'Just do it': Providing Anishnaabe culture-based education.

摘要

The transmission of culture and worldview to Anishnaabe children is essential to the spiritual survival of the Anishnaabe people. Education is therefore a high priority for the Anishnaabe community toward instilling Anishnaabe knowledge such as language, history, traditions, behaviour and spiritual beliefs.; While it can be argued that great strides have been made in the field of Anishnaabe education, one can clearly see the inadequacies in education for off-reserve Anishnaabe children living in Canada. Government provided schooling through public schools does not meet the personal and cultural needs of many Aboriginal Canadian children, including Anishnaabe children.; In an attempt to meet the educational needs of Anishnaabe children and youth, innovative education needs to be created that specifically reflects Anishnaabe culture and Anishnaabe community realities. The Anishnaabe Bimaadiziwin Cultural Healing and Learning Program is one of the very few off-reserve, culture-based educational spaces created for Anishnaabe children and youth in Canada.; This dissertation presents the project of visioning, designing, implementing, and evaluating the Anishnaabe Bimaadiziwin Cultural Healing and Learning Program located in Burleigh Falls, Ontario, Canada. An Anishnaabe Medicine Wheel construct is used throughout the study. A Medicine Wheel framework is employed in the design and implementation of the program. Additionally the Medicine Wheel is used as a theoretical framework and methodology in the evaluation of the program.; The creation of the Anishnaabe Bimaadiziwin Cultural Healing and Learning Program has been successful at providing a culturally-relevant educational space for Anishnaabe children to gain the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to 'survive' in the Canadian and Anishnaabe communities. Anishnaabe education has always been about 'survival'. Traditional education consisted of teaching children what they needed to know to 'survive' in any environment that existed for them. 'Survival' today requires that our children have the skills necessary to provide for themselves in the dominant Canadian and global culture, while being strongly grounded in who they are as an Anishnaabe person and ensuring that the culture of the Anishnaabe people 'survives'. Survival today also requires that Anishnaabe children be able to negotiate the two worlds they must live in while following a traditional culture that is not static. As a Nation, we may not be entirely able to move back to our ancestral ways, but we may use foundations of the past along with contemporary life to build our futures.; The creation of the Anishnaabe Bimaadiziwin Cultural Healing and Learning Program stands as a transformational educational site toward the self-determination of Anishnaabe people. The program exists as a model for other off-reserve Anishnaabe communities to create culturally-based educational spaces for their children by 'just doing it'.