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Indigenous Learning, Leadership, Opinion, Promising Practices

Getting to a Deeper Level of Knowing

Education leaders need to truly understand the journey that Aboriginal students are currently travelling to ensure their success.

Remembering my first year teaching more than four decades ago, Aboriginal education issues and challenges did not figure among the priorities of my school system or in staffroom conversations with my colleagues. Save for the Indian residential school down the road and the single Aboriginal student in our otherwise all-white elementary school, Aboriginal education matters were not on the agenda.

Remembering my first year teaching more than four decades ago, Aboriginal education issues and challenges did not figure among the priorities of my school system or in staffroom conversations with my colleagues. Save for the Indian residential school down the road and the single Aboriginal student in our otherwise all-white elementary school, Aboriginal education matters were not on the agenda. My anger and frustration about the playground bullying of that lone Grade 2 Aboriginal student and my discomfort at the entrenched racist attitudes of my own Grade 5 students went virtually unnoticed by other staff members in the school. 

Fast forward to 2014 and Aboriginal education issues loom large in communities and school systems across the country. Historically low high school completion rates among Aboriginal students and persistent achievement gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students enrolled in schools underscore the urgent need for educators to understand and to address the obstacles to Aboriginal student success in school. Education Canada’s recent issue on the topic of Aboriginal student success provides a tiny glimpse of the rich inventory of resources – research, policies, programs, practices and curricular materials – that are emerging in response to this challenge.

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But resources alone won’t do the job, and understanding Aboriginal education issues as an intellectual exercise falls short of what is required. As educators and education leaders, we need to go beyond the readings, the presentations, the workshops and conferences, and the toolkits to a place of owning the challenge and committing to action. Experiential learning may be part of the answer to take us there.

Mile 20, so named because it is located twenty miles north of Thompson, Manitoba is a special place for many indigenous and non-indigenous people in my province. It is a place of celebration and spiritual healing for some and a place of learning for many others like me who – with colleagues in education – had the recent privilege to participate in the culture camp experience for a day.

As educators and education leaders, we need to go beyond the readings, the presentations, the workshops and conferences, and the toolkits to a place of owning the challenge and committing to action. Experiential learning may be part of the answer to take us there.

Walking into the campsite at Mile 20, one is struck by the quiet, the stillness and the order of the place. Our day begins with a sharing circle – opening prayers and words of welcome, introductions, and explanations of what we will see and do through our day together. Gentle, respectful, reverent words that prepare us intellectually, psychologically and emotionally for what’s to follow.

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We tour the entire camp site in small groups, learning about the ‘colours’ tied to so many trees, the spent ‘grandfathers’ (rocks) accumulated over many sweatlodge ceremonies, the fasting lodges sprinkled throughout the forest, the Memorial Arbour just built for the Spring Gathering (Sikwan Mamawewin) which will begin later that day. We hear why downed trees are not always removed and how the community has reconciled itself with the needs of forest animals without recourse to fences or guns.

The teaching sweat that follows is a first for most in my group. Preparations are careful, unhurried, and elaborate – from the fire that heats the grandfathers, to the gathering of cedar needles to be sprinkled on the grandfathers, to the preparation of cedar swatches that will be used to splash cedar water on the grandfathers throughout the sweat. We learn that women sit to the left side of the lodge, legs covered and tucked sideways but not cross-legged. Men sit to the right and our teaching Elder sits in the mid-position directly opposite the entrance of the lodge. Each sweat participant smudges before entering the lodge barefoot and from a crawling stance.

With the lodge flaps lowered, we sit in total darkness, hearing the quiet, calm words of the Elder who leads our sweat. There are four rounds of traditional songs, prayers and teachings in this sweat, and after each of the first three the flaps are lifted so that more grandfathers can be gently and carefully added to the pit, more cedar sprinkled, and the flaps lowered to begin again. At the last round, we go around the circle, each person speaking in turn and splashing cedar water on the grandfathers before crawling out of the lodge in the same manner as we had entered it. I’m left with the scent of cedar in my nostrils, the sound of cedar water splashing on the grandfathers and the feel of moist heat filling the lodge, but most of all with a profound sense of peace and calm unlike any other I’ve ever experienced.

The day is too short to take in all the learning opportunities that Mile 20 offers – the collaborative building of the tipi and understanding its lessons, a walk through the woods to learn about traditional medicines which the land has to offer, bannock making over an open fire and learning about how these teachings can be woven into the classroom learning experiences of all our students – both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. Clearly, I must come back to Mile 20 at another time. There is yet much I need to learn and to understand about a peoples and a heritage which I know so poorly.

After a lunch of bison stew and bannock around an open fire, we step into a large tipi where we sit again in a circle with a warm fire burning in the centre. From our Aboriginal leaders in this circle we hear incredible stories of healing and redemption, told with gentle humour and gratitude for lessons learned rather than with bitterness or anger for the difficulties and injustices they have encountered in life. In each instance, healing was found in a return to the land, in a reclaiming of indigenous culture and language and tradition, and in the realization that Mile 20 and like experiences are a coming home to one’s roots and to what provides meaning and purpose in life.

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The day is too short to take in all the learning opportunities that Mile 20 offers – the collaborative building of the tipi and understanding its lessons, a walk through the woods to learn about traditional medicines which the land has to offer, bannock making over an open fire and learning about how these teachings can be woven into the classroom learning experiences of all our students – both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. Clearly, I must come back to Mile 20 at another time. There is yet much I need to learn and to understand about a peoples and a heritage which I know so poorly.

Our day ends with a final circle of elders, teachers, facilitators and we the learners. Heartfelt words of gratitude as each one tries to articulate what this experience has meant today and how it will shape our work as educators returning the next week to busy lives as teachers and administrators in the public schools of our province. Weeks after my day at Mile 20, I still puzzle about this but the experience has confirmed at least a few things for me. First, even long serving, dedicated and well-intentioned educators don’t always know what they don’t know and learning of the sort offered through our day at Mile 20 can open our eyes to this reality. Second, understanding from the heart is at least as important as knowing from the head and in combination these two can be powerful instruments for change. Finally, beyond the head and the heart there is yet another deeper level of knowing that was reflected in the words of those who spoke of ‘coming home’ to Mile 20, to the land, to their language, to their culture and to indigenous ways of being. This is the journey that many young Aboriginal students are currently travelling and one that we as educators and education leaders need to understand more fully if we are serious about and truly committed to ensuring the success of all Aboriginal students in schools and school systems across the country.

Photos courtesy of Carolyn Duhamel 


This blog post is part of CEA’s focus on aboriginal student success, which is also connected to Education Canada Magazine’s aboriginal student success theme issue and Facts on Education fact sheet on what the research says about how can we create conditions for Aboriginal student success in our public schools. Please contact info@cea-ace.ca if you would like to contribute a blog post to this series.

Meet the Expert(s)

Carolyn Duhamel

Retired Executive Director, Manitoba School Boards Association

Carolyn Duhamel, a past president of the Canadian Education Association and Editorial Board member for Education Canada Read More