in turn all students can be more successful. So the first I wanted, there's actually 8, 12, 16, 20 different points. So I'll go through some of them today. This is probably going to go into a second video, if not the third. So let's start first off, prior to contact, when Indigenous peoples and I guess maybe we should start there just in case you're new here and you don't realize this. Before contact, Indigenous communities were functioning, thriving communities. We had all of the systems that mainstream does. We had education systems, justice systems, governance systems, the whole nine yards. They looked completely and totally different than their European Counterparts. But they existed and they worked, they served the people. It was when now remember cross cultural relationship Indigenous people and there are several indigenous cultures. When they were forced into assimilated into mainstream and having to adapt to mainstream systems, those systems never did work for us and still don't. Denying that is not bringing us closer to reconciliation. If you want to see successful indigenous people and benefit from a society that has successful indigenous people. Because think about it, if we're successful, we're feeding into the economy, we're, we're contributing like everybody else, we've had the opportunities to heal from all that has been done to us. Many, many, many benefits. So what did that education system look like? Our indigenous style? And this is an amalgamation of a whole bunch of indigenous cultures. Just general, general generalities. Well, there's a word 15 word my mom would say, what were the commonalities in indigenous education systems? So first and foremost, in case you didn't realize this and you think like you're gonna have to lean on Hollywood's interpretation of indigenous communities. No doubt. But prior to contact, there was no such thing as going to school, school or education. The education of the youth was integrate, integrated with day to day life. So you learned to count by counting. I don't know how many birds you saw in the tree. You learned to do math because you were dividing, making sure you had enough to feed everyone. It was a part of life. The skills that we learned in school or learned in school now we always learned in life. You can just apply them. So there was no, no concept of going to school. In fact, you were always in school. And I think that, that always learning, always growing is something you still see among indigenous people, not just indigenous people. For anyone who just went there, but this is indigenous entered space. So that's what we focus on here. So first point, integrated with day to day life as opposed to separated the next part hand in hand with the first one. The education of indigenous youth in our communities involved community members. Everyone was a teacher. If a child went off wandering and came across someone picking berries or picking mushrooms, they would learn how to do that. And that's a survival mechanism, right? Learning how to gather food is a valuable lesson. They're going to be taught which ones you pick, which ones are edible, which ones aren't. Like this is valuable. In the same way, if they wandered off and came across one of the adults or elders fishing, they're going to learn why. Why are you fishing at this time? Why are you fishing in this spot? How do you catch a Fish. How do you prepare a fish once you caught it? So all of that education was not only ongoing, but it involved absolutely everyone. So everyone was a teacher, everyone was a student. Again, I still see this in Indigenous communities as part of that Indigenous worldview. Two more that we'll touch on for today and then I'll leave the rest. We're definitely going into three videos. The focus now, as Chief Alexis said, what is your intent? I would, I have often sat back and wondered what is the intent of the modern day Canadian education system? Because your intent is what you're graded on or measured against. And if the intent is to educate the children that go to that school, I think the education system is failing. If it is to. Some people would say babysit the kids while their parents are working and just keep them alive for these seven, eight hours on a restricted budget. From the outside, that might look like it's getting closer to the actual intent. So why do I mention that? Well, the focus for Indigenous education systems prior to contact, the focus was on survival and personal growth, not on career or financial success. I think you can see there's a difference. Survival and personal growth. I have often heard people like the whole conversation around money, right? And I have been known to say to people, you don't need money, right? And of course the backlash can be anticipated. And I knew that was going to happen kind of the point. So I always say to them, so if I gave you a million dollars, let's just imagine I have a million dollars to give you first. If I gave you a million dollars, put it in your bank account but told you you couldn't spend it, so you're technically a millionaire, but you can't spend it on anything. It's restricted. Would that do you any good? Of course not. Because we don't need money. We need what the money can get us, which is housing, which is food, what the clothes to for our backs and our children, right? Like it's money is the in between to get us what we need. So in an Indigenous centered education, it was focused not on the money, which way too many people stop there, but on what it would get you. The personal growth and the survival. So I have often said with indigenous youth, teach them how to fish, teach them how to hunt, watch their confidence and self esteem grow when they can feed their grandparents and they can puff out their chest and say, I did that. Right? That's that survival, that personal growth. In many, many Indigenous cultures, it's not about how many degrees you have. It's never about how many degrees you have. It's about are you a better with what? What did you learn today? Are you able to add that to your wisdom? And is it making you a better person? If it's making you an arrogant person where you're looking down on other people, then that's not a good thing. So pre contact Indigenous education focused on survival and personal growth, not career or financial success. And last but not least, and this was so huge. Now if you've watched my channel for any length of time, you know my mom used the metaphor of a puzzle and that everything was a puzzle piece and everything fit together. If there's one thing from an indigenous worldview, mainstream seems very compartmentalized, that the, the connections aren't there. You're supposed to go to work and focus on work and forget that you're married and you have children and maybe one of your children is struggling. You expected just to be there and you're expected often to be a robot without emotion. So we even forget that you're human. That is not a characteristic of many indigenous cultures. So when it comes to pre contact education, one of the main aspects of the education system was that it was integrated in with culture and tradition. They were not separate. You didn't bring an elder in to talk as part of a class. You learned at sitting at the feet of the elders of the teachers, hearing the the older men and women talking and sharing their stories and picking up on that wisdom was the education, right? So not separate. It was all together. I shared in a past video that my mother actually didn't go to school until she was to mainstream Canadian school until she was 14. I used to have some issues with that and some resentment against my grandfather who didn't believe the girls had to go to school. And I know it was horrific for my mom when she did go, which is why she only had a grade four education. But as I got older, I realized what that meant was my mom had a pre colonial education up until her 14th year. She was at home surrounded by her sisters and her aunts and her mom and grandmother and listening to those stories and her education on how to learn how to do things was part of the day. Today I honestly believe that's why my mom was as wise as she was and why I was gifted that wisdom by being with her. So it was tradition and culture was part of the education. Not an elective, not an added bonus, but part of the every single day. So that is the first four characteristics out of 20 of a pre contact education system integrated with day to day as opposed to separate. It involved the community members. Everyone is a teacher, everyone is a student, focused on survival and personal growth rather than career or financial success and integrated with culture and tradition. So how's mainstream doing for those indigenous students who would thrive with those characteristics? What do you think? What grade is mainstream getting on those four points? If you gave them a grade out of 10, what would they get? I think I know your answer. Let's continue this discussion. Tomorrow I'll share another eight of the 20 characteristics of a pre contact education system. I'd love to know what you think of this. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye Bye.