This is a clip from a Canadian Nursing Students Association keynote by Sandi L Boucher (Red Thunderbolt, Loon clan, Seine River First Nation). The speaker introduces herself and states the clip will focus on differences in learning styles between Indigenous and mainstream/Western education, explaining why Indigenous students may struggle in mainstream systems.
I'm Sandy Boucher, Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan. I'm a proud member of Seine River First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory in Northern Ontario. And me and my team are still on winter break. But I'm not gonna forget about you today. I have yet another clip for you. This is also taken from the Canadian Nursing Students association keynote speech. But today we're going to focus in on the difference in learning styles. And if you've ever heard anyone saying how Indigenous students struggle in the mainstream education system, this is why. This is the information you need. So let's talk about it. Okay.
As I mentioned, I am thrilled to be here tonight because I have a story to share with you. And it's a powerful story, I believe, and hopefully it will resonate with you as well. But before I share that story with you, I wanted to talk about stories for a second, because the reality is, as an Indigenous person telling a story that might invoke a few stereotypes for some people, because they just assume Indigenous people are always telling stories, and even worse. Whoops, wrong way. Even worse, they assume that our stories are a waste of time, or they assume that we've just gone off topic and we're rambling. And let me be the first to tell you, that couldn't be further from the truth. When we share one of our stories, what it is is actually just a difference in culture between an Indigenous culture, like Anishinaabe for Ojibwe, or mainstream. It's a difference in teaching styles, in learning styles, and that's why so many Indigenous people struggle in mainstream educational structures. And I really. I'm going to share a mini story with you first to explain this difference in learning style for you. So imagine you're working in a clinic or a hospital. You're near one of the administration offices. And I don't even know if you guys do this, but imagine you have, like, a summer student that's doing a placement working there in your area. And I swear, every single place I have ever worked that learning curve, when you first start working, one of the first challenges you have to overcome is the photocopier. I have no idea why they make 5 million different versions of these things. They're always different. They always have 52,000 things they do, except make dinner. And I'm still complaining about that because I. I'd really appreciate it if they did. And you have to figure this out now. I Want you to imagine that you're in the print room with this photocopier, and in comes this indigenous placement student that's there for a couple of weeks. If you were to educate her or him in a Western European style education, you would look at them and say, okay, well, this is the photocopier. If you want to do this, you lift up this screen, you push this button, the paper's over there. It would be very instructional. The Western style is that there's a teacher that has all the knowledge and there's a student that is meant to absorb the knowledge. There's very much a difference in power for indigenous people. We get really uncomfortable when we end up in situations where we feel like we look stupid, like we don't know what we're supposed to know. And depending on the experience of that placement student, her healing, her or his healing journey, how uncomfortable they feel. They may not return to the placement after that story because they just felt so uncomfortable. Or you could share the exact same information, Anishinaabe style. Again, you're near the photocopier, in comes the placement student. They're staring at this machine, and you say something along the lines of, oh, my God, I know exactly how you feel. I remember the first time I came across this contraption. It scared the daylights out of me. It took half a day before I had to figure out that you lift that and push that big green button. I really wish you the best. I'm out of here. And you walk away now. What did you just do? You told a story that was about you, not about them. You shared that you were just as intimidated as their feeling. And hidden in the story was the information they needed to manage this machine without ever implying that you knew more than them. That's why we tell our stories. So the next time you're sharing space with an indigenous person who feels the need to share a story, listen to the story. I guarantee you there's valuable information hidden in between. In between the jokes and the craziness.
