Review of Angela Ward and Rita Bouvier, eds.: Resting lightly on mother earth: the Aboriginal experience in urban educational settings. Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Ltd., 2001.
© John S. Long
Journal of Professional Studies 9,2 (June): 80-1
Educators involved in Aboriginal education will value Resting lightly on mother earth: the aboriginal experience in urban educational settings. The book focuses on Aboriginal education and schooling in urban Australia, western Canada and the United States. /\ Why will educators value this book? But its appeal will not be limited to teachers in urban schools; the issues presented in this book, apply to Aboriginal schools everywhere. The chapters in Resting lightly on mother earth were written by people with extensive experience in Aboriginal education.
Carol Reid provides an historical overview of Aboriginal education policy in New South Wales, Australia. {She deconstructs deficit concepts of culture; showing for example, those who see urban Aborigines as lacking a kinship network need to recognize a much more positive and dynamic view of culture, contained in terms of renewal, rather than loss.} /\ I find this sentence awkward, but I am having trouble making it easier to comprehend. It is the only sentence I have been wrestling with. Can it work better? Or are you happy with it? It will depend on your audience. Reid argues for negotiated "agency within constraints." This agency is illustrated by 13 quotes from Aboriginal youths. /\What agency is being referred to here? Or will the reader know?
Angela Ward brilliantly describes her personal odyssey as a researcher of communicative inequality from rural British Columbia to urban Saskatchewan.
Rita Bouvier writes movingly /\ nice thesaurus use about community schools and community education, based on Calliou's concept. Bouvier's focus is on the land, relationships and justice.
Heather Blair discusses gender, identity, race and class for Aboriginal girls in an urban Catholic grade eight class. She provides a detailed description of the girls, as well as the community and school, economically and socially. Gender and ethnicity are found to be "interwoven constructs" and "fluid, active processes" which the students were actively constructing.
Carol Leroy writes about the views of a ten-year old Native girl, her construction of identity and her struggle to make her Nativeness visible in her classroom.
Linda Wason-Ellam draws on eight years of ethnography in inner-city primary classrooms. She describes the value of sharing "personal stories": building trust and discovering selves.
Shauneen Pete-Willett writes with humour and pride of her four years as consultant for Indian and Métis education for fifty schools.
Bente Huntley found herself teaching science methods to an all-female class in the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP). Huntley examines issues such as gender equity and connecting with culture in her article.
Lon Borgerson compiles selections from personal response journals of 23 SUNTEP teacher candidates who create a play, perform it and then reflect on its effects on their lives. They acknowledge, "It seems like we are starting from nothing, but of course that's not true. We are starting from ourselves." Through this activity, and this chapter, the candidates give voice to their own stories and find a "voice as a group."
Dottie King, Bill Waters and Sharon Wells interviewed 30 urban adults from nine American tribes, using six guiding questions. Most of this chapter consists of excerpts from the interviewees' answers, and their identities. /\ Identities of what? Or to whom?
The editors frame the book in their introduction, and provide an interesting dialogue by way of conclusion. Some of the articles are more academic than others, but this book hangs together nicely.
