Bringing Home the Seeds of Indigenous Autonomy

First Nations House of Learning, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Education is a question right at the centre of the various global Indigenous movements and one of the students four focal groups. Apart from introducing the centres specific role in improving Aboriginal education, Rick Ouellet and Debra Martel also introduced to us how the Canadian education system worked for Indigenous peoples and what policies and projects had been successful. For example, British Columbia was the first province to make it a requirement that all teachers took courses in Indigenous studies. One area which the centre is working towards is in trying to reach a situation where people who acquire degrees, can go back to their communities after their education and still find a job.

"The House of Aboriginal Learning at UBC was full of Indigenous feeling in its architecture and interior. As a student of Taiwan’s first college of Indigenous studies, I noticed we only have one stone slab representing aboriginality at the institute, I felt we could also increase the aboriginal feel of the building by including art installations, to make ourselves truly ‘visible’."
Utun Titi (Department of Indigenous Languages and Communications, National Dong Hwa University, Taroko Nation)

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Video filmed by C. Phiv and D. Chen, edited by N. Coulson, subtitled by Adrienne Chu

Photos by C. Phiv

Written by : Nick Coulson Send a message to Nick Coulson

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