There are many facets to adult education; for the purpose of this post, adult education as a means for social change will be the predominant ideology, following Breunig’s assertion that mainstream education exists to promote “norms and principles [that] are most often associated with the ideologies of the dominant race, gender, religion, and culture of the social class” (Bruenig, 2005, p.112); counter-hegemony in Indigenous adult education “offers a vision of what “could be” different if less oppressive [Indigenous controlled] ways of knowing and institutions were in place” (p.112). For over a century, Indigenous peoples have endured complete and total devaluation of their traditional ways of knowing, their languages, their entire culture, at the hands of the colonial federal government and its forced assimilation led educational policy.
After the 1972 Indian Control of Indian Education paper, most of the recommendations went unimplemented; Indigenous peoples and their national and regional representatives called for more action on reconstructing the ineffective and broken state of Aboriginal education in Canada, as an inherent Treaty right. The Assembly of First Nations (2010) released First Nations Control of First Nations Education as a policy framework for self-determination in Indigenous education, claiming that “today, the necessity for Canadian-First Nations partnerships to support collective action to bridge First Nations education gap is as critical as it was in 1972” (p.4). Hegemony is still a reality in the Canadian mainstream elementary-secondary, postsecondary, organizational learning, and adult educational systems. How does the adult education practitioner promote a counter-hegemonic learning environment for Indigenous adult learners?
Critical Pedagogy and Transformation
The Assembly of First Nations [AFN] considers that lifelong learning is a whole life journey from “pre-natal to Elder level” (2010, p.8), which is culture-based in rich in Indigenous culture, language, and history, and provides preparation for active participation and negotiation within the Indigenous community, the wider Canadian community, and globally. Critical pedagogy provides a means of “thinking about, negotiating, and transforming the relationship among classroom teaching, the production of knowledge, the institutional structures of the school, and the social and material relation of the wider community and society” (Breunig, 2005, p. 109); the Indigenous adult learner, in an Indigenous controlled educational environment, is actively engaged in creating a counter-hegemonic, transformational learning experience.
References
Assembly of First Nations. (2010). First Nations control of First Nations education: It’s our vision, it’s our time. Ottawa: Author.
Breunig, M. (2005). Turning experiential education and critical pedagogy theory into praxis. Journal of Experiential Education, 28(2), 106-122.
National Indian Brotherhood. (1972). Indian control of Indian education. Yellowknife: Author.
