Aboriginal educators from across the province share ideas at U of S conference
- Fraser Needham | March 25, 2015
Verna St. Denis says she was once a shy young woman unsure of her path in life.
However, that was before she enrolled in the Indian Teacher Education Program in the late 1970’s.
“For me it was a place where I was acknowledged as a learner, it was a positive learning environment and a place where I was encouraged to do the best I could,” she says.
After completing the ITEP, St. Denis went on to do a Masters in Community Development at the University of Alaska/Fairbanks and a PhD in the Anthropology of Education at Stanford University in California.
Today, she teaches in the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan.
St. Denis says over the years ITEP has provided the necessary positive and nurturing environment for her and countless other Indigenous academics and teachers to grow and prosper.
“If I had gone into just the regular (bachelor of education) program I’m not sure that I would have been acknowledged as a capable student. I’m not sure that my voice would have been nurtured to the degree that it was.”
The U of S professor was the keynote speaker at a banquet honouring the Indian, Saskatchewan Urban Native and Northern teacher education programs March 19.
The event was part of the U of S’s Think Indigenous Education Conference which brought in Aboriginal educators from all over the province to Saskatoon March 18-20.
Distinguished alumni awards were also presented at the banquet for ITEP, NORTEP and SUNTEP.
Thunderchild First Nation Chief Delbert Wapass is the recipient of the ITEP award, Sue Carriere the NORTEP award and Angie Caron the SUNTEP award.
On the final day of the conference, academics gathered at the U of S for a number of panel discussions on the future of Aboriginal education.
One of the panel discussions, led by Indigenous Studies professors Winona Wheeler and Priscilla Settee, focused on what role this program should play in terms of bridging the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal learners and academics at the university.
Wheeler, who is head of the Indigenous Studies Department, says the U of S has a long way to go in terms of becoming a truly Indigenized institution.
“It depends on what your understanding of Indigenized is,” she says. If all you are going to do is paint a red face on something, a lot of people think that’s Indigenized – just some symbols, some beads and feathers here and there and ‘poof’ you get Indigenized – anybody can do that. But if you look at the deeper meaning of Indigenizing, where you’ve reached the core values of an institution, we’re not there yet.”
She adds although the university administration has moved to incorporate Aboriginal content into the curriculum, all too often it is done in a top-down manner without proper consultation.
Settee says if the U of S is serious about making Aboriginal engagement one of its core pillars, it has to put its money where its mouth is.
“We have a university that’s committed one-quarter of its pillars to Indigenous issues but at the same time we see more and more cutbacks that impact our ability to teach effectively,” she says.
The three-day conference wound up with a round dance at Oskayak High School.
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