Thank you for inviting me.
I'm a Tahltan elder, teacher, principal, district principal, counsellor and cultural teacher. I'm going to talk about a couple of topics that we really don't like talking about. I've worked with over 1,000 to 2,000 indigenous kids, and from their perspective, they have four things that they believe contribute to their failing.
The first is pain at home. The second is choosing friends who are hurting. The third is that the school system doesn't know how to deal with them, and the fourth is that they give up hope in themselves.
From my perspective, there are two critical issues that must be addressed at the school level if we are to improve education for indigenous students.
The first is that as indigenous people, we must break our code of silence, acknowledging the huge impact that intergenerational trauma has on many of our community members. Today we hurt each other way more than anybody else does, and this is something we don't even like to talk about, let alone address.
The second issue is that the school system doesn't know how to prepare indigenous youth to be emotionally ready to learn. They don't understand this intergenerational trauma and its impact.
There was a study done back in the late 1990s, the ACE study, adverse childhood experiences. This study looked at the relationship between 10 different adverse childhood experiences and their impact on health later in life. Some of them included abuse, neglect, witnessing domestic violence, incarceration, addictions and so on. If a child experiences four or more of these adverse childhood experiences, they are 32 times more likely to have learning and behavioural problems in school—32 times more. As a counsellor and as a teacher, I have worked with numerous indigenous students who had seven or more of these. This intergenerational trauma shapes the lives of many—not all—indigenous students, and it needs to be addressed by the indigenous leaders and the various levels of the educational and political systems. We watch suicides, drugs, alcohol, anger, violence. These are all surface symptoms of this intergenerational trauma that we do not like to talk about.
I taught in Telegraph Creek, which is in my nation that my mother was from, in northwestern British Columbia. We created an exciting and successful learning environment for all students—“we” being the community, the staff and the students.
There is something that I created in indigenous pedagogy that I call the four goals of indigenous education.
Goal number one is emotional needs and safety. Again, most—not all—indigenous students live in traumatized homes. Their limbic systems are in a state of alert arousal and can be easily triggered by sensory experiences. For learning to happen, their limbic systems must be calmed down. One of the ways that I was taught growing up was gentle approaches to trauma. It's beautiful to see; it's a cornerstone.
The second one is creating belonging environments. It's a safe place to be for everyone. It's relational. There's a spirit of peace. It's fun. It's family orientated, that kind of thing. When I look at school systems, I see what I call “almost belonging” environments instead of belonging. An “almost belonging” environment is where the teacher is still in control in the traditional sense of the word. A belonging environment shifts and looks at “How do I help this human being succeed?” One of the keys to that is looking for their beauty. When you look for beauty in a human being, it's awesome to watch how they respond.
The third goal, as someone already mentioned, is the creation of a culturally rich environment that belongs to the community you're in, but there's another piece to it. I call it bicultural education. It's the ability to teach someone to walk in two worlds. I can go out and hunt moose in snowshoes that I made, kill a moose, drag it back in, prepare it and tan the hide. I can do all that stuff, but I can also apply for a $300,000 grant and nail it. That's bicultural. I'm walking in both worlds.
Once these three are done, the fourth one—academics—soars. This is because they feel safe and they feel they belong. The academics take off. That can be done in the current system.
Thank you for listening.