A Discussion with Charles Shawanda, Education Director, Whitefish River First Nation, Manitoulin Island, Canada

With: Charles Shawanda Berkley Center Profile

June 4, 2015

Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Fellowship, in June 2015 student Caitlin Snell interviewed Charles Shawanda, education director for the community of Whitefish River First Nation and board member for Kenjgewin Teg Educational Institute on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada. In this interview Shawanda explains how cultural education is a part of both Catholic and public schools in the area, the challenges outside of school many First Nations students face, and the importance of creating an educational environment that helps students and teachers build relationships.
Would you like to begin by introducing yourself?

My name is Charles, I’m the education director for Whitefish River First Nation, and my roles and responsibilities are I manage and oversee the daycare, library, elementary and high school students off reserve, the post-secondary sponsorship. I’m the band rep on various boards, education board, Kenjgewin Teg, which is in M’Chigeeng if you met with them, but they would be a good place to meet as well. They have an alternative high school and a JK (junior kindergarten) immersion language program. I’m also a rep for our band with the Rainbow District School Board, and I’m also affiliated with the Huron Superior Catholic District School Board; that’s where our kids go in Espanola.

I’m also part of the Union of Ontario Indians Education Working Group. We’re trying to come up with a framework for, eventually we see changes in the federal government’s policy for education, Aboriginal education. It varies as to how that’s going to pan out in the future years, but I guess there is some move or some talk about amalgamating our needs into the local, or in our case it would be Rainbow District School Board which is a non-Native organization, whereas Union of Ontario Indians is responsible for all the bands in its area. I think there’s like 43 or 44 First Nations, and we’re a member of that, and they do a lot of political lobbying on our behalf. So they’re trying to spearhead a group to develop our own constitutions, and part of that would be the whole education system. So what they’re proposing is developing a First Nations School Board, and they would be the ones responsible for all the areas I was talking about, primarily the elementary students on and off reserve, as well as post-secondary is the proposal that we’re working on now. We’re trying to get buy-in from the federal government. We’re also discussing with the Ontario government basically to fund the programs and services that we want to deliver on our own; we want to decide what do we want to educate our children in.

How would a system work were there a First Nation School Board integrated within the regular school system?

Well, it’s important that our children know how to integrate into the larger society. They need their three Rs: to read, write, and know how to count, that’s essential, but at the same time we want to do it in our way, that recognizes our culture and our traditions, which is not compatible per se, but it is achievable. At the same time, our territory is spread out so vast, it covers probably the better half of Ontario itself—that’s how spread out our First Nation is—so it’s unrealistic for us to send everyone to one school or a few schools in the territories. Not every First Nation is large enough to have its own school, or close enough. We do have to work within the system that’s out there, the infrastructure that’s there. Ideally with technology, maybe it will be possible to have kids go from JK to even post-secondary. I guess they can do some of that right now online and stuff like that, but I think there’s something too that’s relevant to face-to-face contact, classroom setting; attending a school off-reserve, there’s other socialization that goes on, seeing the world type thing. So it’ll unfold the way it’s supposed to unfold, I guess.

How are academics balanced with cultural education for Whitefish River First Nation students?

Well, I think you might have seen some of it up there, but I would stay that it’s still kind of in its infancy. It begins with the connection with the Creator, in my opinion. But there is kind of like in general society, there’s a general movement that’s been going on for a few years now towards secularism. So you can’t say “Our Father” or anything in general schools. It seems like they’re trying to get away from religious or spiritual ties in school not to offend anybody, but I think that’s the basis of our way of life. Whether it’s Roman Catholic or Anishinaabe traditional beliefs. And I guess in my case I’ve been brought up a Roman Catholic, but I still espouse to learning more and integrating more of the Aboriginal traditional life. Like up here there’s more Aboriginal work on the walls and in the building itself, and the classroom settings and you’ll see it at different levels throughout each First Nation; some are more ingrained, some would be more Western model type, but at the same time the Rainbow District is making more efforts to bring in Aboriginal culture into the schools, and it’s not just schools where we have students, it’s the schools for the whole district, you know where there may not be any children that identify as Aboriginal or anything. So it’s coming, and like I said, it’s a long way from the residential school experience.

How are teachers trained in cultural education?

I think that’s what the district is further ahead on than we are here at the local level because of the economy’s scale, and they have more funding than we do. We don’t get a lot of funding; we get less than provincial funding even though we’re teaching the same age students. It’s hard to really plan ahead and get these programs in place when we don’t have the money to get them trained, we do it kind of at an ad hoc basis. If somebody’s in the area we encourage the teachers to go see them and learn what you can and pass it on to the children if you can. Basically you’re learning for yourself as well.

Can you talk about the transition for students from primary to secondary school, especially the differences in cultural education?

We only go to grade six over here, so for grade six they have to go to one of two elementary schools in Espanola: Sacred Heart, which is Roman Catholic, and A.B. Ellis, which is your general school, I guess. They’re with Rainbow District School Board, A. B. Ellis is, and Sacred Heart is with Huron Superior. We got mixed results or experiences; we do get the extremes where at one end the child is totally not engaging in the system in Espanola. What I’m finding is the home life has a bigger impact on the transition than the school itself per se. If the parents are taking time with their children to help them with their homework, engage them with physical activities, or spiritual or religious activities outside of the school, you see their grades are better in school and everything. Where sometimes you see if there’s a lot of dysfunction in the home, single parents or social issues, I find if that there’s not a lot of support, they’re more worried if mom and dad is going to get along, what’s going on if there’s fighting or neglect going on in the home. A lot of social ills, I guess. Obviously that’s going to affect their ability to learn, so I think those have bigger influence on whether they transition well or not.

Again, it seems to come with, like, the experience in school and the culture of everything in school is just a sliver of their life. Outside of that time, which is more of the time spent at home with the family, so I think whatever they’re experiencing or their engagement outside the school in their home has more of a determining factor for how they’re going to transition or how successful they’ll be. There’s a lot of people who rely on the social safety net; obviously they’re not going to be able to pay for their son or daughter to play hockey or go on trips as much as a family where both parents are working, or in a much more stable household. Like I said, the school is a microcosm or a symptom of their bigger life.

How do parents respond?

It varies as well, but for the most part, most parents support it. There are some parents that don’t. I think from our end, from the administration end, if we don’t have the numbers at the school, we can’t support it. There’s fixed costs, so we try to get everybody who’s eligible to go to school on-reserve here. There’s current moves to try to ensure that that happens, but it’s a policy thing and it’s up for debate at this point. So there are some people who don’t like the cultural aspect to the school, the Aboriginal aspect. Let’s say they’re more devout Roman Catholic and they have a grade two or four son or daughter and they want them to go to Sacred Heart [School] because of the way funding works…you know we need students here to keep the school going and we want to keep the school going. And it’s sporadic, it’s not every year that we see something or hear something about trying to keep the kids here, but it happens from time to time and in general, I think the parents are okay with it.

What is the role or purpose of education?

On the day-to-day basis it’s getting back to the three Rs, but in a larger sense or in the grander plan or grander scheme, it’s spiritual education that’s needed the most, I think, simply because of the path that I’ve taken in my lifetime and I’m finding that once you get on that road, all of these other things fall into place. These relationships with family and friends, people in general, the environment, education-wise: financially, physically, emotionally, mentally, everything kind of falls into place once you have that spiritual foundation. Whether I’m in finance or construction or education, it’s still the same foundation, just a different avenue through which I’m trying to share that message with other people. With education there’s numerous, daily opportunities to share that message with students, parents, teachers, other administration people at other schools.

All these committees that I’m on it’s about sharing messages, and it’s not all education-based or life-based experiences, and it gives me a lot of avenues to be able to share that message and I get a lot of satisfaction out of being able to do that and like I said, build relationships and the ultimate relationship with our Creator, and I see building that relationship with the creator is building relationships with people, and vice versa. If I’m building a relationship with you, I'm building the relationship with the Creator so it’s kind of a win-win situation for everybody. So what I do daily it’s not as important per se, but like I said, building those relationships is good, and it doesn’t matter where I am, that’s what I’m going to do.

What is the role of culture in education?

I think one of the main things is to honor our families and our history. Our ancestors lived this life, and to a great extent I think we lost that along the way over the last 500 years, and it’s only now over the last 50 to 60 years that it’s starting to resurface again, and it’s starting to come back and get support from the non-Native community, so I think it’s about time, but I think things are better now than when the residential schools were operating for sure. They called it nothing short of cultural genocide, so now we’re getting to the point where we have Rainbow District trying to integrate a lot of our cultural teachings and practices for all students, and the language is there for them to learn; the grandfather teaching, drum making, smudging, all of these things are becoming more of the Canadian history than say when I was younger.

What are some of the challenges of integrating culture in education? What’s been impeding progress?

On a grander scale, it’s a view from the party in power right now. I find that the Conservative Party really tries to put us in the mainstream as opposed to the founding people of this country, so a lot of their policies try to put us in the same camp, so to speak, trying to make us like all other Canadians. But to me that’s not honoring the treaties, you know the treaties stipulate our position. I think that’s a big impediment and because of that, we see a lot of funding cutbacks at all levels: the provincial level and the First Nation level, so that kind of stops us from bringing in experts. You know people that have a good message to share about who we are and integrating that into our local school and also at the school board district, as well to have a better understanding of who we are and where we’re coming from. It is a money thing; you know, there’s always an argument for bringing in elders, and somebody will say aren’t they supposed to just do it with a tobacco offering, and well, that’s true, you still have to offer tobacco, but at the same time, they don’t take tobacco at gas stations. So there’s still a financial issue and the logistics come into play too, so that’s a big impediment. Then I guess there’s the problem of who’s controlling the purse strings.

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