First Nations and Higher Education:
The Four R's - Respect, Relevance,
Reciprocity, Responsibility
Verna J. Kirkness
Ray Barnhardt
Kirkness, V. J. and R. Barnhardt (2001).
First Nations and Higher Education: The Four R's - Respect,
Relevance, Reciprocity, Responsibility. Knowledge Across Cultures:
A Contribution to Dialogue Among Civilizations. R. Hayoe and J.
Pan. Hong Kong, Comparative Education Research Centre, The University
of Hong Kong.
INTRODUCTION
American Indian/First Nations/Native
people have been historically under-represented in the ranks of
college and university graduates in Canada and the United States.
From an institutional perspective, the problem has been typically
defined in terms of low achievement, high attrition, poor retention,
weak persistence, etc., thus placing the onus for adjustment on the
student. From the perspective of the Indian student, however, the
problem is often cast in more human terms, with an emphasis on the
need for a higher educational system that respects them for
who they are, that is relevant to their view of the world, that
offers reciprocity in their relationships with others, and
that helps them exercise responsibility over their own lives.
This paper examines the implications of these differences in
perspective and identifies ways in which initiatives within and
outside of existing institutions are transforming the landscape of
higher education for First Nations/American Indian people in both
Canada and the United States.
There is a story of a tribe of people in
Indonesia that has an ingenious method for capturing monkeys alive.
They cut a hole in a hollowed out coconut shell, just large enough
for a monkey to stick its hand through. They then place a peanut
inside and attach the shell to a tree. The monkey reaches through the
hole in the shell to grab the peanut, but then is unable to withdraw
its fist without letting go, and in this state of single-minded
obsession with the peanut is readily captured and sold to the zoo
trade.
At first glance, we as human beings may
identify ourselves with the tribal people in this story and view it
as just another example of the successful application of human
ingenuity to the solution of an everyday problem. However, if we take
a closer look, we may also see a reflection of ourselves in the
predicament of the monkey. We needn't look far to find examples of
situations in which we as humans, individually and collectively, have
become so captivated by habitual behavior as to be unable or
unwilling to make timely adaptations in the interest of our future
well-being. Consider, for example, the efforts to entrench
English-only (or French-only) language policies in an attempt to
impose unilingualism on an increasingly multicultural society, or the
various resource extraction policies and practices that we adhere to
while depleting limited resources with little consideration for the
needs of future generations. These are but two examples of where we,
like the monkey, attempt to ignore the consequences of our
infatuation with the status quo. In this paper we will examine the
extent to which similar head-in-the-sand, hand-in-the-coconut myopia
is evident in the policies and practices of universities in Canada
and the United States with regard to the educational opportunities
for First Nations (Native/Indian/Indigenous/ Aboriginal) students.
While universities generally have adopted the political rhetoric of "equal educational opportunity for all," many
of the institutional efforts to convert such rhetoric into reality for First
Nations
people continue to fall short of expectations. Why is this
so?
If we are to address this perennial
issue in a serious manner, we have to ask ourselves some hard
questions:
* Why do universities continue to
perpetuate policies and practices that historically have produced
abysmal results for First Nations students, when we have ample
research and documentary evidence to indicate the availability of
more appropriate and effective alternatives?
* Why are universities so impervious to
the existence of de facto forms of institutionalized
discrimination that they are unable to recognize the threat that some
of their accustomed practices pose to their own existence?
* What are some of the obstacles that
must be overcome if universities are to improve the levels of
participation and completion of First Nations students?
There are no simple or single answers to
these very complex questions, but those of us who are associated with
universities in one form or another must continue to seek effective
solutions, and along the way we must be prepared to set aside some of
our most cherished beliefs and free ourselves to consider appropriate
alternatives. Let us take a look as some of the issues we are likely
to encounter in this quest, and some of the policy and practice
options we may need to consider along the way.
COMING TO THE UNIVERSITY VS. GOING TO
THE UNIVERSITY
First, let us take a look at what
attending the university can mean from a couple of different
perspectives, one coming (the institution's perspective of the
student) and the other going (the student's perspective of the
institution). From the vantage point of the university, students are
generally viewed as "coming" to partake of what the university has to
offer. From this perspective, it is presumed that the university is
an established institution with its own long-standing, deeply-rooted
policies, practices, programs and standards intended to serve the
needs of the society in which it is imbedded. Students who come to
the university are expected to adapt to its modus operandi if
they wish to obtain the benefits (usually translated to mean better,
higher paying jobs) of the knowledge and skills it has to offer, the
desirability and value of which are presumed to be self-evident. From
this point of view, when particular clusters of students, such as
those from First Nations backgrounds, do not readily adapt to
conventional institutional norms and expectations and do not achieve
levels of "success" comparable to other students, the typical
response is to focus on the aberrant students and to intensify
efforts at socializing them into the institutional milieu. The
lack-of-performance issues in such circumstances tend to be defined
by the university in terms such as "low achievement," "high
attrition," "poor retention," "weak persistence," etc., thus placing
the onus for accommodation on the students and fortifying the
entrenched nature of the university as an institution.
The institutional response, when faced
with these internally-constructed and externally reinforced problems
of inadequate achievement and retention, is usually to intensify the
pressure on First Nations students to adapt and become integrated
into the institution's social fabric, with the ultimate goal that
they will be "retained" until they graduate. Typical solutions that
emanate from this "blame-the-victim" perspective are special
counseling and advising centers, "bridging" and "developmental"
programs, tutorials, and an array of additional student support
services, all of which are intended to help problem students
successfully partake of what the university has to offer. To the
extent that students are willing and able to check their own cultural
predispositions at the university's gate, these kinds of initiatives
can and do assist them in making the transition to the culture of the
institution, but such intensification efforts alone do not appear to
produce the desired results of full and equal participation of First
Nations people in higher education. Even with the many
well-intentioned support services that have been proliferating for
two decades in institutions across Canada and the U.S., the overall
"attrition" and "retention" rates of First Nations students remain
near the bottom of all university students in both countries. The
statistics speak for themselves:
- In Canada in 1986, only 1.3% of the
First Nations population had completed a university degree,
compared to 9.6% of the general population. In other words,
non-Indians were 7.4 times more likely to have successfully
completed a degree program than First Nations people. (Armstrong,
Oberle and Kennedy, 1990) While initial enrollment of First
Nations, American Indian and Alaska Native students increased
significantly in the 1990s, their graduation rate has lagged
behind that of the general population by up to fifty percent.
(Pavel et al, 1998, Carter and Wilson, 1997)
- In the U.S. in 1984, less than 60%
of the American Indian students completed high school, and
approximately one-third of these went on to college, but only 15%
of those who went on to college completed a four-year degree, for
an overall average college graduation rate of 3%, compared to 16%
for the general population. (Tierney, 1991; Fries, 1987) Of the
American Indian students entering university in the mid-1990s,
only 24% had completed a pre-college curriculum compared with 56%
of all college-bound graduates. (Pavel et al, 1998)
- In 1986, only 25% of the First
Nations population in Canada completed high school compared to
half of the non-Indian population, and of those, only 23% went on
to the university, compared to 33% of the rest of the population.
Of those First Nations students who commenced university studies,
25% earned a degree, compared to 55% of
non-Indians.
(Armstrong, Kenney & Oberle, 1990)
- In 1986, only seven four-year
institutions in the U.S. had 500 or more American Indian students
enrolled, and most of these were tribally-controlled colleges
located on reservations.
(Tierney, 1991)
The largest increases in funding,
enrollments and college completion for First Nations, American
Indians and Alaska Native students are occurring in Tribal
Colleges in the U.S. (AIHEC, 2000), and Aboriginal-run
institutions in Canada (INAC, 2000).
Only 5% of American Indian and
Alaska Native college students maintained a 3.5 grade point
average, compared to 19% for the general population. (Pavel et
al, 1998)
Native American students are more
likely to drop out of college for non-academic reasons than for
academic deficiencies. (Tierney, 1992; Reyhner and Dodd,
1995).
It is clear that despite the many
efforts to improve First Nations' participation in higher education,
U.S. and Canadian mainstream universities, by and large, do not yet
provide a hospitable environment that attracts and holds First
nations students at a satisfactory rate. University policies and
programs aimed at decreasing First Nations student attrition are
typically oriented toward helping the students make the transition
from their home culture to the culture of the university. (Beaty and
Chiste, 1986; Pottinger, 1989) In a study of the college experiences
of American Indian students in the U.S.: Tierney identified five
implicit "axioms" or assumptions held by universities, that serve as
the basis for most of their efforts to integrate the students into
the ways of the institution:
* Post-secondary institutions are
ritualized situations that symbolize movement from one stage of life
to another.
* The movement from one stage of life to
another necessitates leaving a previous state and moving into
another.
* Success in post-secondary education
demands that the individual becomes successfully integrated into the
new society's mores.
* A post-secondary institution serves to
synthesize, reproduce, and integrate its members toward similar
goals.
* A post-secondary institution must
develop effective and efficient policies to insure that the initiates
will become academically and socially integrated.
However, from the perspective of the
American Indian students Tierney interviewed, who had their own
distinctive reasons for "going to the university," social integration
into the culture of the university was not what they had in mind, at
least not if it was going to be at the expense of the culture they
brought with them. He quotes one student who had dropped out in his
first attempt at college after two semesters, and then returned to
the local community college ten years later with a different cultural
perspective:
I think white people think
education is good, but Indian people often have a different view.
I know what you're going to say - that education provides jobs and
skills. It's true. That's why I'm here. But a lot of these kids,
their parents, they see education as something that draws students
away from who they are... I would like to tell them (at the
university) that education shouldn't try and make me into
something I'm not. That's what I learned when I wasn't here - who
I am. And when I learned that, then I could come back here. I sort
of walked away for a while and then came back. It's one of the
best gifts I've ever had. But a lot of us just walk away.
(Tierney, 1993, p. 311)
In these comments, we see the university
from a perspective in which what it has to offer is useful only to
the extent that it respects and builds upon the cultural integrity of
the student. The university must he able to present itself in ways
that have instrumental value to First Nations students; that is, the
programs and services that are offered must connect with the
students' own aspirations and cultural predispositions sufficiently
to achieve a comfort level that will make the experience worth
enduring. If we cannot create an environment in which First Nations
students began to "feel at home" at the university, all the special
programs and support services we can dream up will be of little value
in attracting and holding them in significant numbers. We must
recognize that attending the university is not an all-or-nothing
proposition, and many students, such as the one quoted above, will
move in and out of the university over a period of many years,
depending on how well it suits their purposes.
While improved job opportunities alone
may provide sufficient motivation to keep some students interested,
in the case of many First Nations students, these "jobs" are often
linked to aspirations with much broader collective/tribal
considerations, such as exercising self-government, or bringing First
Nations perspectives to bear in professional and policy-making
arenas. The inadequacy of our understanding of, and attention to,
these kinds of considerations was pointed out in a recent government
report on "university education and economic well-being" for First
Nations people in Canada, which concluded: "A greater understanding
is needed about motivating factors if policy and programs are to be
successful in their intent to increase participation and success at
university." (Armstrong, Kennedy and Oberle, 1990, p. 19) Wendy Hull,
chair of the Aboriginal Students' Association at Dalhousie University
in Halifax, illustrates the point in her observation: "(University)
education is not important to me in my life. But it is important when
we start dealing with the government." (Harrington, 1991, p. 4) We
need to recognize that there can be many reasons for pursuing a
university education, reasons which often transcend the interest and
well-being of the individual student. For First Nations communities
and students, a university education can be seen as important for any
of the following reasons:
* It can be seen as a means of realizing
equality and sharing in the opportunities of the larger society in
which we live.
* It can be seen as a means for
collective social and economic mobility.
* It can be seen as a means of
overcoming dependency and "neo-colonialism."
* It can be seen as a means of engaging
in research to advance the knowledge of First Nations.
* It can be seen as a means of providing
the expertise and leadership needed by First Nations
communities.
* It can be seen as a means to demystify
mainstream culture and learn the politics and history of racial
discrimination.
From the extra-institutional point of
view of a First Nations student who is "going" to the university for
any of these reasons, the problems they encounter along the way are
not constructed as matters of attrition and retention, which make
sense only from an internal institutional perspective. Rather, the
issues are likely to be framed in more humanistic,
culturally-sensitive terms, such as a desire for "respect,"
"relevance," "reciprocity,'' and "responsibility," and as such,
reflect a larger purpose than simply obtaining a university degree to
get a better job. First Nations students and communities are seeking
an education that will also address their communal need for
"capacity-building" to advance themselves as a distinct and
self-determining society, not just as individuals. In this context, a
"job" may be important, but more as a means to an end, than an end in
itself.
In the effort to sustain their own
cultural integrity, there is an urgent need for First Nations people
to assume roles as teachers, doctors, lawyers, administrators,
comptrollers, architects, historians, etc. This need is reflected in
an observation by Chief Simon Baker, an elder from the Squamish
Nation in British Columbia who has often pointed out that, "Having
White lawyers running your band government is not First Nations
self-government." These sentiments are echoed by Patricia Monture, a
Mohawk and professor of law at Dalhousie Law School, who has pointed
out that getting a university education is an indispensable, if often
unpleasant step to attaining self-determination. She goes on to
state, however, that "Canada is not making an effort to talk to us.
We're the ones who have to do double-time and learn how to talk to
them." (Harrington, 1991, p. 4) How then can the
monolithic/ethnocentric institution of the university be reoriented
to foster a more productive two-way exchange that increases its
capacity to respond effectively to the higher education and human
resource needs of First Nations students and communities? To begin to
respond to that question, let us examine more closely the
implications of the "Four R's" of respect, relevance, reciprocity and
responsibility.
RESPECT OF FIRST NATIONS CULTURAL
INTEGRITY
The most compelling problem that First
Nations students face when they go to the university is a lack of
respect, not just as individuals, but more fundamentally as a people.
To them, the university represents an impersonal, intimidating and
often hostile environment, in which little of what they bring in the
way of cultural knowledge, traditions and core values is recognized,
much less respected. They are expected to leave the cultural
predispositions from their world at the door and assume the trappings
of a new form of reality, a reality which is often substantially
different from their own.
The physical and social environment of a
typical university campus is intended to protect faculty and students
from "the real world," or put another way, it is a reality unto
itself. It is a literate world in which only decontextualized
literate knowledge counts, and that knowledge must be displayed in
highly specialized literate forms. As an institution for perpetuating
literate knowledge, the university has served us well. But there are
other kinds of knowledge in the world and there are other ways of
conveying knowledge than those embodied in the "Ivory
Tower."
One variation of another kind of
knowledge is that which has typically been associated with First
Nations people, usually referred to in terms such as traditional
knowledge, oral knowledge, indigenous knowledge, etc., depending on
which literate tradition you draw upon. (Goody, 1982, p. 201) While
the manifestations can vary considerably from one group of people to
another, some of the salient features of such knowledge are that its
meaning, value and use are bound to the cultural context in which it
is situated, it is thoroughly integrated into everyday life, and it
is generally acquired through direct experience and participation in
real-world activities. If considered in its totality, such knowledge
can be seen to constitute a particular world view, a form of
consciousness, or a reality set.
In an examination of contemporary values
and lifestyle in the context of a northern Athabaskan community, Ron
and Suzy Scollon (Scollon and Scollon, 1981, p. 100) identified four
aspects of what they described as a "Native reality set" (patterns of
behavior and ways of thinking) which they felt distinguished it from
"modern consciousness", as articulated by Berger and others. (Berger,
Berger and Kneller, 1973) Native people who live in isolated northern
communities, in Scollons' view, tend to favor a lifestyle that
exhibits a high respect for individual self-reliance,
non-intervention in other people's affairs, the integration of useful
knowledge into a holistic and internally consistent world view, and a
disdain for complex organizational structures. The Scollons go on to
point out that these aspects of local consciousness create
considerable interactional tension and conflict when Native people
encounter the componentiality, specialization, systematicity,
bureaucracy and literate forms characteristic of Western institutions
and modern consciousness. The holistic integration and internal
consistency of the Native world view is not easily reconciled with
the compartmentalized world of bureaucratic institutions.
For the First Nations student coming to
the university (an institution that is a virtual embodiment of modern
consciousness), survival often requires the acquisition and
acceptance of a new form of consciousness that not only displaces,
but often devalues their indigenous consciousness, and for many, this
is a greater sacrifice than they are willing to make. If they enter
and then withdraw before "completion," however, they are branded by
the university as a "dropout" - a failure. Those who persevere and
make the sacrifice can find themselves in the end, torn between two
worlds, leading to a further struggle within themselves to reconcile
the cultural and psychic conflicts arising from competing values and
aspirations.
Some of the institutional implications
of this struggle for recognition of competing realities were
summarized by Scollon in a study of communication patterns and Native
student retention at the University of Alaska Fairbanks:
The problem of retention in an
institution of higher education lies as much in the definition of
the problem as in any other factor. Previous research has
indicated that the problem of communication between modern
bureaucratic institutions and members of non-Western cultural
groups can be understood to a considerable extent as a problem in
conflict of world view or reality set. More recent research has
argued that this difference in reality set is associated with the
predominant modes of communication, with the modern bureaucratic
institutions showing a strong association with literacy. While the
extent and power of Western bureaucratic institutions is well
known, it is also well known that these institutions are highly
unresponsive to their environments. Some researchers have referred
to this unresponsiveness as an institutional incapacity to learn.
(Scollon, 1981, p.i)
Scollon went on to characterize the
problem of high Native student attrition at the University as a
conflict between "the institution's knowledge" and "human
knowledge."
`The institution's knowledge'
characterizes the relationships between individual members or
clients which are governed by institutional considerations. `Human
knowledge' characterizes the relationships between members or
clients which are governed by human interpersonal considerations.
By framing the problem as a problem of `retention' the institution
was incapable of perceiving the issue from the point of view of
the affected population, Alaska Native students. It is recommended
that what is required is not increasing the involvement of
students in the institution, but on the contrary, increasing the
domain of human knowledge of institutional members. (Scollon,
1981, p.i)
Increasing the university's domain of
human knowledge to include and respect First Nations cultural values
and traditions is a formidable task, but it is a task that we must
begin if we are to make the institution more "user friendly" for
First Nations students. What then can be done to begin to reduce the
cultural distance and the role dichotomy between the producers and
the consumers of knowledge in university settings.
RELEVANCE TO FIRST NATIONS
PERSPECTIVES AND EXPERIENCE
If universities are to respect the
cultural integrity of First Nations students and communities, they
must adopt a posture that goes beyond the usual generation and
conveyance of literate knowledge, to include the institutional
legitimation of indigenous knowledge and skills, or as Goody has put
it, to foster "a re-valuation of forms of knowledge that are not
derived from books." (Goody, 1982, p. 201) Such a responsibility
requires an institutional respect for indigenous knowledge, as well
as an ability to help students to appreciate and build upon their
customary forms of consciousness and representation as they expand
their understanding of the world in which they live.
The complexity of the task of
incorporating a First Nations (oral) perspective in the everyday
functioning of the (literate) university is exacerbated by the
inherent problem of speaking of two reality sets in the idiom of only
one of them. (Scollon, 1981, p. 24) Nevertheless, with the help of an
emerging group of First Nations scholars, we are beginning to see the
outlines of a more culturally accommodating view of how knowledge is
constructed and passed on to others. One example of an attempt to
reconcile differences in the ways knowledge is understood and
conveyed is a contrastive study of orality and literacy by Jo-ann
Archibald, a member of the Sto:lo Nation in British Columbia, in
which she points to the need "to define and create new ways of
thinking and writing about literacy and its relationship to
orality."
With the technological advances
of video, television and film, our world has become a combined
oral/literate/visual one. This combination has exciting
possibilities for First Nations because it is nearing the
traditional holistic approach to teaching and learning which is
needed to heal our people who have been adversely affected by
history. (Archibald, 1990, p. 66)
Eber Hampton, a Chickasaw originally
from Oklahoma and now in Alaska, has made an effort to identify some
of the qualities that he considers important in the move to construct
an "Indian theory of education." (Hampton, 1988, p. 19) He lists the
following as twelve "standards" on which to judge any such
effort:
* Spirituality - an appreciation for
spiritual relationships.
* Service - the purpose of education is
to contribute to the people.
* Diversity - Indian education must meet
the standards of diverse tribes and communities.
* Culture - the importance of culturally
determined ways of thinking, communicating and living.
* Tradition - continuity with
tradition.
* Respect - the relationship between the
individual and the group recognized as mutually
empowering.
* History - appreciation of the facts of
Indian history, including the loss of the continent and continuing
racial and political oppression.
* Relentlessness - commitment to the
struggle for good schools for Indian children.
* Vitality - recognition of the strength
of Indian people and culture.
* Conflict - understanding the dynamics
and consequences of oppression.
* Place - the importance of sense of
place, land and territory.
* Transformation - commitment to
personal and societal change.
Such a list of qualities begins to offer
universities (and schools) a set of standards against which to
examine their policies and practices to see how respectful and
relevant they really are to First Nations considerations. While
Hampton's set of standards may differ from those against which the
university is accustomed to being judged, it is in fact a more
inclusive list of criteria whereby all students can find something
with which to identify. To the extent universities are able to
reconstruct themselves to be more relevant to, and accepting of First
Nations students' perspectives and experiences, they will be that
much more relevant and responsive to the needs of all
students.
RECIPROCAL
RELATIONSHIPS
One of the most frustrating aspects of
the university experience for First Nation students is the role
dichotomy between the producers and the consumers of knowledge in
university settings. The conventional institutionalized roles of a
university faculty member as the creator and dispenser of knowledge
and expertise and the student as the passive recipient of that
knowledge and expertise have a tendency to interfere with the
establishment of the kinds of personalized "human" relationships to
which First Nations students are most likely to respond. Scollon
described the problem in Alaska as follows:
Our research leads us to
believe that the only way that modern institutions such as the
University of Alaska can become responsive to their environments
is to acknowledge and exploit the institutional/human interface
that each member negotiates in each institutional act. In the
phrasing of the students, we must constantly "expose" ourselves to
the human and non-institutional. In the phrasing of the faculty we
must allow ourselves to become vulnerable. Institutional
invulnerability is the mark of institutional unresponsiveness.
(Scollon, 1981, p.18)
In an effort to help Native students
understand the nature of the institution in which they were situated
and to learn how to successfully negotiate their way through it,
Scollon developed an entry level course titled "Cultural Differences
in Institutional Settings." The course, which continues to be one of
the more popular for beginning Native students, is described in the
1990 University of Alaska Fairbanks catalog as follows:
Introduction to the phenomena
of culturally organized thought processes, with emphasis on the
communication patterns resulting from the interaction of peoples
from different linguistic/cultural traditions in modern
institutional settings. Special attention is paid to Alaskan
Native and non-Native communication patterns.
Another example of a course with a
similar purpose but a different focus, is a course offered at the
University of British Columbia titled, "Cross-Cultural Education
(Native Indians)," described in the 1990-91 Calendar as
follows:
Instructional techniques for
adapting teaching to the needs of Indian students; methods of
enriching the curriculum by including the cultural background of
all students; the course will include some examination of the
anthropological, sociological and historical backgrounds of Native
Indians with an emphasis on contemporary situations as these
relate to teaching.
In both of these courses, the emphasis
is on making teaching and learning two-way processes, in which the
give-and-take between faculty and students opens up new levels of
understanding for everyone. Such reciprocity is achieved when the
faculty member makes an effort to understand and build upon the
cultural background of the students, and the students are able to
gain access to the inner-workings of the culture (and the
institution) to which they are being introduced.
One of the few examples of situations in
which university faculty members make a deliberate effort to be more
accessible and "vulnerable" to accommodate First Nations students is
in field-based programs in which faculty are physically located in
outlying communities. The out-stationing of faculty has been an
inherent feature of many of the Native/First Nations teacher
education programs that have been established across Canada and the
U.S. over the past twenty years. The effect of such a move on the
role of faculty and students is reflected in the following account of
the "field-coordinator" faculty position in the Cross-Cultural
Education Development (X-CED) teacher education program situated in
rural Alaska:
The most effective faculty
members in our field programs have been those who have been able
to engage themselves and their students in a process of
sense-making and skill-building through active participation in
the world around them. They use books and pencil and paper as a
means to add breadth and depth to the students' understanding, but
not as the sole source of knowledge. They measure their students'
achievement through the students' ability to effectively perform
meaningful and contextually appropriate tasks. They engage the
students in tasks that allow for the integration of various forms
of knowledge and the application and display of that knowledge in
a variety of ways. They jointly build knowledge from the ground up
with their students through an inductive process that allows the
students to develop their own emic perspective, at the same time
using literate forms of knowledge to acquaint them with other
perspectives. They experience with students, the ambiguity,
unpredictability and complexity of the real world, and in the
process, prepare students who are better equipped to find
solutions to problems for which we may not yet even have a theory
(Barnhardt, 1986, p.6).
Faculty members and students in such a
reciprocal relationship are in a position to create a new kind of
education, to formulate new paradigms or explanatory frameworks that
help us establish a greater equilibrium and congruence between the
literate view of the world and the reality we encounter when we step
outside the walls of the "Ivory Tower." It is not necessary that all
faculty leave the security of the university campus with its
protective structure of academic disciplines and venture into the
uncertainty of the world outside, but it is important that enough do
so to provide a reality-check for the institution as a whole. Even
those who do venture out, however, sometimes hesitate to make
themselves vulnerable to any challenging of the efficacy of their
authority and beliefs, and find ways to protect themselves behind a
veneer of academic aloofness and obfuscation. For First Nations
students and communities, such a posture is no longer
acceptable.
Responsibility Through
Participation
In the context of a First Nations
perspective of the university, higher education is not a neutral
enterprise. Gaining access to the university means more than gaining
an education -- it also means gaining access to power, authority, and
an opportunity to exercise control over the affairs of everyday life,
affairs that are usually taken for granted by most non-Native people.
For First Nations students, this is a matter of necessity, for in
order to survive the formal curriculum, they must also learn to
navigate through the alien power structure of the institution. In
effect, they must engage in an educational strategy comparable to
what Henry Giroux refers to as "border pedagogy":
Students must engage knowledge
as a border-crosser, as a person moving in and out of borders
constructed around coordinates of difference and power. These are
not only physical borders, they are cultural borders historically
constructed and socially organized within maps of rules and
regulations that limit and enable particular identities,
individual capacities, and social forms. In this case, students
cross over into borders of meaning, maps of knowledge, social
relations, and values that are increasingly being negotiated and
rewritten as the codes and regulations which organize them become
destabilized and reshaped. (Giroux, 1988, p. 169)
For universities that are seriously
committed to finding ways to create a more hospitable climate for
First Nations students, the institutional implications of such border
negotiations can be far-reaching. Tierney, building on Giroux's form
of critical analysis, outlines what he sees as some of the steps that
need to be considered:
I am suggesting that
organizations need to be constructed where minority students'
lives are celebrated and affirmed throughout the culture of the
institution. The point is not simply to have a Native American
Studies Center or a course or two devoted to Native peoples.
Minority students need institutions that create the conditions
where the students not only celebrate their own histories but also
are helped to examine critically how their lives are shaped and
molded by society's forces. Such a theoretical suggestion has
implications for virtually all areas of the organization -- from
how we organize student affairs, to the manner in which we
construct knowledge, from the role of assessment, to the role of
the college president. (Tierney, 1993, p. 322)
Clearly, such "theoretical suggestions"
for comprehensive reform are not likely to spread like wildfire
through college campuses, but that does not mean that systemic
changes are not possible; in fact, they are already happening. The
most promising sign on the horizon of First Nations people exercising
responsibility and increasing participation in the arena of higher
education is the burgeoning number of First Nations
post-secondary/adult education initiatives, both within and outside
existing institutions across the U.S. and Canada. Examples range from
the 24 Tribal Colleges in the U.S. to the Saskatchewan Indian
Federated College, the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, the
Secwepemc Cultural Education Society, the James Bay Education Centre,
the Gabriel Dumont Institute, the First Nations House of Learning,
and many other similar First Nations institutions across Canada, all
of which are having a marked effect on the level of participation and
success of First nations students (Boyer, 1989; Chrisjohn & Mrochuk. 1990).
The structure and focus of each of these
institutions vary greatly, with services aimed at clientele ranging
from the local community to national levels, and with program
emphases ranging from adult and vocational education to graduate
level program. Typical program offerings are in the areas of
band/tribal/municipal self-government, rural/community/economic
development, Native/ Indian/ Aboriginal law, land claims and natural
resources management, Native teacher education, First Nations health
and social services, Native language revitalization, First Nations
performing and creative arts, and adult education/literacy
development. Underlying all of these programs and institutions, is an
explicit commitment to culturally appropriate, readily accessible,
quality post-secondary education for First Nations people. Typical of
the mission statements associated with such institutions is that of
the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology (NVIT) in Merritt, British
Columbia:
To provide First Nations people
with access to a system of the highest quality post-secondary,
academic and career/technical education in a culturally reinforced
environment (NVIT, 1990, p.1).
While NVIT functions as a more or less
independent First Nations institution, similar purposes can be
achieved within the structural framework of existing public
institutions. At the University of British Columbia (UBC), for
example, the First Nations House of Learning draws on the following
mission to broaden the cultural attributes of all UBC programs by
helping them better serve the needs of First Nations
people:
The mandate of the First
Nations House of Learning is to make the University's vast
resources more accessible to British Columbia's First People, and
to improve the University's ability to meet the needs of First
Nations. The House of Learning is continuously seeking direction
from the First Nations community in determining priorities and
approaches. This is achieved through consultation meetings and
workshops held throughout the province. The First Nations House of
Learning is dedicated to quality preparation in all fields of
post-secondary study. We believe that quality education is
determined by its relevance to the philosophy and values of First
Nations (Kirkness, 1990, p.4).
Similar missions, goals and programs can
be found in most of the other higher education initiatives coming
from First Nations people across Canada and the U.S. It is the
exercise of First Nations leadership and responsibility through
institutions such as these that offers the best long-term promise for
improving First Nations participation in higher education (Barnhardt,
1991). Through institutions of their own making and/or under their
own control, First Nations people are creating a more comprehensive
definition of "education" and reaffirming their right to respect and
self-determination. The significance of this undertaking was
summarized by the Carnegie Foundation in its report on U.S. Tribal
Colleges:
At the heart of the tribal
college movement is a commitment by Native Americans to reclaim
their cultural heritage. The commitment to reaffirm traditions is
a driving force fed by a spirit based on shared history passed
down through generations, and on common goals. Some tribes have
lost much of their tradition, and feel, with a sense of urgency,
that they must reclaim all they can from the past even as they
confront problems of the present. The obstacles in this endeavor
are enormous but, again, Indians are determined to reaffirm their
heritage, and tribal colleges, through their curriculum and campus
climate, are places of great promise (Boyer, 1989, p.
xiii).
The need for such a shift in cultural
emphasis as that sought by the Tribal Colleges is no less important
in existing Western-oriented institutions of higher education serving
First Nations students, but the structures and processes for engaging
with First Nations people through these institutions are necessarily
different. The nature of some of those differences are spelled out by
Tierney in his use of critical analysis to examine the role of
colleges with regard to Native American students:
The emphasis of a critical
analysis shifts away from what strategies those in power can
develop to help those not in power, to analyzing how power exists
in the organization, and given how power operates, to developing
strategies that seek to transform those relations. All
organizational participants will be encouraged to come to terms
with how they may reconstruct and transform the organization's
culture. As opposed to a rhetoric of what mainstream organizations
will do for Native Americans -- a top-down managerial
approach -- the struggle is to develop strategies and policies
that emerge from a vision of working with Native Americans
toward a participatory goal of emancipation and empowerment.
(Tierney, 1993, p. 323)
Tierney's call for the reconstruction
and transformation of the university's culture to better serve First
Nations ends may seem at first to be a daunting task, but it really
is no more than a matter of shifting to a policy, posture and
practice of actually working with First Nations people, and in doing
so, attending to the "Four R's" of respect, relevance, reciprocity
and responsibility. We have ample evidence that this can be, and is
being done, within existing institutions, as well as through
institutions of First Nations peoples own making.
Conclusion
It is the notion of empowerment that is
at the heart of First Nations participation in higher education --
not just empowerment as individuals, but empowerment as bands, as
tribes, as nations, and as a people. For the institutions to which
they must turn to obtain that education, the challenge is clear. What
First Nations people are seeking is not a lesser education, and not
even an equal education, but rather a better education -- an
education that respects them for who they are, that is relevant to
their view of the world, that offers reciprocity in their
relationships with others, and that helps them exercise
responsibility over their own lives. It is not enough for
universities to focus their attention on "attrition and "retention" as an excuse
to intensify efforts at cultural assimilation. Such approaches in themselves
have not made a significant difference, and
often have resulted in further alienation. Instead, the very nature
and purpose of higher education for First Nations people must be
reconsidered, and when we do, we will find that the entire
institution, as well as society as a whole, will be strengthened and
everyone will benefit. The only question remaining is, can those who
are in a position to make a difference seize the opportunity and
overcome institutional inertia soon enough to avoid the alienation of
another generation of First Nations people, as well as the further
erosion of the university's ability to serve the needs of society as
a whole? Can we make the necessary adaptations and escape the
misfortune of the monkeys in Indonesia? Let us hope so, because the
university is too vital an institution to end up in the
zoo.
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