Tipi teachings: Straightgoods.com
 
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:04:12 -0500 (CDT)

 
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from: http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature5.cfm?REF=404
Tipi teachings

Sorting out fact from fiction in Indigenous Studies.

Dateline: Saturday, September 17, 2005

by Stewart Steinhauer

Nechwamps mina nicakos [Cree for "my cousin that I love to gossip with"] 
asked me if I would assist with a ten-week course at Blue Quills (BQ) First 
Nations College this fall. Watstakats! How can a person with no 
post-secondary education, and with a track record of being adamantly 
opposed to the institution of education in its current assimilative form, 
work as an assistant instructor at a college?

After my second class, I'm beginning to see why. It's an adult-upgrading 
class, the mainstream version of which is meant to bring students up to 
university entrance level proficiency in the ole 3 Rs. For years Blue 
Quills ran the mainstream version, with terrible results. Last year, in a 
financial fit of desperation, college management decided to try something 
completely different. What they came up with was a ten week intensive 
course that ignores the three Rs, and focuses on who the students are.

c9c36d.jpgThis is the second time BQ has offered this course, but it's 
still experimental. Last week, in our introductory session, the students 
filed in with pens and notebooks, wondering when they were going to get 
down to the business of upgrading their three R capacity. Instead, they 
found themselves seated in a circle in the basement of the former Indian 
Residential School building, now one of BQ's instructional facilities. 
Nechwamps began by telling them that this course was designed to help them 
know who they are, as Peoples indigenous to this land, and that it would 
help them stand up in the world, whenever something or someone came along 
and tried to push them over.

Then he launched into a very challenging discussion on gender issues, using 
a baiting technique. He asked, "You've all seen on TV how the young brave 
wants to marry a certain girl, and, to win her, he goes and steals a herd 
of horses, and drives them up to her father's tipi? That's traditional, 
right?"

The young men in the class are saying "yeah", and some of the young women 
are saying "yeah" too, although a side discussion breaks out about whether 
it's traditional to steal.

Then Nechwamps throws in the comment that "a man's home is his castle", 
just to get the fire burning brightly. An argument breaks out between a 
couple of the more mature female students, and everybody else.

It's a Cree argument, which means that everybody is laughing all the way 
through it.

Then Nechwamps drops his bomb: that TV scene couldn't be true, because, 
unlike the European paradigm, the tipis in a Cree village belonged to the 
women, and unlike the European wedding scene, women did not belong to their 
father to be handed over to their future husband. In fact, Cree society was 
matriarchal. The first week's classes would examine the tipi teachings, 
because they reflect women's roles in the actual society that existed right 
here, on the northern plains, before first contact with Europe....

whole article at: http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature5.cfm?REF=404

Penney Kome, author and journalist
http://penneykome.ca
Editor, Straight Goods, http://straightgoods.com 

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