Indigenous Learning in the CALP Model

Community Learning Network

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00:05A lot of people say they don't have

00:06any Indigenous people in their communities.

00:08I find that very hard to believe.

00:10I find that impossible to believe.

00:12Yeah.

00:13But the reality is, many of them don't enter the spaces,

00:16so they think because they aren't front and center in their experience

00:19that they're not there.

00:20And the reality is, is that the vast majority

00:23of communities in Alberta have Indigenous learners.

00:27If you don't have Indigenous people in your classrooms,

00:30then there's a gap that you need to really look at closely.

00:35We have about 15% of our population is Indigenous in Manning.

00:39And I would say we might have a handful

00:42that would come into my programs on a yearly basis.

00:48And so I knew there was a problem.

00:49I knew that there was a disconnect,

00:52and I had no idea

00:54how to address it.

00:56I approached Georgina at that point of it.

00:58She was kind of sitting back and going,

01:00"I don't know if I quite trust this whole situation."

01:05I thought Kelly would have this project

01:07and then we would be just offending our elders,

01:12that we would be doing things

01:14that are not the proper protocol,

01:16not the proper way of doing things in the community.

01:19It took me a long time.

01:20I had to really, really think about this.

01:22I'm not a person just to jump on something.

01:24I have to really think about it,

01:26and if it sits well in my heart, then I will do it,

01:31but it took me a while.

01:32I started thinking about it.

01:33Yeah, this is a good opportunity

01:35for us to clarify what's the barriers here.

01:41With a number of members of other CALP communities

01:44in Peace River and High Level and those areas,

01:47we compiled a huge list, three pages, of questions.

01:52And I went to Dave Matilpi, who is an elder in Peace River,

01:56and I asked him, I emailed the list of questions.

02:01And I said, "I want to do a training for my staff

02:05"on cross-cultural Indigenous awareness

02:10so that we can get people into our centre and retain them.

02:14And he kind of looked at me and I said,

02:16"Did you look at the questions the first time we met?"

02:18And he went, "No."

02:21So I went back, and he invited me back to meet with him,

02:24and we talked again.

02:26He introduced me to some of his students and their families

02:29and some of the people in the outreach centre where he worked,

02:33which is a high school outreach campus.

02:37And I watched him play grandpa and papa

02:41to all of these students and people in the community,

02:45and I watched it.

02:46I said, "Did you look at the questions?"

02:49"No."

02:50And he sent me home,

02:52I emailed him again.

02:54I said, "Are you going to look at these questions?"

02:57I didn't get an answer.

02:58I went the third time,

02:59and now I was getting frustrated

03:02because I'd asked a direct question and I had no answer.

03:05Anyway, so he said, "Kelly," he said, "those questions,

03:10"they are written by an educated white educator."

03:14He said, "I don't want to use those words.

03:17"I don't even want to even try to use those words.

03:20"You have to rewrite those questions so they're simple, in plain language.

03:25So I did.

03:27For him, he was raised in a residential school.

03:30He has very negative attitudes towards early learning,

03:33so a lot of the words that we use,

03:36I would say educators and practitioners

03:39and Indigenous learners,

03:43and all of those words that fit the European model,

03:46and he didn't recognize them and had no interest in learning them.

03:50He once told me, he said,

03:52"The nuns tried to make me speak English.

03:55"And then, when I went back as an adult learner,

03:57"they said, you need to build your word power.

03:59"I finally told them that my language is my own.

04:02"The words I choose are my voice."

04:05And he had no intention of changing those words.

04:09When he finally did this training,

04:12we invited people, we had our staff,

04:15and then we invited people from the region.

04:19And, at the end of the day, everybody was

04:24blown away.

04:26His story was so powerful.

04:28We started to explore the Indigenous learning principles.

04:32One of which is learning involves patience and time,

04:36which I had to learn.

04:38And everybody kind of said, "We need this."

04:43These stories are stories that are not history.

04:47The residential schools weren't closed in Alberta until 1993.

04:52They are very much part of people's lived experiences today

04:58and certainly their children

05:00are also experiencing that kind of fear.

05:06When they come into these centres,

05:07they don't necessarily know that they trust

05:12a European-trained educator

05:16in a box of a building.

05:18They don't necessarily trust that person,

05:22Indigenous people don't get that opportunity

05:24to be a voice at that table

05:26or to have an opportunity to say,

05:30"This is the way that I'd like to do my programming."

05:33There's always the European saying,

05:36"This is how you do things.

05:38"And that's the only way that you're going to do things."

05:40And, "This is my way or no way."

05:44I realized how the history of

05:48residential schools and colonization

05:53really does impact, even now,

05:57the way learners feel about formal learning spaces.

06:05If we don't acknowledge that,

06:07we're never going to have people feel comfortable

06:09in the places that we make.

06:12We knew that there were some teachings

06:14that we could introduce,

06:15that you could use in your programs,

06:18but we also really tried to embed the ideas

06:22of the principles of learning of Indigenous learners.

06:26And those are really different.

06:29It helps us understand

06:31that if we understand some of those principles,

06:35then we can create our own strategies.

06:38If you understand that learning takes time,

06:43then you're not going to be in a rush to outcome.

06:46If you realize that another principle

06:49is the importance of intergenerational roles,

06:52if you understand that,

06:54not only are you to bring elders into your programs

06:57but you're also to encourage the young people,

07:01your students, their families to be involved in your programming,

07:04because learning is a collective experience

07:07in the Indigenous culture.

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