A Short History of Indigenous Education in Canada

Overview

Indigenous education is a confusing and loaded term that has been defined in many ways historically in Canada, some of which convey completely contradictory goals and outcomes.

We might think of Indigenous education as something different depending on who’s teaching, who’s learning and what is being taught.

Using a medicine wheel as a guide, we can look at themes in Indigenous education historically in Canada tracing the changes from pre-European contact, to early contact, to Colonial education to contemporary movements. The wheel also helps us to see how all themes and currents continue to exist and exert influence even when a new one threatens to supplant the old. In other words, all conceptions of “Indigenous education” continue to manifest in the current moment but to greater degrees of acceptance, power and popularity.

This unit provides an unpacking of the term Indigenous education to explain why it is thought of in such different, sometimes opposing, ways. This lesson will also depict some of the major currents of educational movements related to Indigenous learning.

Indigenous Education Resources by Jean-Paul Restoule is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/abed101/. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/abed101/.