At least Tom Flanagan is up front about his pro-assimilationist views of Native people – not Frances, who has to hide behind Marxism and her theory of the “Aboriginal Industry” as a smokescreen for her ethnocentric views. Just look at how she contradicts herself in the above comment.

I do work in Uganda with the educational system as well with the Ainembabazi Children’s Project and we struggle with the pedagogy and approach to education as it is based on model from colonialism. The students are being educated in skills that prepare them for a future that is centred around a western model of what we would envision as values in education and success for the future but in reality, doesn’t necessarily prepare them for success within their own culture, community and environment.

How do we define what needs to be in the curriculum? In a recent dialogue with a Ugandan PhD student on the values of education in Uganda, she argued quite strongly that the content of the curriculum had to fundamentally change in Uganda to provide an education that fits within their cultural and societal needs to perform well and become active citizens within their context and not within the colonial western concept.

There’s interesting discussion here because finding a blend between that evidence based curriculum which you speak of to prepare students to participate in a ‘globalized’ world is important, but yet, as many indigenous groups around the world are grappling with, where is that fine line of making education relevant and fully embedded within their cultural framework so that individuals in their communities thrive? And thrive within not only their culture but also the globalized world?

This is obviously a heated debate and because it does arouse such emotion, it speaks to the need for public dialogue on this issue.

Who are you to say what “cultural and educational values” that aboriginal people have? Aboriginal people have all sorts of values, and to make these blanket assertions is to stereotype them. It is your view that actually has racist implications because it assumes that aboriginal people, because of their ancestry, are inherently irrational.

It is not clear what the UN declaration means when it states that “tolerance…among…religious groups” should be promoted. Are biologists “intolerant” of fundamentalist Christians when they teach the theory of evolution?

Aboriginal people, like all Canadians, are free to believe what they want. However, the educational system should encourage critical thought and teach an evidence-based curriculum. To deny this to aboriginal students will deprive them of the knowledge that they will need to participate in a full range of occupations. This, of course, will keep them continuously in need of the Aboriginal Industry’s “services”.