Taking Control: Power and Contradiction in First Nations Adult Education

305 Pages·1995·17.786 MB·English

by  Celia Haig-Brown

Taking Control
Taking Control is a critical ethnography of the Native Education Centre in
Vancouver, British Columbia. It presents an intimate view of the centre,
focusing on the ways that people work there - First Nations students, board
members, teachers - and how they talk about and put into practice their
beliefs about First Nations control.
The study is based primarily on fieldwork conducted in the centre during
the 1988-9 school year. At that time, over 400 adult students were enrolled
in eleven programs ranging from basic literacy and upgrading to 'skills train-
ing.' The author contextualizes people's notions of taking control first within
the space where they work - a building specially created using cedar planks,
glass, and hand-carved poles - and then in relation to the efforts by Abo-
riginal people to control their formal education in British Columbia. The
work engages theoretically with Foucault's notion of power as a relation,
juxtaposing it with the National Indian Brotherhood document Indian Con-
trol of Indian Education (1973). Views of the programs of study are a central
focus of Taking Control, which also includes a self-reflexive analysis of the
non-Native researcher's position in a study of First Nations control.
Celia Haig-Brown is a professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser
University.
To all Aboriginal people
engaged in the process of taking control
and to the non-Native people
who work by their sides
Celia Haig-Brown
Taking Control:
Power and Contradiction in
First Nations Adult Education
UBCPress /Vancouver
© UBC Press 1995
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission
of the publisher.
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper oo
ISBN 0-7748-0466-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 0-7748-0493-9 (paperback)
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Haig-Brown, Celia, 1947-
Taking control
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7748-0466-1 (bound). - ISBN 0-7748-0493-9 (pbk.)
1. Indians of North America - British Columbia - Vancouver - Education.
2. Adult education - British Columbia - Vancouver. 3. Native Education Centre
(Vancouver, B.C.) I. Title.
E96.65.B7H34 1994 371.97'97091133 C94-910654-2
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation
of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
It has also received funding from the Multiculturalism Programs of the Department of
Canadian Heritage.
UBC Press also gratefully acknowledges the ongoing support to its publishing program
from the Canada Council, the Province of British Columbia Cultural Services Branch,
and the Department of Communications of the Government of Canada.
Royalties from the book are to be divided between the Native Education Centre and the
author.
Set in Stone by Irma Rodriguez, Artegraphica Design Co.
Printed and bound in Canada by D.W. Friesen & Sons Ltd.
Copy-editor: Joanne Richardson
Proofreader: Jacqueline Wood
Indexer: Bob Smith
UBC Press
University of British Columbia
6344 Memorial Road
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
(604) 822-3259
Fax: [phone]
Contents
Foreword / vii
Ron Shortt
Preface / ix
Michael Apple
Acknowledgments / xii
Introduction / xiv
Part 1: Approaching the Native Education Centre
1 The Place/3
2 Power, Culture, and Control / 13
3 Doing Ethnography: Socially Constructing Reality I 27
4 Historical Fragments: First Nations Control in British Columbia / 50
5 Becoming: A History of the Native Education Centre / 77
Part 2: The Everyday World of Taking Control
6 The People and the Place /109
7 The People and the Programs / 149
8 Taking Control: What They Said / 194
vi Contents
Part 3: Forming Knowledge, Creating Discourse
9 Contradiction, Power, and Control / 233
Appendixes / 255
Notes / 262
References / 266
Index / 275
Foreword
Ron Shortt
Aboriginal people of this country and, indeed, worldwide have good reason
to be mistrustful of the outside research into, and consequent interpreta-
tions of, our experience and our hopes for the future. Similarly, our reluc-
tance to entrust important aspects of our strategies and methods for regain-
ing control of our lives and our future to academics is both deeply rooted
and legitimate. However sensitive they might be, academics must always
remain observers, not participants, in our history and in our efforts to de-
fine our future. Their methodologies were developed to serve the needs of a
culture and society that has neither treated us well nor been sympathetic to
our needs.
First Nations people in Canada have long been engaged in a complex
struggle to assemble the resources and to develop the institutions and pro-
cesses necessary to effecting our decolonization. That struggle has been all-
encompassing, touching, as it does, on every aspect of our lives and of our
interaction with non-Aboriginal society and culture.
It has long been recognized that education is one of the keys to a mean-
ingful and fulfilling future. Native people throughout Canada have lived
the paradox of having what is recognized as one of the best education
systems in the world fail dismally in meeting their needs. That failure
is a matter of well-documented public record, thus needing no further
comment here.
It became clear to Aboriginal leaders that the reasons for the failure of the
education system were inextricably linked with the processes and practices
of colonization - processes and practices which ensured that the educa-
tional/academic agenda was largely irrelevant to the health and survival of
our cultures, nations, and people. For Aboriginal people, such processes are
invalidating rather than validating, oppressive rather than liberating, de-
structive rather than constructive. In short, they are utterly inimical to the
building of strong, viable communities. And mainstream education has been
viii Foreword
a continuation of colonization - at least as it has been experienced by most
Aboriginal people.
In 1972, the National Indian Brotherhood presented to Canada a docu-
ment which contained a blueprint for bringing about shared responsibility
for the education of Aboriginal people - a shared responsibility that would
rectify the major shortcomings of the existing educational/academic agenda.
As expressed in the title of the document, Indian Control of Indian Education,
its key proposal was that Aboriginal educators should take control of, and
responsibility for, the education of Aboriginal people. It is hardly surprising
that the liberation envisaged by the National Indian Brotherhood has not
been fully achieved even now, more than twenty years later.
One effect of the NIB document, however, has been to give impetus to a
range of initiatives by First Nations people to develop institutions and in-
frastructures that would deliver culturally relevant and appropriate educa-
tion. These emerging institutions were to face the challenge of providing
quality academic curricula while, at the same time, incorporating relevant
cultural values into course offerings.
It was into this movement that the Native Education Centre, the subject
of this study, was born. The centre and its governing body, the Urban Na-
tive Indian Education Society, has, since its inception, been faced with at
least two major challenges: (1) being accepted by mainstream institutions
and authorities and (2) finding ways of providing culturally relevant aca-
demic programs in an institutional setting that, in many ways, is the
antithesis of the traditional Aboriginal 'life as classroom' approach to edu-
cation. This book shows how the Native Education Centre has responded
to both of these challenges.
The research which led to this publication was allowed only after careful
consideration by the staff and board of directors of the Urban Native Indian
Education Society. One cannot but be impressed with the courage of the
board in granting final authority for the conducting of this wide-ranging
research. Similarly, one is impressed with the confidence which the board
exhibited in its own vision and operations.
On behalf of the board and staff of the Urban Native Indian Education
Society and the Native Education Centre, I want to express appreciation for
the candour, sensitivity, and rigour with which Celia Haig-Brown has ap-
proached her research and the philosophical issues relating to both her
methodology/theory and her final report.
Ron Shortt
Administrator, Native Education Centre
Preface
Michael W. Apple
It should hardly have to be said, but perhaps it is worth remembering, that
education is not a neutral activity. It is profoundly political. This is the case
in a number of ways. First, our formal institutions of education - because
they cannot escape their history and the social conditions in which they
are situated - are intimately linked with the social divisions of paid and
unpaid labour in this society. Second, there is a politics of collective memory
at work in schools. The curriculum itself is always a choice from a wider
universe of knowledge and values. Thus, schooling is deeply implicated in
cultural politics, with some groups having the power to declare their knowl-
edge, values, and histories (i.e., 'official knowledge'), while others are
marginalized. Third, teaching is, itself, involved in politics. Some people
are declared to be 'worthy' of teaching, while others are deemed unworthy.
This is strikingly visible in those countries where teaching is seen as mainly
women's work, with the struggles over autonomy, respect, wages, and con-
trol that often accompany such definitions. Yet teaching is political in an-
other way. The very act itself attests to the various ways in which different
people believe that their cultures should be passed on. Fourth, education is
often seen as a function of the state. Thus, it is regulated according to cer-
tain economic, political, and cultural interests and pressures which lead the
state to support some groups more than others. Fifth, changing what we
have now, and then defending it against attacks from those who are either
threatened by these transformations or who may be racist, requires that we
think politically.
I could go on, but I think my point is clear. Education and power are parts
of an indissoluble couplet (Apple 1993). Not to recognize the intimate con-
nections between the two is to live in a world divorced from reality. But
reality doesn't stalk around wearing a label; it is contested by different groups
with different social and ideological outlooks and agendas. There are multi-
ple stories about what counts as reality. Some are more gritty and connected