Wasagamack First Nation creates Native curriculum

Education Authority has been working to preserve Native knowledge and traditions through education

By: Moe Sylliboy

Wasagamack First Nation is a Cree community of 1,300 people in northeastern Manitoba, which offers education from kindergarten to university right in the community.

The Wasagamack Education Authority administers George Knott School, which began with classes from kindergarten to grade 10, and now goes to grade 12. More than 300 attend the school. Wasagamack is accessible by plane and boat in the summer and by winter road in winter. It's on the west side of Island Lake, about 610 km north of Winnipeg.

The community also offers the Brandon University Northern Teachers Education Program or BUNTEP (brandonu.ca/Academic/Education/buntep/was.htm).

BUNTEP, which has operated in many northern communities, must be invited and supported by the local people. A coordinator, who lives in the community, administers each center. Floyd Mason is Wasagamack's coordinator. The first intake of BUNTEP at Wasagamack began in January 2001, and the project is scheduled to finish in 2007.

Faculty members from Brandon University travel to the community and teach courses in four to five week blocks. Courses offered in the centres are equivalent in content and standards to those offered on campus.

Many residents of northern Manitoba are unable to attend a university campus, largely because of location or lack of financial resources. Each academic year of BUNTEP consists of 10 - 11 months of study, divided into four terms: Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. At least one block in each year is devoted to student teaching in the community schools.

BUNTEP delivers the Brandon University five-year concurrent program (B.G.S./B.Ed.) or an undergraduate degree in Arts, Science or General Studies and after degree B.Ed. The education component consists of education courses and practical experience in the classroom. The students must maintain a Grade Point Average of at least a 2.00 (a``C``) throughout their degree program.

The community and participants are directly involved in planning and implementation of the system. The participants are trained to satisfy peoples' service needs through employment in the public sector.

Copyright Brandon University

Location of Wasagamack in Manitoba

Graduates of BUNTEP serve as role models and can be found in a wide variety of positions. Many are working as classroom teachers or school administrators while others work as Chiefs of bands, Superintendents of Education, counselors, employers of the Department of Education or Aboriginal organizations.

It is the belief of the Wasagamack Education Authority that learning should involve the whole community and be exciting, rewarding and most of all culturally relevant. That belief applies from the university level to the elementary and high school where teams of teachers at the George Knott School and older students developed curriculum units for various grades.

Vice-principal Leslie Harper, for example, who started as a grade 1 teacher, was involved in developing a Bannock Unit for nursery age children and was actively involved in developing the Island Dialect Cultural Immersion Program for grade 1. Harper is from Wasagamack First Nation.

Each of the units is available on the web (at collections.ic.gc.ca/teaching/index.htm) and includes a rationale, a web diagram, advance material preparations, lesson plans, evaluations/reflections and a brief profile of the Elders who helped design the unit. Other units, on rabbit snaring (for grade 9), beaver (grade 5), moose (grade 3), and fish (grade 2), were developed by community teams.

One of the co-ordinators of the curriculum development project, Bryon Beardy, said, " I believe that in order to be whole, as First Nations people, we must first master our First Native languages and cultures, thus not losing our identity".