By Lori Chalmers Morrison
Wilfrid Laurier University
When Nicole Robinson was accepted into Wilfrid Laurier University’s master of social work (MSW) in Aboriginal studies program, she immediately packed up her belongings and her three children – ages 9, 12 and 14 – and made the move to Kitchener from North Bay.
She wasn’t alone. Many of the 18 students enrolled in the new master’s program left respected positions within their Native communities, uprooted their families and traveled across the country to become part of this unique educational experience. The program, launched last September, is the only one in Canada to combine an Aboriginal worldview and traditional teachings with contemporary social work training.
“The MSW was what I was looking for, but didn’t know existed. It has opened my eyes to the way education can be rooted in traditional [Indigenous] knowledge and culture,” Robinson says. “My father was adopted out of Oneida Nation of the Thames at an early age, and didn’t know his birth family until he was in his 30s. As a result, I didn’t grow up with direct ties to my culture, so this program has become an important part of my life and my children’s lives – it’s a part of my personal growth that goes beyond my education.”
(Left to right) Elder Jean Becker, Professor Mac Saulis and student Nicole Robinson.
That’s exactly what program co-ordinator and veteran First Nations scholar Mac Saulis envisioned when he set out to establish the MSW in Aboriginal studies. This program represents the culmination of his life’s work. The empirically based approach at the heart of mainstream university social work education is often at odds with the traditional Native approach to learning. Saulis worked at the grassroots level to gain support from Native communities and university administrators to bridge the differences.
“It’s a life-long dream,” says Saulis, who is from the Tobique First Nations in New Brunswick and a recognized circle-keeper. “This program had to be a ‘true thing.’ It is more than education; it is a process, a connection and reeducation with the traditional worldview.”
Saulis keeps the Aboriginal wholistic worldview at the program’s core, ensuring it touches every aspect of the student experience. Instructors put ‘indigegogy’ – education within the indigenous world view, as Saulis describes it – at the forefront, exposing students to the worldview through daily teaching elements like traditional smudging and sweat lodge ceremonies, prayers, songs, visions, and the circle custom in the faculty’s circle room. The program also has an Elder-in-residence, Jean Becker. The Elder serves as a teacher and spiritual guide to help students discover their creation stories and aboriginal identities, or as instructor Laura Mastronardi describes it, who helps students to challenge “who they have learned how to be” as a result of living in a world dominated by non-native influences.
For lecturer Gus Hill, it is this fundamental embodiment of wholism that makes Laurier’s program unique. “It grounds the way we teach, assess and evaluate students, as well as conduct our ceremonies,” he says. “We look at the spiritual, emotional, physical and mental aspects of the individual.”
These aspects are evaluated at the beginning of the students’ year, where they spend a week with faculty and staff in a culture camp. The camp, says Hill, allows everyone to come together to build trust and familiarity. It also provides an opportunity to assess students’ suitability for the program, based on their comfort with and understanding of traditional processes, and their intellectual capability.
This evaluation helps to ensure that the MSW students will be capable of taking traditional methods back to their native communities, which Becker says is a way of reclaiming education for Native children.
“Historically, our way of educating our children, our culture and our language has been devalued and eliminated through mainstream education,” she says. “This program is the first opportunity to learn and work in a truly aboriginal way. Our graduates will validate our traditional methods by taking them back and using them within our native communities.”
Before students take this step, however, the instructors make a final evaluation – this time of themselves. Instructors strive to ensure that they have done everything they can to respect their students as family and pass on their knowledge. At this point, they are ready to shift responsibility to their students to pass on their traditional knowledge to the next generation.
With this knowledge in place following 10 months of course work and 609 hours of practicum, graduates hold a range of employment opportunities. As tradition-based wholistic practitioners who combine traditional knowledge and contemporary social work training, they can work within both native and mainstream communities and organizations.
For student Nicole Robinson, this means returning with her family to her North Bay community. She plans to work with both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people, recognizing that she will need to earn their acceptance by demonstrating a non-judgmental approach.
“I’m looking forward to using the wholistic worldview that I’ve learned,” she says. “I’ve discovered that how I live is how I will practice.”
For further information about the program, visit www.wlu.ca/socialwork or call Melissa Ireland at 519-884-0710 ext. 5249.
