This text is part of the special section Higher Education
With the creation of a new microprogram in Aboriginal studies, the Université de Sherbrooke is part of a movement seeking to decolonize higher education in the country.
In the program, students will take courses on the Abenaki language and culture, Aboriginal literature, or on contemporary Aboriginal issues. The first small cohort, which began training this fall, includes students from different disciplines, from philosophy to history, through literature, law or education. The 15-credit undergraduate microprogram can be recognized in multidisciplinary, history or philosophy baccalaureates. Most courses can also be taken as electives in other disciplines.
“These students will become allies for the communities [autochtones] “, hopes Marc André Fortin, professor at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences and responsible for the new program. All disciplines benefit from enriching themselves with an Aboriginal perspective, he illustrates. How to read a text? How to decolonize research, and do it in collaboration with communities? How to manage the territory? Examples are everywhere.
“It’s a matter of eradicating this problem of systemic racism and decolonizing,” says Marc André Fortin, on the importance of training new generations of thinkers and professionals to undo old power structures.
For a long time, we made these populations invisible and acted as if they did not exist, explains Mr. Fortin. Yet Canada is home to approximately two million Indigenous people; it is also the population with the strongest demographic growth, continues the professor. “There are still questions of access to doctors, to education, to drinking water,” he says. We have environmental problems based on the exploitation of territories. These are the questions that should be discussed with the students. »
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada had also called on the government and educational institutions to change their teaching model, in order to highlight the history of indigenous peoples or to promote their languages, recalls Mr. Fortin, who specifies that the creation of the microprogram is part of a process of reconciliation.
The multidisciplinary program brings together courses from the departments of arts, languages and literatures, history, philosophy and applied ethics, applied politics, as well as, to a lesser extent, law and education. Due to a lack of sufficient replacements in the French-speaking community, all the teachers in the micro-program are non-Aboriginal. However, the Université de Sherbrooke team designed the program in consultation with communities in the territory, including those of Wôlinak and Odanak. Indigenous people are regularly invited as speakers or for activities such as blanket exercises, a participatory educational tool that explores past and contemporary relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
A long way
“Students are sensitive, they make comments: ‘How come I’ve never heard this before, the question of colonization?’ observes Marc André Fortin. There is certainly much to do after decades of silence. It should be remembered that the last residential school for Aboriginals was closed in 1996, he notes.
In 2012, the Ontario-born professor proposed creating an Indigenous language course, like English-speaking universities elsewhere in the country. The university then declines the proposal. Ten years later, the Université de Sherbrooke is following in the footsteps of other French-speaking universities in the province to create this microprogram that particularly highlights the language and culture of the Abenaki nation, whose traditional territory covers part of southern Province. A small victory for Marc André Fortin, who is delighted to see the creation of these spaces highlighting the Aboriginal identity. Along the same lines, numerous conferences, ceremonies, documentaries and shows honored Abenaki identity from September 26 to 30, during National Truth and Reconciliation Week.
“It would be great if students from all departments of the university came [aux cours], dreams Mr. Fortin. When we know, we can no longer pretend that we did not know. »
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