“Aboriginal Education” in Teacher Education: Beyond Cultural Inclusions

Abstract

Since the 1970s, there have been efforts to include education for and about Indigenous people into the Canadian education system. This curriculum has primarily consisted of Indigenous history and culture. However, critical Indigenous scholars and their allies have critiqued the approach of cultural inclusion and maintain that Indigenous education must also interrogate power structures imbedded in racism and colonialism. As “Aboriginal Education” is being increasingly implemented within teacher education programs, now is an important time to examine what is taken up under this heading. This chapter provides a critical discourse analysis of “Aboriginal Education” in two teacher education courses at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The curriculum is analyzed for the way it interacts with the dominant discourse of cultural inclusion and the alternative discourses it offers. This chapter ends with some suggestions for anti-racist and anti-colonial pedagogies within “Aboriginal Education”.