When speaking about Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mazina Giizhik — also known as Justice Murray Sinclair — often declared: “Education has gotten us into this mess, and education will get us out.”
Sinclair captured an essence of formal schooling that is frequently ignored.
Contemporary discourse often draws on older philosophic traditions to discuss education as a force for democracy, liberation and self-expression. But formal schooling is also a structuring force — an instrument of the state.
Through education, states legitimize their authority while helping to cultivate the kinds of citizens the state wishes to govern — in other words, education is a tool of “statecraft.”
Education as statecraft highlights an ambiguity of schooling. Among its objectives, public schooling is a standardization tool, producing great benefits for some with potentially devastating consequences for others. Such ambiguity is strikingly visible in states forged through processes of contested settler-colonialism, like Canada.
Who do we as inhabitants of Turtle Island, or as Canadians, want to be in the era of reconciliation? If we are committed to truth and reconciliation, we must recognize education’s ambivalent role.
This should have implications for reforming public school curricula and teacher competencies, as well acting in partnership with Indigenous governments to support Indigenous governing autonomy and capacity in education and other matters.
We address these questions as scholars whose combined expertise is partly concerned with education policy. Jennifer Wallner, the lead author of this story, is a settler scholar born in Canada of European immigrants, and Gavin Furrey, co-author, is a settler scholar born in the United States of primarily European descent, with Lakota ancestry and Rosebud Sioux tribal citizenship.
Cultivating citizens
The relationship between schooling and the cultivation of citizens is well-documented. According to data from more than 100 countries, governments began to oversee and direct primary schooling on average 65 years before democratizing.
Other analyses suggest schooling in non-democratic regimes is used to quash rebellion and preserve the status quo. Even when schooling was introduced in democratic regimes, education was perceived as a means to instill a certain order, and help the state shape its desired citizens.
Public schooling played a pivotal role in legitimizing the nascent authority of the future Canadian state.
Emerging from competing British and French colonial projects, settler authorities used education to encourage migration, enforce preferred linguistic, political and economic order and safeguard their peoples and regimes from Indigenous Peoples.
Broader curricular shifts needed
Prior to Confederation in 1867, colonial legislatures introduced measures to establish formal schooling. Consequently, when leaders negotiated the division of powers, provinces claimed jurisdiction over the field — with one key exception.
Provinces retained responsibility for the schooling of settlers while the federal government claimed authority over Indigenous Peoples, who were seen as a threat to the desired order of the Canadian state centred on liberalism, representative democracy, private property and capitalism.
Residential and day schools overseen by the federal government were the key instrument used to “protect” settlers, secure land and assimilate First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples.
The language of instruction was predominantly in English, reflecting the preferred Anglo-dominant order being forged throughout most of the country. Provincial curricula long presented racist images of Indigenous Peoples.
Education researcher Dwayne Donald, a descendent of the Amiskwaciwiyiniwak (Beaver Hills people) and the Papaschase Cree, has shown how in Canadian myth, the separation and exclusion of Indigenous Peoples from everyone else has been enforced through the colonial image of the fort.
Read more: Decolonizing history and social studies curricula has a long way to go in Canada
Deeper and broader curricular shifts are needed, since some provinces’ curricula still does not recognize Indigenous legal traditions or governance practices and Indigenous Peoples are often depicted as being largely without agency.
Investments in schooling infrastructure
Indigenous communities are reckoning with the devastating effects of residential schools and other forms of colonial schooling. Despite the harm caused by colonial policies, Indigenous Peoples note that they continue to survive and thrive through their knowledge, practices, resistance, resilience and activism.
Read more: Acting with one mind: Gwich’in lessons for truth and reconciliation
But inadequate funding is a barrier. Between 1996 (the year the last residential school closed) to 2016, there was a 29 per cent growth in the First Nations population. In this same window, a federal cap on the annual growth rate of core program funding to First Nations for elementary and secondary education was in effect.
This led to a to four per cent annual decline in funding per student for First Nations throughout this period, which had a notable impact on schooling infrastructure.
Studies confirm that the majority of First Nations students must leave their communities for secondary school.
Teachers in First Nations schools are paid less than their provincial counterparts and culturally sensitive post-secondary educational programs and professional development tailored to First Nations are wanting.
Meaningful social, economic participation
The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission emphasized education in two ways: to ensure Indigenous and non-Indigenous students alike are provided the tools for meaningful social and economic participation, and to ensure all Canadians understand the history and legacy of residential schooling.
Read more: How Indigenous-led health education in remote communities can make reconciliation real
It highlighted the importance of integrating Indigenous content and perspectives within mainstream curriculum. The Winnipeg School Division foreshadowed such transformative work since adopting its Indigenous Education Policy in 1996. In Saskatchewan, a 2018 policy framework supports the infusion of Indigenous content, perspectives and ways of knowing to the benefit of all learners.
If treaties are to be understood as a framework for relationships of mutual aid and non-domination, schools are essential for preparing settler society to engage in such a relationship.
Self-determining Peoples
Indigenous scholars also emphasize the importance of educating Indigenous youth to prepare them to be members of a self-determining people.
Mi'kmaw professor of education emeritus Marie Battiste, for example, argues that Indigenous peoples ought to focus on building their own institutions and on cultivating knowledge systems in Indigenous languages rather than simply Indigenizing shared school spaces.
An increasing number of modern treaties or negotiations have improved financing, options for education or local management of education in some scenarios.
But some researchers highlight pernicious problems related to large-scale agreements: for example, while the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement includes a program to recognize and compensate roles in hunting and trapping, it has been criticized for not properly considering women’s realities.
Indigenous signatories to agreements have developed their autonomy steadily as they navigate new questions of how to best invest education funds and what services to prioritize for their students.
Acting in partnership, mutual respect
Problems with collaboration or communication also exist, for example, around secondary diploma accreditation.
Even when funding is available to build schools, limited space can be an issue, as communities also need new homes and other infrastructure for growing populations.
Limited housing for teachers in remote locations contributes to high vacancy rates and impacts what educational services and programs can be offered. Capacities for Indigenous governance, including education governance, are impacted by evolving political, social, economic, geographic, health and environmental factors.
If schools are to fashion a new order of mutual respect between multiple authorities, then settler schools must continue transforming to meet the challenge.
Additionally, federal and provincial authorities must act in partnership with Indigenous governments to support Indigenous governing autonomy and capacity.
Jennifer Wallner received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and is the Jean-Luc Pepin Research Chair in Canadian Politics at the University of Ottawa.
Gavin Furrey works for the Cree School Board as a Project Development Officer.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
