Intended for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal learners, this course will explore indigenous ways of knowing and how they can benefit all students. Topics include historical, social, and political issues in Aboriginal education; terminology; cultural, spiritual and philosophical themes in Aboriginal worldviews; and how Aboriginal worldviews can inform professional programs and practices, including but not limited to the field of education.
3.2 Ab ed through the wheel Pre-contact [Part 2] (15:26)
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來自 University of Toronto 的課程
Aboriginal Worldviews and Education
50 個評分
從本節課中
A Brief History of Aboriginal Education
The description goes here
與講師見面
Jean-Paul RestouleAssociate Professor
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
There's some principles that have been talked about in some writing on indigenous
world views that come to mind, and one of them is written up by Clare Brant, who is
a psychologist and looked at a lot of different indigenous people's thinking,
and he said this was a principle that kind of applied to many indigenous peoples
across North America. The principle of non interference.
So this is an idea and an ethic that, pervaded many indigenous cultures, that
you don't interfere with one's, autonomy. So, in a sense, like, you don't directly
instruct someone, about how to be, how to do things,[COUGH] what they, what they
ought to do, how they should behave, and so forth.
It has a, it has really carried on into today despite some of the other efforts at
assimilation, and so a lot of people still kind of carry this, this autonomy, as a
very strong part of their identity. And, and, and you can certainly see it in
some of the communities, Rupert Roth has written about it, he's a, a Crown attorney
in northwestern Ontario. And he, he observed in a lot of the
interactions that he saw in courtrooms, that this principle is, was still
operating, and was frustrating western approaches to carrying out justice.
Because some people wouldn't testify against others, or, they, they, they would
kind of claim that they didn't know about something, 'because they hadn't directly
experienced it. So they felt that they couldn't really say
in a court of law that they, that they knew something, because to know something
is to directly experience it. And there, there's also senses of kind of
harmony in the, you know, principles of retaining that harmony among people who
are in a small community, and have to work together to continue to survive.
So to cause discord, and disruption which, kind of the Western justice system
encourages by setting up a plaintiff and a defendant, in some of these, cases.
Is, is kind of against the whole principle of the harmonious, community, restorative
justice. So the principle of non-interference, when
it comes to learning things, when it comes to education, was operating in the sense
that people couldn't, you, you kind of had to let people learn for themselves.
And an example that I think was repeated in Rupert Ross's book Dancing With a
Ghost, is there was an elder in a boat, and a younger person was operating the
boat, and they ran a river and they were heading towards this area at some speed
where there were a lot of rocks, that the elder knew was in river.
And principle of noninterference, according, you know, according to Ross and
his telling of this, dictated that even though they were heading toward certain
harm, he would not say anything, because that would cause the younger person to
lose faith, that they had to learn how to notice this, and respond.
So even though they were hurtling towards certain danger, he remained quite to see
what the other would do. And th, so this kind of principle of
noninterference, as it was an important part of pre-contact learning, and
certainly carrying on into today, that people have to experience things for
themselves, in order to claim that knowing that relationship to knowledge as their
own. And I almost fell into this problem that
we have with the language, where, where I was going to say till they can have that
knowledge. But that's another things that's, that's
different about approaching knowing and knowledge, is that it's not a thing to be
had, it's not a thing to own, it's not an, it's not a, like an entity.
'Because once we thing knowledge, then we can either talk about who owns it, who has
rights to it. And so a lot of indigenous people are
struggling with this notion, because from the west, knowledge is talked about in
those ways, someone does own knowledge, someone can have it, someone can possess
it. In these, old ways of knowing it's a
relationship. So you are developing a relationship with
something, some, that can be known. And so knowing isn't really possessed by
anyone. But that relationship one has is, is one
that is very personal, and it's, it's an intimate one, and it's one that others
wouldn't want to speak for someone's knowledge or knowing, because that's their
own relationship. But there's a way's certainly of, of
people understanding, having a greater understanding of what that kind of
relationship is like. And so, they would encourage the youth
like through things like the fasting rituals or through certain challenges or
ordeals that were put before them, to enter into a relationship with knowing,
so, that they then could have that, that relationship for themselves.
So, it's possible for communities to develop a knowledge that continues and is
transferred over time but, it's not thought of in a sense that people own or
possess it. That being said, there were certain
understandings of who could enter into relationships knowing on certain topics,
or in certain places, and at certain times, and these restrictions were
respected among the community. A good example is say along the northwest
coast, people used to build the, their villages with the, the physical
structures, actually in the same order that their rights to fish in certain parts
of the ocean worked out. So, if the villages, the village had like
a, buildings like this, the family that was in this house,[NOISE], could access
the resources here, and the family in this house, access resources there.
And, so there was a sense of how to divide up access to resources, but it wasn't
spoken of as, as an ownership. In the same kind of way, certain families
had songs, or relationship to certain ceremonial items, which was their
responsibility to carry for the community. Is not talked about like a right or an
ownership thing, but there is a sense of respecting that that's their
responsibility to carry that knowledge of that song, or to carry knowledge of that
drum, or to, or to carry the, the knowledge of that shaker or that talking
stick, or what, whatever important ceremonial object it was.
There was a sense, that's that family's, and it's spoken of it's their
responsibility. So we're just, It's not talked about as
ownership and stuff, but we see that kind of come up with, say, museum repatriation,
and someone says this mask belonged to this clan or that family.
That's the kind of notion. So we're seeing that, as we enter into
this period where world views are kind of differing on approaches to knowledge,
approaches to ownership of knowledge, and what can be owned and not owned and so
forth, changes come about in how these things are talked about.
So I guess the thing that I'm not addressing with all of this, is the
language and how the language makes it so hard to convey this, these differences and
ideas of role view. But I need to at least touch on that.
So, kind of obvious to state, but in this period, all that learning is taking place
in the indigenous language, of each of each culture, and, and, and each
communities own dialect. So what does that mean?
It means we, we, we all know this notion of the intimate connection between the
languages we speak, and the way we think about things.
And one of the things that's important to know when we think about language in world
view, is for many indigenous languages the verbs come first.
So, when we're talking about the level of, say the sentence.
It's usually starting from a verb, that is built with suffixes and prefixes that
modify the verb, but it's the doing that is central.
The process is central the action is central.
Whereas, many European languages are noun based, so the things are central, the
subject is central, and what it does to an object is what a lot of the sentences are
about. So we, we place our focus on the things.
So for an indigenous language, some of the implications of it being verb based, is
that there is a sense that change and motion and dynamism, is a natural state of
order. Whereas, when we're thing-a-fying things,
we talk about things, there's, there's a stability or permanence that resides in
the object itself. And so there's a sense that, there's a
permanence to the object so we can talk about it.
But if we talk about things as being, moving and in motion they're constantly
changing. And we can see that in a lot of the
stories too, where there are transformer beings, or there's transformation that's
at the center of, of many of the important stories indigenous people tell.
Because that is a part of understanding the nature of reality, is that its always
changing always transforming. So I just mentioned stories, and I can't
believe I got this far, talking about pre-contact learning, without mentioning
the centrality of, narrative and story. This is a way that one could respect that
principle of noninterference, is instead of saying, don't do that, you tell a story
where someone makes that mistake. And so, it's up to the learner to get what
you're saying, and they'll get what they're ready for.
So that notion I mentioned earlier about the time being right, and the fact that
one's own relationship to knowing, is their own, that's one that they develop on
their own and, and directly experience. Stories embody that so well, because the
story can be shared, and very skilled orators and elders knew which story was
right to tell, at the right time for the right person.
Again, all part of that highly con, contextual learning, is that the story
would be told at the right time and the right place for that person to pick up the
right meaning. And sa, some really skilled el, elders
knew from the, the vast oral tradition of stories that were available to pull from,
to use these stories, which is part of a story, or which story to retell in a
certain way, to make the point evident to that person about what they should be
taking away, or what they should understand.
But again, that learner, that, the person listening and hearing the story, did have
to be able to take that in, and, and, and act that understanding.
So this is, this is part of the skill of those knowledge keepers, too, is knowing
which story to tell when, and to whom. So, again, very highly context dependent.
So I, I think that's, that's a lot of what characterizes the ways of teaching and
learning in the pre-contact mode. I guess another thing to, to emphasize, I
went, at the beginning I said that community and the environment were the
classroom, and then I went into the ways that the community was the classroom.
I just want to come back to this idea, the environment in this classroom.
I touched on it a little bit with the way that the bear clan would pick up medicine
knowledge, by being out there and learning from things.
But the, but it's important to stress too, that like animals were teachers, trees
were teachers. Anything that was in the natural
environment, although that nature culture distinction wasn't made in indigenous,
communities at the time. But anything that, that was around could
be a potential teacher. And, one example that's, that's given and
I, you know I can't say the specifics of it, but I, basically came from
observation, so it's empirical knowledge too.
But I, I heard the story told of, of how a certain medicinal use of a plant came to
be known among a particular people, and they had seen how a deer had, had, I don't
know, scratched itself on something sharp, and was bleeding.
And it went into this bush, and it chewed some of the leaves and then licked its
wounds and by, just by watching that happen, the people realized there's
something in that leaf that's activated, and can help with clotting a wound.
And so, it's this kind of observation which lead to some, some of the knowledge
that was developed. And, so when we say like animals are
teachers, this is a way that they could teach.
So learning by observation, very important as well.
And there are many others, there are many others.
But I, I think I should be moving on to early contact period.
