Part 3

Educating Our Nation

After years of abuse and isolation at residential schools, First Nations communities are taking back control over education. Many see it as the key first step toward native self-government. In this series, we’ll examine how First Nation communities are transforming what was once a source of profound alienation and despair to a creator of pride, knowledge and confidence.

Today: Part 3: B.C. bands take educational control for brighter future

Previously: Part 1: Community-run schools paving the way toward First Nations’ self-government and Part 2: Learning to move past residential schools

B.C. bands take educational control for brighter future

By Jenifer Norwell

Every morning children at the Neqweyqwelsten School start their day with prayer, in

Secwepemctsín, to the creator. Students from kindergarten to Grade 7 gather in their classes and give thanks in their own language for the land, their families and the opportunities they’re given.

That prayer is also an unspoken affirmation of the school’s commitment to the language and culture of the Simpcw First Nation, north of Barriere.

For nearly 30 years, the Simpcw First Nation has been striking an educational balance between culture and convention and has been doing it in its own community. That’s given the nearly 700 band members a chance to take control of their children’s education.

Neqweyqwelsten School was started in 1982 after parents in the community pushed for local education that would provide a cultural context for their children. Since it started, the parent-run school has expanded from a morning program for toddlers to a year-round school that offers a head-start program and kindergarten to Grade 7 education. With that growth, the school continues to stand out from provincial schools because of its focus on culture and language.

Another thing that sets the school apart is Judy Matthew, the school’s primary teacher. She’s been teaching there almost since Neqweyqwelsten School was founded and is a staple of the children’s early education.

Sitting at a small table, she marks her students’ work while a flurry of action whirls around her. Children laugh and read through picture books as she surveys her classroom. Back when the school started, she knew it would be critical in keeping the language and culture of the Simpcw alive.

“We had the resources to do it and we knew things were becoming scarce,” she says. “Fluent

speakers are very, very rare.”

“Because it’s an oral tradition, our elders are our books so when an elder passes away or a fluent speaker passes away, that is a body of knowledge that’s very distinct that is lost,” says Matthew.

There are now only about five fluent speakers in the community and that lack is why the school needs people like Charli Fortier.

Fortier, 24, is a former student of the school who’s now returned as the Secwepemctsín materials

developer. Her goal is to create resources that will increase the amount of Secwepemctsín spoken

in the school and the community. It also lets her pass along the knowledge she gained at the

school. Her parents helped found the school and she feels fortunate to have gone there.

“I wouldn’t have experienced anything like this in public school,” says Fortier, “I wouldn’t have

been able to learn the language or the culture. It was something that wasn’t very prominent in our

parents’ generation at all so I wouldn’t have gotten that aspect of that teaching at home.”

“I was happy to be here and be part of that,” says Fortier.

Students like Fortier represent a bright spot in First Nations education. More than 40

per cent of First Nations students between the ages of 20 and 24 don’t have their high school

diploma, according to a 2009 study by the Canadian Council on Learning. In Fortier’s class, the

outcome was much better—out of the 14 students that went through Neqweyqwelsten School with her, 12 graduated. All 12 went on to get some post-secondary education. Fortier majored in First Nations Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby.

Now she’s sharing her knowledge with the school’s current students. In the school’s bright

basement, Fortier works on creating new language worksheets for future students. Around the

room, numbers line the walls with the Secwepemctsín words for the numbers below.

“It’s kind of a ripple effect because there’s still parents who didn’t get the opportunity like we

did so the knowledge of language and the knowledge of culture and tradition still isn’t there,”

she says. “To have the kids learn it here and to be so enthusiastic and to bring it back home, it’s

helping everybody.”

In the primary classroom, children flip though books and chat with each other. Asia Ball, 6,

smiles shyly as she plays on the ground. Some of her favourite parts of Grade 1 are getting to say

the morning prayer, drumming in the gym and doing puzzles.

“It’s great,” says Ball.

Like many of the students, Ball has a confidence to her. She likes her school and is happy to be there.

Part of what makes the school enjoyable is Joe Jules. He teaches culture to the students in addition to his work at the band office. Every week, students learn drumming, singing and cultural games from him. Jules sees this education as laying the foundation for their future.

“Any inherent rights, they’re not based on the colour of my skin and the percentage of my blood.

I tell the people that what makes you unique, what gives you that connection and guarantees your

place in the world is hanging onto your culture, your language, your ceremonial ways,” says

Jules.

Tom Eustache, a councillor with the band, also sees the value in building a sense of identity. He

holds the education portfolio, but like many in the community, his connection to the school isn’t

just business. He’s had two children go though the school and has seen its benefits.

“It’s important so they have some kind of identity, are able to identify with who they are. I think

that’s important because if you don’t know who you are then you’re sort of lost in that and when

my children were going through, they learned a lot of the language which I never did and they

actually have learned a lot from their grandparents, which I didn’t. They taught them more than

they taught me,” he says.

Another person who’s benefited from the school is Rachael Bowser, a former student who’s

returned to the school to help convert existing educational materials into a digital form.

“Having the positive experience that I had growing up and going to school here has really made

me proud of who I am and really proud to say, ‘Yes, I’m First Nations. I am a Shuswap woman.

This is where I grew up. These are my people.’ It’s made me really proud to say that and not

only am I proud to say it, I’m proud to definitely be living here, growing up the way that I did

and still living the way that I do,” says Bowser.

The school helped give her a sense of pride that many First Nations students have had to work

hard to obtain.

Nathan Matthew was one of the parents who helped found the Neqweyqwelsten School and

has gone on to become the executive director of Aboriginal education at Thompson Rivers

University in Kamloops.

He believes that First Nations-driven education is essential for the success for First Nations

people.

“The first task is to develop that belief in First Nations people because without that you can’t

really go any further,” he says.

“We survived and we will move into the future with that notion, building from a notion of strength and potential rather than this notion of deficits,” says Nathan Matthew.

Building from strengths is exactly what the Neqweyqwelsten School has been doing for nearly 30 years.

For Judy Matthew, culture is at the heart of what allows First Nations to be unique.

“It’s at our core. Secwepemc, being First Nations Secwepemc, traditions and language and culture are at our core. Everything we do is because of that and for that,” she says.

Part 2

Educating Our Nation

After years of abuse and isolation at residential schools, First Nations communities are taking back control over education. Many see it as the key first step toward native self-government. In this series, we’ll examine how First Nation communities are transforming what was once a source of profound alienation and despair to a creator of pride, knowledge and confidence.

Today: Part 2: Learning to move past residential schools

Followed by: and Part 3: B.C. bands take educational control for brighter future.

Previously, Part 1: Community-run schools paving the way toward First Nations’ self-government

First Nations learning to move past residential schools

By Jenifer Norwell

Every time Janet Deneault steps into the Kamloops Residential School, it takes her back to when

she was nine years old. The red brick of the outer walls and the pastel blues and yellows of the

hallways and dormitories haven’t changed in the nearly 40 years since she was a student.

It took Deneault, 53, more than three decades to come back to the school where she lived for six years as a child. Now she returns to the school regularly to give tours as part of her job as a museum educator with the Secwepemc Museum. Though her work, she teaches students and visitors about what happened at the school and the effects it had on its students.

Starting in the 1870s, First Nations children were forced to attend government-funded schools,

usually located far away from their own communities. The schools themselves came out of the creation of the Indian Act in 1876. The act determined who was and was not an Indian and set out the rules of what First Nations people were allowed to do.

The first school in Kamloops opened in 1890 and was rebuilt in its current state after a fire in

1923. In the nearly 90 years before the school closed in 1977, the goal of the school was simple–

to assimilate First Nations children into mainstream society.

In reality, what the school did was further isolate First Nations children. Students were often subjected to all kinds of abuse. They were underfed and forced to do manual labour. Even when conditions were good, students weren’t taught the necessary skills to excel outside the school’s

walls.

Sitting in her office, tucked behind the museum in the old annex building that once housed the dormitories for senior students at the residential school, Deneault remembers what her time was like at the school.

“I had no idea about how to get down on my knees and scrub a floor, but I had to learn. I had to

do it,” she says.

She’s not the only one who suffered at the school. In a windowless room of the museum, posters about residential schools line a partition. The black and white eyes of children stare out at visitors as the words beside their faces explain how students were forced to work the land and were sometimes beaten or starved for their trouble.

Daniel Saul’s face is also on the walls of the museum. The grad photo of the manager of the Secwepemc Museum hangs next to his classmates. A small smile turns up the corners of his teenage mouth, but his experience at the school wasn’t positive. He attended the Kamloops Residential School for 10 years starting in Grade 3. During his time there, Saul lost his language and his close connection to his community, the Simpcw First Nation, north of Barriere.

“Even though we were surrounded by hundreds of kids, we were all very lonely because you’re lonesome for your family and we were very poor and they didn’t have a vehicle or anything like that to come all the time,” he says.

Looking out over the old school, Saul remembers the harsh treatment he suffered there.

“I was never beaten in my life until I got here,” he says.

Stories like Saul’s resonate with Lisa Cooke, a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor

at Thompson Rivers University in the department of Sociology and Anthropology. She’s spent much of her academic life studying First Nations people.

“At the time in law you couldn’t be an Indian and a citizen of Canada so to turn all Indians into good Canadian citizens, the government felt that the best thing to do would be go for the kids,”

says Cooke.

“Many residential school survivors talk about how what they learned in residential school was

not how to be white, but how to be ashamed of being Native and so we talk about ethnocide

as the attempt to deliberately extinguish a culture. Residential schools can be thought of as a

Canadian attempt - an aggressive violent attempt - at ethnocide,” she says.

“At the turn of the century, it was reported that a full 50 per cent of children didn’t survive residential school,” says Cooke.

That’s information that some Canadians still don’t know. Cooke teaches many university students who have never heard of residential schools and the effects they’ve had on First Nations people.

The disconnection and abuse has led to issues that still affect First Nations communities today.

Intergenerational impacts like addictions and abuse continue to plague communities, but there seems to be hope that things will get better. That’s in part because of the same tool that caused the problems in the first place–education.

Many bands are now running schools that offer their children education on their own terms.

Across from the Kamloops Residential School building is the Sk’elep School of Excellence. The band-run school offers a balance of provincial curriculum and cultural teachings in a building that’s inspired by Secwepemc architecture.

And the Tk'emlups Indian Band in Kamloops isn’t the only First Nations community to move to this model. Across the province, First Nations bands are taking back control of education and that’s something that makes Cooke happy.

“While the colonial government saw children as a key to the assimilation project, local

communities see children as the next generation so the movements towards community and

collected healing, reconfiguring new possibilities, new visions for communities—the education

of children is critical and central to that and communities seem to be recognizing the importance

of that,” says Cooke.

“Having some jurisdiction over education for bands for Native children is key,” she says.

Deneault shares that view on education. Even with all she’s gone through at the Kamloops

Residential School, Deneault still puts her hope into the community-run education system to improve the lives of First Nations people.

“Most all Indian reserves now have education as their number one goal and that’s what I like, because it means rather than looking back at an era of what happened in education, they’re moving forward to better educate our children,” she says. “It’s very empowering.”