My parents taught me a lot while I was out on the land, and one of the things they taught me was if you are going to do something, do it now, and mom did it, when she was ready to do it.
When times were hard, my dad used to go down to the barrenland, and my dad is not a very big person. He is less than five feet tall. He used to go down from Red Knife, and up the Horn Mountains, down the other side, and he used to go down to the barren lands to harvest caribou when you could not find moose in our area. A lot of times, even when I grew up, I used to have to carry rifles and bags for my dad, I was quite small and I used to mumble, and complain a lot about the heavy loads. Even when we used to go visiting rabbit snares, my dad does not think like a white man, so if he caught a rabbit, he would pick it up, and dump it into my bag. So, by the time we got to the other end, the bag that I was carrying was loaded up, and I would have to carry it all the way back, instead of him going right to the end, and working our way back.
So, those are some of the things that I went through. My dad, I owe him my life. All the values, and the compassion that I have within me, comes from this man. Also, I know that a lot of Members here in this House have grown up in that same kind of environment. I do recall seeing Nellie on T.V. fishing on the ice. I have also seen her in McLean's Magazine driving a boat. A lot of the things I have learned through my people, Mr. Speaker.
My dad used to own a kicker. A five and a half horse kicker and a boat, and at that time my dad was one of the first persons who owned a kicker. Not too many people in Providence had kickers in those days, and they used to rely on borrowing my dad's boat, and kicker, to go hunting, but my dad would never let it go unless, I was driving the boat. So, that was the way I learned a lot, too.
We used to go out and drop people off in different creeks and that, and would work our way back, but we always would get a moose or some other animals.
Mr. Speaker, the philosophies that underlie learning to the Dene are different from those involved with learning to be a Canadian. There is no way around it. That is a fact. Throughout history, Euro-Canadian culture has stressed individual success, aboriginal culture has stressed collective survival.
Euro-Canadian culture has viewed child development as a series of stages in which one has to struggle to accomplish certain goals. Aboriginal culture has viewed it as a continuous process of moving closer to a sense of harmony with self, others and the natural world. Euro-Canadian cultures has developed a system which emphasized learning through instructional technologies and teaching methods. Aboriginal culture imparts knowledge through holistic experience.
Euro-Canadian education is based on the most part on learning to succeed by manipulating thoughts and objects. Aboriginal people learned to become part of the environment.
Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to experience both kinds of learning. So have many of the northern aboriginal people in my generation. Interestingly enough many of the non native educators, and experts, who have criticized my views, have not experienced them. I know that the two educational frameworks are different, they feel different. Each has evolved from a different purpose.
The contemporary education system can expose students to curricula that informs them about what it is like to be Dene or Inuit. Make no mistake about it, our Department of Education and the divisional boards have make incredible progress in terms of developing absolutely beautiful books and teaching methods which they do. People like Fibbie Tatti, Margaret Thom, Judy Tutcho, Chuck Tolley, Joe Handley and many, many others are to be complimented and congratulated on their contribution.
Plainly and simply there are some vital things about being Dene or Inuit that cannot be taught in the schools. I fear that our youth are not learning how to live like aboriginal people.
What I am referring to, Mr. Speaker, is that I can only use my experience for an example, that I have a boy that is really interested in the wilderness. I have brought him to a lot of places, but I have to do everything for him. He is interested, but those are the things that you cannot teach in the schools.
The other thing, is for songs, for example, every time we have a feast in Fort Providence, for example, we have to get people from Fort Rae, Hay River Reserve, or some other community, where people who are good at those things. I still have yet to see a graduated Dene, that graduates because of his skill as a Dene.
The other thing, is syllabics. I have here a book, done in the Sahtu area, it is called the "Sahtu Dene Long Ago", a good book. I read the material, I could read this stuff and be able to interpret it. Read it in English and interpret it. I also, look at the other part of it, and it is written in roman orthography. I cannot read this, Mr. Speaker. I have to have a degree in linguistics in order for me to interpret what is here. It is all in roman orthography, with little dots and lines. I cannot read this, Mr. Speaker. I do not mind turning it around, reading it in English, and interpreting it.
Syllabics used to be a part of my culture too. That has been lost. We have several people in Fort Simpson who still could do it, and I think we have one in Fort Providence, I am not even too sure on that one. Syllabics used to be sort of a universal language for the aboriginal people. I remember my granny, back in 1960, used to read syllabics to me. She used to read books about Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and those are not books that were developed up here, I am sure. They must have been done in the Mississippi somewhere by aboriginal people there, but she was able to read it. I would think that, even as the English language is universal, I think the aboriginal language is also universal. I think we also should take an interest in saying that syllabics is part of the aboriginal language, and we should try to reinforce it. It really pleases me that Inuit people can still write syllabics, and be able to communicate, I am really proud of those people, for hanging on to their syllabics.
Unfortunately, I am not proud to say that it is happening in the west. In fact, I think syllabics is dying in the west. It is not being reinforced. What we have, is a method, a white man's method translating into English, into aboriginal languages, and it is different.
Children in the schools are learning about their culture and where they are from, but they never go out there. Half the kids that go to school in Fort Providence, do not go out on the land and see where mom and dad used to live, or where their uncle used to live. Landmarks for them do not exist, because there is nobody there to tell them where the landmarks are. You refer to them when you are teaching. For example, Red Knife River in my own language, if I tell that to my son, he would not know where that is, unless I take him over there to show him.
One of the things, in April, about dog team expeditions from Pangnirtung to Lake Harbour, Alan and Rene will be following a traditional rule that was regularly used by Inuit, throughout the history as people. I know that this was the same road used by my own great grand parents, in travelling to Igloolik area from Pangnirtung.
For many years Baffin people have been quite fearful that our culture might pass away with the passage of time, that we might forget the knowledge of tradition that have sustained us as Inuit for centuries.
By travelling this route, Alan and Rene have kept a link with our past, have assured that they landmark forms, and guideposts of this traditional pathway to the west coast of Baffin Island, so this will remain fresh in our minds for other generations.
This is good, this is what I am talking about, Mr. Speaker. As a Member, I have stressed this time, and time again, that it is good to teach our culture in the schools, but the kind of teaching that you should be teaching in the schools, for aboriginal people, is before Christopher Columbus came, this was the way things were in North America, the Aztecs, the Mexicans, the Navahos, those are the things that should be in the curriculum, but it is not there. What little we do teach is not part of the school curriculum, it is a program by itself. It you go into social studies, for example, you do not see anything about Dene people in the curriculum itself.
You only have a small little problem, by itself, within the school system. It is not part of the school system. It might as well be out of the school system, and controlled by the communities. In the past, our youth would have learned these things by sharing time with elders, by accompanying uncles or parents on the land, by listening to what they have to say, and by watching and becoming part of the natural environment around us.
Now they are trying to learn those things from books, from maps, writing essays, or going to short field trips with their teachers, and maybe one or two elders. Mr. Speaker, it is not the way it should be. Why is it that any time we aboriginal people have had a different way to doing thing, we are told that it better to do it the way it is done in the rest of Canada. Why is it that over, and over, we are given the message that white is right? Why is it that even our own communities are beginning to believe that the white system for teaching children is better than the one we used for centuries, even for showing them how to live like Dene?
What is the solution, Mr. Speaker? Since 1988 I have been saying that we should restructure the educational system to allow the community to take the lead role in educating our youth about their own cultural values and traditional knowledge.
Surely, with the creativity we have shown in other areas, we can build an education system which has appropriate mechanisms to allow both types of learning to take place, within their own cultural framework.
We may, for instance, want to establish a system where young people can take leave from school, to accompany their families, or community hunters and trappers into the bush, and learn the traditional ways.
These should be available for several months at a time, but there would be a firm understanding that the student would not be penalized upon returning to school, and that mandatory attendance provisions of the Education Act would not apply.
Perhaps, with a stronger effort to develop distance education technology, youth who were with their parents on the land, or in the bush, could take their academic studies over the radio and stay in touch with the schools at certain times.
There is a wide range of options, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, one of the things when I grew up, too, is that I was born Catholic and the missionaries did not do their missionary work based on getting their flocks to go to a certain centre. The missionaries went out to the outpost camps and to the small settlements to do their missionary work. I did not go to Grandin College, but I know Steve did, and the first time the intent was, to develop aboriginal people to become priests or brothers. The saying at that time, or in the bible, is that many are called, but a few are chosen. Sometimes the Bishop used to get mixed up and say, many are cold, but a few are frozen.
---Laughter
I am sure that, with the creative people in our communities, and in the local education authorities, there are many solutions that could be developed at the local level.
I should emphasize, Mr. Speaker, that this new vision of cultural education is not my own idea, it is not just based on my personal views, but rather, the wishes of my constituents.
That is what some of my political critics have said. Let them tell the press whatever they want. The fact is, that I consult with the people in my community far more than the most vocal critics of this position do.
I do not go to their meetings and make grand speeches, or listen to their complaints about all the perceived flaws in our system of government, or listen to some of the southern trained teachers blame their classroom problems on the way Dene children are brought up at home. No, I do not do those sorts of consultations, at least not any more than I have to.
I do spend time listening to our elders and checking with them about the positions I am taking in the House. Mr. Speaker, just about a week ago, the Friday before last, when I made that statement about the educational aboriginal program, I heard Charlie Barnaby on the radio, and he supports me on my own views about what I meant when I said that the cultural programs should be the responsibility of the community, not the school. At least once or twice during each year, I meet with the Deh Cho students who are attending school in Yellowknife. Often we have a chance to talk as we drive back and forth to Fort Providence. I stay in close touch with the band councils, and chiefs in my constituency.
Mr. Speaker, what I hear over and over is a quiet concern that our current approach to cultural education is not working. At the same time, there seems to be a reluctance to criticize it in case current program funding will be cancelled and we will have nothing in its place.
Mr. Speaker, I know that I am not the only one to share the vision of an improved cultural education framework. I listened in the House when Mr. Pudlat, my honourable colleague from Baffin south, made the following comments on September 22 of this year, "Education is something that we are working hard towards, as parents, especially as father, because we used to be taught, but we do not teach life skills any more. Nowadays, we have handed over our children to the education system, and it has caused stress on both parts."
I also noted the comments made in the press article, I tabled yesterday, by my honourable colleague from Kivallivik. Mr. Arngna'naaq said, "I feel our culture is a way of life, and not a subject in a classroom. Inuit did not learn or live in buildings, so I do not see how we could study our culture in a building. It is taught out on the land. That is where we lived, and that is where it should be taught."
I also know that this issue is not confined to the Northwest Territories.
I have been reading many accounts in the educational and native cultural literature that talk about new approaches in the field of cultural learning. I have tabled some examples of these, Mr. Speaker, and I would urge honourable Members to take a look at them.
The Harmony Foundation, for instance stresses a holistic approach to helping teachers from Canada, Peru, Mexico, Kenya, Pakistan, and the Philippines learn about the environment.
The American Indian Magnet School near St. Paul, Minnesota has experienced unprecedented success in working with "high-needs" native children. Their whole approach is based on the concept of placing education into culture, rather than placing culture into education.
Finally, some exciting new research was brought to my attention courtesy of Dr. Dan McDougall of the University of Calgary. This research was carried out by two west coast educators, with non-native children, in the north Vancouver school district.
The research study compared grade four students who had an opportunity to participate in an immersion program, where they actually lived in a Squamish Band long-house with other students who had studied a classroom curriculum.
The results showed that the children who lived in the long-house had a much deeper and far-reaching understanding of the cultural values and practices than those who had take the classroom program.
No, Mr. Speaker, these are not Sam Gargan's ideas. These are things that many people are beginning to realize throughout North America. To make this vision a reality, however, we will need leadership from the Minister.
While the specific school programs for greater community inclusion should be developed at the local level. I believe that an atmosphere that will encourage the community to come forward with innovative plans must be established by the Minister. This may not be easy.
I have read that Dr. Lawrence J. Peter, a Canadian educator who worked to reform the education system in the late 1950s, and early 1960s, was found as saying, "The bureaucracy defines the status quo long passed the time when the code has lost its status."
However, I know that we finally have a Minister of Education who knows how to overcome the bureaucratic hurdles, and who understands the importance of making sure our aboriginal culture remains alive in the north.
I would urge him to give these thoughts some serious consideration, and I would be happy to give him any assistance I can. Mr. Speaker, that concludes my comments on the educational system.
In closing, I would like to thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would also thank Mr. Hamilton and his staff. I understand they were angry with me yesterday. I also want to thank my family and members of my constituency, and I would also like to send my sympathies of the families of the people that lost their families in the mine. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause
