The Flavours of Indigenous Marginalization in Provincial Education in Canada
Global Friday Presents
Co-sponsored with Inspiring Women Among Us (IWAU) and the UNBC Geography Program
Dr. Anne Godlewska, Professor & Laura Schaefli, PhD Candidate
Department of Geography & Planning
Queen's University
ABSTRACT: The Flavours of Indigenous Marginalization in Provincial Education In Canada
Anne Godlewska, Laura Schaefli, John Rose, and Christopher Lamb
This paper explores the context, rationale, nature and findings of the Assessing and Addressing Student Awareness of Indigenous people and topics in Canada project. We want to understand how students in Canada are learning to think about colonialism and its relationship to First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. The project looks at curricula, text and undergraduate student knowledge and attitudes across educational jurisdictions in Canada. It involves content analysis of curricula and government policies; critical content analysis of school texts; the development of a knowledge test through co-design with First Nations, Métis and Inuit educators; the design of a larger questionnaire in which the knowledge test is embedded; implementation of the questionnaire in a survey of first-year and final year undergraduate students; quantitative and qualitative data analysis; and the delivery of reports to university and non-university communities. Working across Canada we are increasingly noticing commonalities and differences linked to different histories of contact, different times and conditions of entry into Canada, different First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples and different provincial identities (roles within the Canadian political and economic system). In all contexts so far, exclusion of First Nations, Métis and Inuit people is the norm. There is some variation in the flavour and strategies of exclusion and these are linked to particular settler vulnerabilities. We discuss our findings in the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and British Columbia.
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