Indian Control of Indian Education at 40: Assessment of First Nations Education Policy in the Post-control Era

In First Nations Education Policy in Canada, Paquette and Fallon seek to "contribute to a conceptual framework for Aboriginal education" (p.52) in Canada.Paquette and Fallon synthesize scholarly work and reports published by Aboriginal people and organizations and their allies since the late 1960s with a heavy focus on the past 20 years.Implicit in their study is the conclusion that the only way forward in Aboriginal education is to arrive at a consensus, widely shared, on the purposes of Aboriginal education in philosophy, practice, and policy.The point of departure for Paquette and Fallon's study is the National Indian Brotherhood's (NIB) 1972 policy statement: Indian Control of Indian Education (ICIE), the counter to the 1969 Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy known also as the White Paper.The later policy, accepted by the Canadian government in 1973 with a promise that "ICIE would form the future basis for federal policy on Indian education" (p.79), enabled Indigenous peoples to reclaim their educational responsibilities, to set a philosophy of education, and to implement it in their schools.ICIE has been reaffirmed by the NIB's successor organization, the Assembly of First Nations, in 1988 and 2010, because this breakthrough document enabled First Nations in Canada to restore education to its Indigenous roots.Support for ICIE in principle does not wane among First Nations.Paquette and Fallon find that in the past four decades, the model of ICIE, understood by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) as low cost devolution from its oversight over schools, has resulted in hundreds of small schools responsible for services that an entire school board provides.Paquette and Fallon demand a new way: one that builds on community strengths and one with community leaders committed to a national consensus on philosophies, policies, and practices in First Nations education, specifically, in the domains of foundations, leadership, special education, and curriculum.Paquette and Fallon engage the literature in First Nations education, spanning educational administration and leadership, foundations, curriculum, and Indigenous knowledge paradigms.Their literature review leads them to the conclusion that teachers in contemporary school pedagogy and curricula continue to replace Indigenous students' worldviews with lessons framed by English literacy, numeracy, and citizenship standards, seen as "rational-technological approaches to teaching and learning" (p.36).This "status quo is immoral and . . .simply untenable" (p.xx) because of underinvestment by the Canadian government and standards that demand reserve school conformity to provincial and territorial curricula.Education still does not, for the most part, "build . . . on and strengthen . . .what makes Aboriginal people unique" (p.17).To negotiate conflicts between modern and Indigenous systems of education requires

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