Two Policy Approaches to Native Education: Can Reform Be Legislated?.
The evolution of Canadian federal policy for Native elementary and secondary education has followed a pattern remarkably similar to that in the United States. A significant difference in the provision of educational services to indigenous peoples is, however, that whereas the United States has historically attempted to regulate and reform Native education through federal legislation, Canada has generally eschewed such a proactive strategy in favour of what Hall (1992) refers to as the “No Policy-Policy.” In this article I examine the evolution of Native education policy in both countries to determine which approach has brought Native people closer to their desired goal of having control over their children’s education. La politique federale canadienne d’enseignement primaire et secondaire destinee aux autochtones suit une evolution semblable a celle des Etats-Unis. ll existe toutefois une difference significative dans la prestation des services educatifs aux peuples autochtones: les Etats-Unis ont toujours tente de reglementer et de reformer l’education des autoch- tones par le biais de lois federales tandis que le Canada evite, en regle generale, ce genre de strategie proactive et prefere ce que Hall (1992) designe comme une “politique de non-politique.” Dans cet article, l’auteur analyse l’evolution, dans les deux pays, de la politique en matiere d’enseignement aux autochtones afin de determiner quelle approche permet aux peuples autochtones de se rapprocher de leur objectif, qui est de controler l’education de leurs enfants.
Decolonizing Indigenons Education: Beyond Culturalism: Toward Post-cultural Strategies
Les recents appels internationaux exigent la decolonisation de l'enseignement des eleves indigenes pour augmenter leur succes scolaire en incluant les connaissances indigenes dans les curricula des ecoles. Pour repondre a ces appels, des aspects de la connaissance et des perspectives de la culture autochtone ont ete integres dans le curriculum des sciences humaines d'une ecole dans un vieux quartier pauvre du Canada afin d'evaluer les effets sur l'accomplissement academique, l'assiduite et le redoublement scolaires chez quelques eleves autochtones canadiens. Le resultat suggere un certain optimisme dans l'augmentation du succes scolaire chez ces eleves avec l'integration des perspectives autochtones. Cinq facons efficaces pour integrer les perspectives indigenes au curriculum de l'ecole et quelques elements critiques de l'instruction qui semblent avoir affecte le succes academique, l'assiduite et le redoublement scolaires chez quelques eleves autochtones canadiens sont examines ici.
The Indian Reorganization Act: The Dream and the Reality
THE GENIUS OF JOHN COLLIER, commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945, was that he saw the bankruptcy of federal Indian policy more clearly than anyone else in his generation. With its emphasis upon the allotment or division of Indian reservations into individually owned parcels of land and the forcible assimilation of Indians into white society, that policy had brought widespread poverty and demoralization to the majority of Indians by 1922. In that year, Collier, much like David, challenged the Goliath of the federal government in a case involving the lands of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. His surprising victory in that encounter resulted in the birth of the modern Indian reform movement.'