From age five, Tungoyuq Mary Carpenter attended a Northwest Territories residential school in the 1950s. Going to school away from home, Carpenter only saw her family two days a year due to government regulations prohibiting children from flying in one-engine planes.
“I don’t know what normal is,” she reflects sadly. “When you tell me that you have a father and mother and siblings, I don’t know what that means.”
At school, Carpenter was forced to wear a dog tag reading ‘W3-244,’ as part of the Eskimo identification of Canada.
“None of us had last names, so they objectified us with dog tags,” she reveals.
The situation for aboriginal Canadians has certainly improved since Carpenter’s residential school experience, almost 50 years ago, but the educational standards for aboriginal Canadians are still not quite on par with non-aboriginal Canadians. Getting a good secondary-school education is difficult, and the transition to university is a challenge that not all students are willing to take on.
History, says Carleton professor Robert Shepherd, is not a favourable backdrop for Aboriginals seeking education, and Carpenter’s story is not alone. Shepherd co-founded a management consulting firm dealing with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, before assuming his current position with Carleton’s School of Public Policy and Administration.
“We haven’t exactly been the kindest,” Shepherd said.
“There’s entire generations peeled away from their families.”
Who’s responsible?
Now, the challenge is overcoming the past, and making sense of the current legal situation. Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, aboriginal affairs fall under federal jurisdiction, however, education is a provincial responsibility. This overlap creates a complex and confusing system for the government, and the people trying to navigate the system, according to Shepherd.
“You own your house, but you don’t own the land that it’s sitting on,” he said. The same applies to schools. The federal government is responsible for property maintenance and teacher salaries, but curriculum is up to the province.
“This draws in a lot of confusion,” Shepherd said. First Nations schools still have to satisfy provincial curriculum standard, and have their individual curriculums approved by local school boards. This makes teaching curriculum specific to aboriginal art, culture and history more difficult for schools on reserves.
For Carleton professor Alan Ryan, aboriginal studies are drastically different than other academic studies.
A former folk singer, artist, graphic designer and author, Ryan studies humour and irony in aboriginal art. Speaking from his office decorated by floor to ceiling bookshelves of aboriginal art and culture, Ryan reflected on his experiences in aboriginal communities and academic world across Canada over the past 30 years.
Teaching in the aboriginal community, Ryan said he didn’t try to teach students what they already knew.
“I tried to put what they already knew into a broader context,” he said.
For his graduate seminar, Ryan said he integrates the community by inviting guest speakers and urging his students to volunteer with community organizations.
At Carleton, he integrates indigenous ways of teaching and learning into his class, emphasizing the oral tradition and holistic learning, and trying to make the personal and transformational.
Making the transition
But not all professors think like Ryan, and jumping into the academic world can be a harsh experience. The remote locations of most reserves can make the move to urban universities jarring.
“Most reserves are not exactly located in downtown Toronto,” Shepherd said.
On top of that, unemployment rates and other social problems such as substance abuse create additional hurdles for students on reserves.
“For many First Nations that are trying to address those other problems, like substance abuse, education falls down the list of priorities,” Shepherd said.
Many students do overcome challenging circumstances, but not as many as their non-aboriginal counterparts.
The most recent data from Statistics Canada’s 2006 report concluded that less aboriginal students attend and complete university than non-aboriginal students. The distribution of aboriginal people aged 25-54 with university degrees is seven per cent for First Nations, nine per cent for Métis and four per cent for Inuit, compared to 25 per cent of non-aboriginal population with university degrees.
However, enrollment and graduation in college and trades is about even for aboriginal and non-aboriginal students, according to the report.
Though they may be a minority, there are a variety of services offered for aboriginal students on Carleton campus, like the Aboriginal Enriched Support Program.
“Unlike other universities, Carleton has a pretty supportive culture to it,” Shepherd said, comparing it to his experiences at Brock University, the University of Ottawa and Queen’s University. Aboriginal students seem to agree.
Sitting in his small, lamp-lit office, Pitseolak Pfeifer spoke about his own experience with the program. With the program’s help, he came to Carleton last year and he’s now the aboriginal centre’s program co-ordinator.
For Pfeifer, 44, the support program helped him bridge the gap between his experiences after college and his decision to return to university after spending several years in management.
“I really wanted to get a degree because it allows me to stay competitive in the employment field,” Pfeifer said, adding that his education in management studies from Arctic College his hometown of Iqaluit allowed him to secure employment for a long time.
“Living in a small town, I didn’t really want to go anywhere,” he said. “I had applied to Carleton when I was in Grade 12, but [the] journalism school said my marks just weren’t good enough.”
Pfeifer said he gave up on the idea of school for the time being, until years later when he found himself at a crossroads in his life, and felt ready to go back.
“As a mature student I felt I had enough experience and enough passion to take it on,” he said.
Even with experience behind him, Pfeifer’s time at Carleton so far has not been challenge-free. A lot of the challenges had to do with the fact that as an aboriginal student in a sea of dominantly white Canadians, he was a minority.
“I was a little concerned I wouldn’t feel a part of it,” he said, but commended the school’s efforts to make him feel included.
Finances
There are some bursary programs at Carleton for Aboriginal students, but there are a limited number of bursaries available, and to be considered, students must complete an extensive application, voluntarily self-identify as an Aboriginal student, and meet Ontario residency requirements. These bursaries are listed under Awards and Financial Aid on Carleton’s website.
Even bursaries awarded to reserves don’t provide enough funds for all students who want to go to university.
“I would be very surprised if you found very many aboriginal university students who are getting funding at 100 per cent coming to Carleton,” he said.
Shepherd explained this is because on a reserve, there may be ten students wanting to go to university, but only enough government funding for five. In this case, the reserve would either spread the money out and partially fund all the students, or pick and choose which students get funding. Usually, they choose the former option, he said.
Ignorance on campus
This August, Carleton released its report on the 2010 Commission on Inter-Cultural, Inter-religious and Inter-racial Relationships on campus. The report said one of the main themes emerging from the commission meetings was the importance of creating open and safe classrooms and public spaces for students to voice and hear different views.
“If we’re going to make a better country, then this university has to make space for true and honest dialogue,” Pitseolak said.
The report was well meaning, he said, but fell short in terms of providing a strategy to bring needed human and financial resources to deal with some of the issues facing aboriginal students on campus.
Carleton’s report identified misinformation and lack of knowledge as a main source of discomfort for aboriginal students.
Pitseolak said the classroom is a breeding ground for potentially racist comments and ignorance, which he said keep aboriginal students separate. He emphasized the responsibility of teaching assistants and professors to raise awareness and promote understanding, especially in discussion groups where the atmosphere is less formal.
“A lot of people are starting from a foundation of ignorance . . . It’s too easy to make flippant remarks like ‘Well, get over it,’ or ‘you guys get free everything so quit asking for stuff,’” he said.
The ignorant and inaccurate remarks bleed into a general ignorance about aboriginal, First Nations, and Métis culture as a whole.
The tendency, said Carleton’s report, is to categorize “Aboriginal” as one culture. But the Aboriginal Centre’s meet and greet Oct. 22 proved to be a layered look into diverse and distinct cultures joining together in solidarity.
The night began with students, elders and Ryan’s graduate Aboriginal Studies class milling about Roosters’ and enjoying the free chili catered by an Algonquin reserve nearby.
The highlight was spoken word by Montreal poet Taqralik Partridge. Only a few occasional snaps of approval interrupted her soft, breathy voice as she recited her poems from memory. Reflective of the largely oral aboriginal traditions, the experience is impossible to replicate in print.
“Poetry in books — it just kind of sucks,” she joked in between performances.
Painting stunning pictures of nature and culture, her words were filled with wisdom and history.
“My mother used to say, when people are about the leave this world, they get really beautiful,” Patridge said.
After reeling from the humbling experience of spoken-word poetry, the fifty or so attendees were invited to share their own cultural talents. Some name chanting cured the shyness, and there was story telling, a Cree song, and Iroquois smoke dancing. Ryan even braved throat singing.
But even with bridge and enrichment programs, and opportunities to study and get involved in aboriginal cultural activities, the dropout rates for aboriginal students are still staggering in comparison to non-aboriginal students.
Statistics Canada’s most recent 2008 study of Canadian postsecondary institutions revealed that the 30 per cent university dropout rate for aboriginal students is nearly double the 16 per cent dropout rate for non-aboriginal students.
“We’re often told as first nations people that we’re making small steps,” said Satsan (Herb George), the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief of the Frog Clan at at Carleton’s fourth annual Katherine A.J. Graham Lecture Oct. 23.
“We’re at a time where what we need is not small steps, but it’s leaps and bounds. Are there institutions that are prepared to do that?”
