4. Is this a problem culture can solve?
Hartley GoodWeather
5. The scientific method, Nintendo and Eagle Feathers: “culture-based curriculum”
Mary Hermes 2000
Much curriculum development has been plagued by superficial
notions of ‘culture’ (ie., culture as material culture) and state or
federally driven standards, resulting in practices which at best
include content about Native peoples and at worst act to
reinforce stereotypes of a static culture.
culture-based curriculum needs to be based on practices and
theories that assume ‘cultures’ are living, that is, cultures are
able to influence and be influenced without losing their
substance, cohesion, and distinctiveness of being a ‘culture.’
view culture as a complex web of relationships, not just material
practices, and enact this in our schools in a way that is central to
curriculum.
6. The scientific method, Nintendo and Eagle Feathers: “culture-based curriculum”
Mary Hermes 2000
Does learning culture preclude the opportunity for a college prep
education?
Since ‘culture’ is distinguished from ‘academics,’ academic success is
associated with whiteness and assimilation – must choose between
‘being smart’ and ‘being Indian.’
Categories that separate academics from culture tend to narrow
understandings of culture and identity.
Cultureless and universalized academic category perpetuates notion of
superiority of Eurowestern traditions. Cultural traditions framed as
what people do before they become civilized and educated.
Teachers left with the difficult task of inserting ‘culture’ into lesson
plans.
Teaching about a culture is different from guiding students to see and
feel that their culture is alive and within them.
7. Eurowestern Culture and Sensibilities
Knowledge Systems
Social Structures and Conventions
Foundational Philosophies
Wisdom Traditions
Indigenous Culture and Sensibilities
Knowledge Systems
Social Structures and Conventions
Foundational Philosophies
Wisdom Traditions
8. Rethinking Culture Theory in Aboriginal Education – St. Denis (2009)
Will teaching Native culture remedy the many wounds of oppression? (Hermes 2005)
We owe our modern notion of culture in large part to nationalism and colonialism,
along with the growth of anthropology in the service of imperial power.
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
Anthropologists have trained us to think of culture in particular ways. They have
also trained us to understand Aboriginal-Canadian relations in terms of cultural
conflicts. Primitive people need culture more than the civilized do.
The belief that culture as a thing exists as an entity outside of people (‘genetically
predisposed’) provides a foundation for the belief in the potential for ‘cultural
revitalization’ and the very idea that culture can be retrieved and preserved.
High levels of school failure for Aboriginal students blamed on cultural
dissonance and discontinuity (not racism, oppression, and/or poverty). This leads
to preoccupations with ‘culturally relevant curriculum.’
The idea of the Aboriginal cultural Other as unwilling/unable to comprehend
change and adapt is a long entrenched assumption that continues to have major
influence on discussions of school experiences of Aboriginal students. Aboriginal
peoples blamed for loss of culture. Cultural deficit models. Pathologization.
A major assumption is that cultural continuity and cultural transmission are
necessary for success and survival of Aboriginal students. A major belief is that
schools and curriculum can facilitate this.
9. The belief in twentieth-century social analysis about the
incommensurability of different cultures encourages a
trivializing of colonial oppression by attributing the effects
and the conditions of oppression to this very factor of
incommensurability. In the example of Aboriginal people,
effects of oppression are cast as ‘value-conflicts’ between
white and Indian cultures, suggesting that inequality is
inevitable, and merely an effect of different orientations to
work, education, and family. When the effects of oppression
are attributed to a ‘conflict of values’ it is easy to see how the
remedy then becomes cross-cultural awareness training that
does not disrupt the status quo of structural inequality while
seemingly responding.
St. Denis (2009)
incommensurable — adj (foll by with )
1. incapable of being judged, measured, or considered comparatively
2. not in accordance; incommensurate
10. I can’t teach this stuff. I don’t know
anything about Aboriginal
issues, their history, their culture. I’m
not properly prepared to teach any
of it.
11. This curriculum doesn’t have
relevance where I teach. I don’t
have any Aboriginal students in
my classes.
12. Why do we need this Aboriginal
perspectives stuff? We already
have multiculturalism.
13. I know it is important for my students to
understand the history and how the cultures
are different, but I still feel like I would be
cheating my students if I focused on aboriginal
studies and ignored everything else. My
students come from many backgrounds and I
don’t think it would be fair to teach one
perspective if we can’t teach them all.
14. incorporate (v.) late 14c., "to put (something) into the body or
substance of (something else)," from Late Latin incorporatus,
past participle of incorporare "unite into one body," from Latin
in- "into, in, on, upon" (see in- + corpus (genitive corporis)
"body".
infuse (v.) early 15c., "to pour in, introduce, soak," from Latin
infusus, past participle of infundere "to pour into," from in- "in"
(see in- + fundere "pour, spread". Figurative sense of "instill,
inspire" first recorded 1520s.
Why do teachers so often use these words to somehow
describe what they think they are being asked to do with
Aboriginal curriculum perspectives?
18. Multicultural Policy in Canada
Multiculturalism was adopted as the official policy of the Canadian
government during the leadership of Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s and
1980s. The Canadian government has often been described as the
instigator of multicultural ideology because of its public emphasis on
the social importance of immigration.
Multiculturalism Act was passed in 1988. It legally establishes
Canada’s multicultural policy and
officially recognizes the importance of Canada’s multicultural
heritage and states that the heritage must be preserved and
promoted;
recognizes the rights of Aboriginal peoples in Canada;
states that while English and French remain the only official
languages of Canada, other languages can be spoken;
states that all Canadian citizens have equal rights, regardless of any
differences they might have and regardless of skin colour, religion,
country of birth, ethnic background, etc.; and
recognizes the right of ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities to
keep their cultures, languages, and religious practices.
19. From an Aboriginal standpoint, liberal theories of minority rights,
tolerance, equality, and multiculturalism facilitate the
misrecognition of who Aboriginal peoples are in relation to
Canadians and the Canadian state. As such, they do not promote
good relations. According to Dale Turner (2006), there are four
main reasons for this:
1. They do not adequately address colonial legacies.
2. They do not respect and cannot comprehend Indigenous
notions of sovereignty and belongingness—along with the idea
that Indigenous peoples are not bestowed ‘rights’ by the
Canadian state.
3. They do not question the legitimacy of the Canadian state’s
unilateral claim to sovereignty over Aboriginal lands AND
peoples.
4. They do not recognize that a meaningful theory of Aboriginal
rights in Canada is impossible without Aboriginal participation.
20.
21.
22. So, what’s the problem?
"As far as I'm concerned, they (the aboriginal people)
were given the reserves," he said. "Now they want to
take over the province. The ones on the reserves now
weren't even here when those treaties were signed...
They just want to see what they can get, but they don't
survive off hunting the way they used to. This'll hurt them
in the end."
Edmonton Journal, July 5, 2009
23. The curriculum can conserve the divisions that cut up
the world into little territories where we are all
marooned or it can entertain another geography. It is
the teacher who stands guarding the territory where
these secret gardens can grow, who can grasp these
visions and grant them the legitimacy of knowledge.
Madeleine Grumet
