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Running head: FREIRE AND INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE

Paulo Freire, Critical Literacy, and Indigenous Resistance

J. Celeste Kee and Davin J. Carr-Chellman

Penn State University and the University of Idaho

J. Celeste Kee

1024 Elysian Fields

New Orleans, LA 70119

jcelestekee@gmail.com

Davin J. Carr-Chellman:

402 Education Building

University of Idaho

Moscow, ID 83843

dcarrchellman@uidaho.edu
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FREIRE AND INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE

Abstract

Using several case studies drawn from Freire’s cultural context and contemporary

Canadian indigenous resistance movements, this paper questions whether a Freirean approach to

critical literacy can work with indigenous literacy needs without reproducing colonial power

structures. It also seeks to examine current scholarship in the literacy education of Maritime

Aboriginal people in Canada, and to illustrate the need for critical pedagogies honoring multiple

cultural literacies and ways of knowing among indigenous youth.

Keywords: Freire, resistance, epistemology, indigenous, aboriginal, literacy

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FREIRE AND INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE

Paulo Freire, Critical Literacy, and Indigenous Resistance

Of all the groundbreaking and transformative concepts Paulo Freire brought to 20th

century educational philosophy, perhaps his best-known contribution was the development of

literacy campaigns designed to foster critical consciousness in the mass of people he deemed ‘the

oppressed’. As a Brazilian educator aligned with the political Left, this critical consciousness

was overtly politicized and served to induct the largely apolitical rural population into national

class awareness. However, Freire’s critics have pointed out the potential dangers of ethnocentric

and nationalistic distortions within such an approach; his implicit assumptions that rural people

were powerless, naïve, and unaware of their class status without the intervention of literacy

education has also been critiqued by recent scholarship. Additional criticism has emerged around

popular education’s assumptions of “literacy” as the ability to read and write in the dominant

language. These constructions are challenged by Indigenous critical pedagogues who suggest

that far from being pedagogically neutral, literacy campaigns based on such assumptions can

work to undermine and destroy Indigenous and vernacular forms of language, knowledge and

literacy.

This paper addresses these concerns in the context of global indigenous resistance

movements, and examines whether Freirean critical pedagogy still offers a valid framework for

discussing questions of indigenous critical consciousness. The lead author is a Canadian-

American scholar with Maritime Acadian/Indigenous ancestry, generating an interest in applying

Freire’s philosophies to current discussions surrounding Atlantic indigenous literacy and

schooling. Moving in this direction, it is necessary to examine the effects of Freire’s literacy

campaigns on rural cultures of his time. As it spread beyond Brazil, Freire's critical pedagogy
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interacted (and at times conflicted) with indigenous knowledges? In this light, we will explore

the possibilities of combining Freirean literacy principles with indigenous knowledges without

reproducing underlying colonial power structures. And, in particular, the ways these principles

might be applied to current Canadian Aboriginal resistance movements.

Methodology, Scope & Purpose

This paper uses historical textual analysis to argue that while Freirean pedagogy has at

times reproduced and reinforced colonialist ideologies, it remains relevant in applying critical

pedagogy to the context of indigenous resistance. It also argues that the problematic

developments in Freire’s literacy campaigns in Guinea-Bissau, Nicaragua and the Andes

demonstrate a much larger tension between the global indigenous need to learn dominant

languages for the purpose of self-advocacy, participation, and representation in the dominant

culture, and the ways uncritical assimilation of these dominant languages can alter, diminish and

devalue indigenous knowledge and literacies.

To support these arguments, we will first discuss Freire’s educational philosophy

and describe the historical background for his literacy campaigns. We will also discuss research

addressing indigenous resistance and literacy within the larger context of neoliberal

globalization. Next, we will examine Freirean literacy campaigns in Guinea-Bissau and other

regions and analyze issues that arose when these campaigns misunderstood local indigenous

culture and values. Finally, we will draw parallels between contemporary applications of

Freirean critical pedagogy and Atlantic indigenous literacy movements in Canada.

We must note several key terms used in this paper, including “indigenous” and

“literacy”, have been contested and problematized by recent scholarship. In this paper, the term

“indigenous” refers generically to groups of people whose societies predated Western colonialist
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presence in the countries described; at times, the terms “First Nations” or “Aboriginal” will be

used in the context of contemporary Canadian scholarship. The term “literacy” will remain

ambiguous, its usage clarified only when necessary; it refers both to strict Western definitions of

reading and writing skills in the dominant language, and to New Literacy Studies constructions

“where literacy is seen as consisting of fluid, purposeful social practices which are embedded in

broader social goals, cultural activities, power relationships, and historical contexts” (King &

Benson, 2008, p. 344). This deliberate ambiguity illustrates the continuous tension and blurring

of boundaries between dominant and indigenous epistemological systems in literacy studies.

Historical and Theoretical Context

Freirean Philosophy

The relationship between Freirean critical literacy and indigenous literacies

emerged at particular times and in particular places, relying on particular ideas. These

philosophical and historical contexts help explain the complicated and problematic legacy of

Freirean critical literacy as well as its continuing relevance to indigenous literacies. Freire’s

central philosophical tenets were groundbreaking in the field of critical pedagogy; his most well-

known contributions include the concept of education as

(l)ocated within and shaped by particular historical conditions, a focus on problem-posing

strategies and a dialogic process, the fostering of solidarity through collaboration, and a

rigorous and demanding curriculum that focuses on reflecting and acting on the world, or

praxis. (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2003, p. 95)

Central to his philosophy was an assumption that the ontological vocation of men and

women was to become more fully human by liberating themselves from oppressive states of

dehumanization. This state of fully realized “humanness” existed in dialectical opposition to the
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animal state, which Freire considered atemporal and ahistorical (Blackburn, 2000, p. 4). The

specific vocation of the oppressed—those held back from achieving their potential due to

dehumanizing conditions—was to restore both their humanity and the humanity of their

oppressors through liberatory reflection and praxis. “The pedagogy of the oppressed is an

instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of

dehumanization” (Freire, 1993, p. 30).

This dialectical relationship between oppressed and oppressors, expressed in lucid

and passionate terms, was highly attractive to various anticolonial movements of Freire’s time.

He also addressed the problem of oppression in the form of critical pedagogy. He distinguished

between ‘banking’ education, which dehumanized students by treating them as empty vessels to

be filled with deterministic knowledge, and ‘problem posing’ education, which rejected

traditional teacher-student hierarchies in favor of egalitarian critical dialogue: “Whereas banking

education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant

unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter

strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality” (Freire, 1993, p.

62). This concept provided both the inspiration and the blueprint for a pedagogy grounded in the

existential realities of the oppressed rather than false realities imposed from above by oppressors.

However, within this dialectic was an essentialist blind spot that continues to

draw critical questioning. Freire (1993) argued true liberation could only be achieved when the

oppressed engaged in “critical reflection which increasingly organizes their thinking and thus

leads them to move from a purely naïve knowledge of reality to a higher one which enables them

to perceive the causes of reality” (p. 112). Many critics have pointed out the essentializing

teleology within this concept, which posits the oppressed as inherently naïve, uncritical and
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powerless. This concept erases indigenous forms of power and knowledge while seeking to

induct the oppressed into a class awareness based in European Leftist constructions of political

power. “(A)ny pre-determined vision of liberation introduced from the outside is ultimately

paternalistic, since it presupposes that the oppressed are incapable of determining their own

endogenously produced vision of liberation” (Blackburn, 2000, p. 12). This concern will be

further addressed in the context of indigenous resistance to globalization and Western

dominance.

Historical Context of Literacy Campaigns

Freire’s philosophy contributed to the development of national mass literacy

campaigns in his home country of Brazil, and later in other countries engaged in anti-colonial

struggles. The Brazilian campaigns began under the modernizing dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas

(1930-1955) and were continued by the Goulart administration into the 1960s. Freire began

working in the Brazilian education system in the 1950s, when the national government was

concerned about the large percentage of peasants who were unable to read and write in

Portuguese and thus unable to fully participate in the democratic process. Freire, whose beliefs

were based in Christian Marxism and liberation theology, placed an “emphasis on

consciousness-raising that separated him from previous generations of educational reformers”

(Kirkendall, 2010, p. 18). Freire’s Marxism provided the historical and dialectical materialism

that framed the liberation of an oppressed group as occuring through the very people and forces

behaving oppressively. Freire’s Christianity saw Jesus as a model of the humanity required for

the oppressed to liberate both him/herself as well as the oppressor. Freire’s liberation theology

translated the Christian Marxist message of salvation specifically for the context of Brazil and

South America. This framework made his method compelling.

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Freire’s method, which promised ‘basic literacy in forty hours using minimal resources’,

became central to Brazil’s national literacy campaign. His method was based in a problem-

posing pedagogical orientation in which the educator immersed him/herself in participants’

reality through extensive interviews and participant observation and then produced ‘generative

themes’ based in that reality. Participants first decoded thematic pictures designed to provoke

critical dialogue about their conditions, then learned generative words introduced to teach

syllable families and provoke further dialogue. “The method, in terms purely of teaching literacy,

is very efficient. The success of the method is due in large part to the creativity it allows its

participants, and to the broader process of conscientization taking place at the same time”

(Blackburn, 2000, p. 10). Thus this method was designed to promote both literacy and

conscientization (class consciousness and awareness of the forces and processes creating

oppressive conditions) in the colonized minds of the oppressed.

Although Freire’s method was broadly popular in Brazil by the mid-1960s, he (and the

Goulart administration) became aligned in public consciousness with controversial Leftist

politics, which led to the withdrawal of American support and backlash among the military and

right wing political sectors. In the resulting military coup and overthrow of Goulart, Freire was

arrested and exiled to Bolivia. From there he spent several decades further developing his

literacy campaigns in other countries.

Indigenous Literacies, Indigenous Resistance

While examining the impact of Freirean literacy campaigns on indigenous

populations in Guinea-Bissau, Nicaragua, and other contemporary settings, we must situate them

in the broader context of indigenous resistance to colonization. This resistance sheds light on the

problematic work of Freire’s campaigns in these locations, as well as on the complicated

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response to those campaigns. We will describe this context through the three interpretive lenses

of resistance to globalization, literacy as the transmission of language, and the development of

indigenous critical pedagogies.

Even though the word “indigenous” derives from European etymology, recent

activism and scholarship has attempted to reclaim it (sometimes capitalized as “Indigenous”) as a

term of global solidarity among diverse cultural groups who have all experienced the negative

effects of Western colonialist aggression. Resistance to colonialism is based in pedagogies of

difference and the rejection of primitivist assumptions that indigenous cultures, beliefs and ways

of knowing are less developed or inferior to dominant Western epistemologies. This resistance

also means rejecting deterministic assumptions by scholars such as Freire that “cultures have

evolved from a prerational state of existence (i.e., indigenous) to the higher state of complexity

marked by literacy, critical reflection, and individualism.” Instead, indigenous scholars argue

these cultures “have developed sophisticated knowledge of local ecosystems and patterns of

community interdependence” apart from Western epistemological frameworks, and should be

considered on their own merits (Bowers & Apffel-Marglin, 2005, p. 4). Additionally, many

groups have launched community-based forms of legal, political and personal resistance to

Western imperialism: “As indigenous peoples have remained targets for mistreatment, their acts

of resistance will continue to problematize such suppressive efforts—in a word, resistance.

Instead of standing by passively, the indigene has demonstrated countless acts of opposition over

several centuries” (Fenelon & Murguía, 2008, p. 1658). Within the education sector this

resistance has taken the form of pedagogies of critical consciousness among indigene youth, as

well as advocacy for indigenous languages and literacies to be taught alongside the dominant
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language (McCarty, T.& Lee, T., 2014; Anthony-Stevens, V. E., 2013; Anthony-Stevens, V. E.,

2017).

Currently there are approximately 300–350 million indigenous people worldwide

inhabiting over 70 countries and speaking 4,000–5,000 languages (King & Benson, 2008).

International comparative research has uncovered significant disparities between indigenous and

non-indigenous populations in terms of literacy (reading and writing) skills; while unequal

access is certainly a factor in this disparity, language of instruction is also a major concern.

Although “(e)xtensive empirical international research affirms the efficacy of providing initial

literacy instruction in learners’ first languages” and many international policy documents support

this recommendation, a majority of indigenous people are still forced to attend schools in which

the dominant language is the only language taught (King & Benson, 2008, p. 341).

Why are monoculturalism and monoliteracy still major concerns in indigenous literacy

scholarship? A combination of factors exists, including Western “English only” ideologies that

are contemptuous of bilingualism; the advent of high-stakes testing promoting de facto

monolingualism; and the increasing domination of public spaces and visual media by major

world languages, especially English (King & Benson, 2008; Romero-Little, 2006). This

contributes both to decreased literacy among indigenous population and the erosion of minority

language conservation. In examining patterns of indigenous resistance, the devaluation of

indigenous literacies is at the forefront of concerns about the encroachment of Western

imperialism.

These concerns have led to calls within indigenous education scholarship for the

development of critical pedagogies rooted in indigenous cultural resistance. Garcia & Shirley

(2012) expand on Freirean concepts to discuss a “Critical Indigenous Pedagogy (CIP)” based in
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Tribal Critical Race Theory and “theoretically grounded in critical methods that resist the

injustices caused by colonization and oppression experienced by Indigenous peoples” (p. 80).

This pedagogical framework seeks to engage students in a “decolonizing process of praxis,

dialogue and self-reflection to sustain and privilege Indigenous knowledge systems while

simultaneously addressing contemporary goals and issues within the schooling context” (p. 76).

Their ethnographic research with American Diné youth resulted in the following

recommendations for a CIP based on indigenous student needs: developing critical

consciousness by learning the history of colonization; using self-reflection to recognize

unconscious ways Western hegemony is internally inscribed; recovery of Indigenous knowledge

and culture; and developing a sense of personal agency leading to self-determination and self-

pride.

In a similar vein, McCarty, T., & Lee, T. (2014) and Anthony-Stevens, V. E. (2013)

provide ethnographic studies of pedagogical frameworks designed to sustain and revitalize

indigenous culture and sovereignty. Anthony-Stevens provides an ethnographic account of an

indigenous serving charter school’s successful approach to culturally responsive teaching. She

argues,

Careful examination of student, educator, and parent narratives about the school during

its years in operation illuminate how adults and youth co-authored a unique

reterritorializing both/and discourse, building a school community of practice around

connections to mainstream standardized knowledge and local indigenous knowledges.

The transformational potential of the school’s both/and approach offered students access

to strength-based both/and identities (2013, p.12).

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Supporting both Garcia and Shirley and Anthony-Steven’s frameworks, McCarty and Lee

draw on Paris’ notion of a culturally sustaining pedagogy to argue for critical culturally

sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy that is grounded in indigenous sovereignty. Much like Freire’s

process, implementing this pedagogy seeks to enable cultural reclamation that exposes

colonizing influences (2014).

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In addition, CIP and indigenous qualitative research can be viewed within the broader

framework of global decolonization movements focused on individual and collective resistance

to neoliberal expansion and its accompanying destruction of the environment and minority

cultures. Cultural scholar Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández (2012) writes,

In the context of these changes, educators are called upon to play a central role in

constructing the conditions for a different kind of encounter, an encounter that both

opposes ongoing colonization and that seeks to heal the social, cultural, and spiritual

ravages of colonial history. (p. 42)

This encounter might both acknowledge and supersede the Freirean dialectical relationship of

oppressor and oppressed to a mutual recognition of alterity, empathy and vulnerability. It might

also involve unmasking and questioning hidden power structures within pedagogical praxis in

schools and government-sponsored literacy campaigns (however liberatory their stated aims).

This questioning and unmasking is where indigenous scholarship both builds upon and

challenges Freire’s assumptions about the possibility of liberation through outside intervention

(Anthony-Stevens, V., Stevens, P., & Nicholas, S., 2017; Anthony-Stevens, V., 2017). These

assumptions were also put to the test in Freirean literacy campaigns with indigenous populations

as Freire’s pedagogical influence spread beyond Brazil; the campaigns will serve as case studies

to inquire further about the complicated relationship between Freirean critical pedagogy and

indigenous literacies.

Freirean Pedagogy in Indigenous Contexts: A Case Study

The troublesome essentialism in Freire’s dialectic reappeared as his literacy

campaigns spread beyond Brazil. Although Freire claimed he had remained both philosophically

consistent and aware of the impossibility of transplanting Brazilian methods into diverse settings
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(Taylor, 1980; Freire & Macedo, 1987), some popular educators noticed complications and

unexpected outcomes when attempting to apply Freirean critical pedagogy in rural indigenous

contexts:

They were at first deeply motivated by Freire's vision of empowerment, which they

initially interpreted as a noncolonizing pedagogy. But as they learned from indigenous

cultures, they became aware that Freire's ideas are based on Western assumptions and

that the Freirean approach to empowerment was really a disguised form of colonization.

(Bowers & Apffel-Marglin, 2005, p. 2)

Freire’s focus on reading and writing in Portuguese/Spanish as the definition of literacy

at times resulted in the devaluation of oral languages and other indigenous systems of

knowledge; in a few cases, rural indigenous people rejected the literacy campaigns outright as

they neither wanted nor needed to learn the dominant language. These case studies examine the

impact of Freirean critical pedagogy on indigenous literacies in rural settings.

Guinea-Bissau

Freire first became involved with Guinea-Bissau’s politics when the African

nation successfully achieved independence from Portugal in 1974 after a long and bitter colonial

struggle (Davidson, 1981). The anti-colonial army (PAICG), led by charismatic leader Amílcar

Cabral until his assassination in 1973, rose to power due to mass dissatisfaction with oppressive

conditions under Portuguese rule: in 500 years of colonial presence, only fourteen Guineans had

graduated from university and illiteracy rates exceeded 90% (Taylor, 1980). Freire gained most

of his knowledge of Guinea-Bissau’s political and cultural climate through Cabral’s

revolutionary literature, and he assumed an “unusually high level of political consciousness

forged in the revolutionary struggle” (Kirkendall, 2010, p. 107). Although he spent little time in
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Guinea-Bissau, he discussed the literacy campaign extensively in a series of correspondences

with PAICG Comrade Mario Cabral.

Within this correspondence, a strong preference for a Leftist one-party system

emerges in Freire’s writings. This comment regarding the training of popular educators reveals a

frankly political and deterministic aim:

The team attempting such an undertaking would be attentive to the general political

principles of the Party and the government—the social plan that determines what needs to

be known, how, why, and in whose benefit, as well as what needs to be produced, how,

for what and for whom. (Freire, 1978, p. 114)

Here we find Freire and his colleagues employing adult literacy education in the service

of anti-colonial reconstruction. But as we will see, these political aims were not necessarily

aligned with the needs and considerations of local indigenous populations.

Several scholars have called the Freirean literacy campaign in Guinea-Bissau a

failure (Harasim, 1983; Kirkendall, 2010) due to a series of complicating factors. There was a

lack of material support and commitment from higher authorities, and ongoing class tension

resulting in a lack of urban youth willing to work as popular educators. Perhaps the most crucial

factor was the decision of the PAICG-led government to launch the campaign itself in

Portuguese (possibly against Freire’s wishes). The 5% of Guineans who spoke Portuguese were

already literate, and the rest (most of whom spoke Creole and/or one of many indigenous African

languages) worked in subsistence agriculture and had no need to learn Portuguese. Freire’s

program was designed to build literacy in educands’ native language, not to teach a new

language.
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Beyond practical concerns, it was difficult to induct people into anti-colonialist

class consciousness in areas where they had never fully assimilated to colonialism in the first

place: “In the countryside, in particular, the European presence was virtually nonexistent and

there was little interest in or necessity for learning to read and write in Portuguese” (Kirkland,

2010, p. 111). To some critics, this lack of sensitivity to the realities of rural indigenous life

reaffirmed the ethnocentric assumptions underlying the political aims of the Freirean literacy

campaign, which “(did) not consider in depth the cultural problem of the country…there would

seem to be a lack of profound knowledge of the cultures which shape this emerging nation called

Guinea-Bissau” (Freire & Faundez, 1989, p. 103). These concerns about the efficacy of Freirean

pedagogy in addressing the needs of ethnically diverse communities also emerged in other

campaigns.

Other Campaigns

The 1980 literacy campaign in Nicaragua was seen as a major victory for the

Sandinista regime (Blackburn, 2000); although Freire only spent nine days total in Nicaragua,

most accounts name him as a main architect of the campaign. In truth by the time Freire was

involved, Sandinista popular educators (known as brigadistas) had moved beyond generative

words to explicitly teaching revolutionary political slogans. Ultimately his involvement in the

Nicaraguan campaign faced the same criticism as in Guinea-Bissau: “he passed so quickly

through Nicaragua that he failed to see how his campaign fit into the country's internal political

dynamics" (Kirkland, 2010, p. 118). An analysis of one such dynamic reveals the need for more

indigenous scholarship around the impact of Freirean campaigns on rural vernacular literacies.

In 1981, the indigenous Miskito group engaged in armed rebellion against the

Sandinista regime; political tribal leaders “claimed territorial rights as an indigenous people and
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called for Miskito political and economic authority over Nicaragua’s traditionally isolated and

multiethnic Atlantic coast” (Meringer, 2010, p. 3). The Miskito people did not embrace the

Freirean literacy campaign but instead saw it as interference from the central government

infringing on their cultural and linguistic sovereignty. The campaign’s attempt to create a

revolutionary national culture unified around pro-Sandinista aims was interpreted as an attempt

to “homogenize” the Miskito culture and language resulting in “a loss of identity and regional

power” (Blackburn, 2000, 12). Although the majority of literature represented Miskito voices as

a unified front of rebellion, Meringer (2010) argues against such homogeneity and instead calls

for the inclusion of alternative voices (e.g. those of collusion with the government) as well as

representations of intraethnic competition and disagreement. This illustrates a larger need for

scholarship to move beyond mere multiculturalist reconstructions and recognize “cultures” are

not discrete categories, but porous, rhizomatic and marked by experiential and epistemological

border crossings.

The Andes, which span the entire length of South America, are home to multiple

indigenous cultures and languages that have survived and adapted to Spanish rule. Sichra (2008)

provides an overview of Andean indigenous literacy from the Spanish invasion and defeat of the

Inca empire in the sixteenth century to contemporary Hispanic literacy movements. She also

charts Andean literacy from the Freirean pedagogical current of the 1970s to the indigenous

resistance movements of the 1980s: these “movements with social and later ethnic demands

questioned the state’s homogenizing and unifying character and challenged nation-building aims

that adopt a ‘one language, one culture’ ideology” (p. 288). One of the major challenges in

adopting Freirean literacy methods in Andean popular education was adapting to diverse
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indigenous philosophies, concepts and systems of knowledge that were not always compatible

with Freire’s strictly dialectical construction of knowledge as a critical and reflective process.

Bejarano (2005) is a Bolivian popular educator who was at first enthusiastic about

implementing Freirean pedagogies with Andean campesinos (peasants), but soon became

concerned these pedagogies imposed a hierarchical Western model on indigenous ways of

knowing, unconsciously affirming and privileging dialectical thought over the cyclic patterns of

thought favored by her students:

We were not prepared for the diversity and heterogeneity of the ways of being and doing

that campesinos experienced on a daily basis. Instead of dialogue, the conversation

between them and ourselves ran along parallel lines that most of the time never crossed

or met. (Bejarano, 2005, p. 59)

Freire’s supporters were never able to fully resolve these concerns of unconsciously

reproducing Western hegemonic assumptions in the name of liberation. Although it seems that

Freire himself was sincere in his aims of liberation, he was not always critical of what

‘liberation’ might look like in diverse contexts, or even why the oppressed would necessarily

choose the specific form of liberation (i.e. critical class consciousness) favored by their teachers.

While the long-term impact of Freirean literacy campaigns on indigenous communities

deserves more critical scholarship, Freire himself contributed a rich language for describing the

existential and spiritual experience of oppression and liberation, and an array of methods for

addressing these conditions, that have been drawn upon in subsequent decades by both

indigenous and Western critical pedagogies. After Freire left Guinea-Bissau, teachers and

participants in the literacy campaign shifted to more student-driven aims, such as linking the

program to agricultural production and using the generative word method to develop literacy in
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their native language of Creole. We have examined several case studies of the complicated

relationship between Freirean critical literacy and indigenous literacies in his time. Do the

tensions of this relationship also emerge in contemporary indigenous qualitative scholarship? If

so, what new forms might it take in this era of globalization, and how might these forms expand

our understanding of Freirean critical literacy in the context of contemporary indigenous

resistance?

Contemporary Freirean Pedagogy: Critical Literacy and M’ikmaq Resistance

Canadian Indigenous Resistance Movements

Indigenous/First Nations/Aboriginal scholarship in Canada has been engaged over

the past 40 years with the slow, difficult process of decolonization and revitalization of

traditional languages and cultures. The historic conditions that precipitated this process can be

viewed through the lens of what Freire (1993) called cultural invasion: a dehumanizing and

domesticating process in which “the invaders penetrate the cultural context of another group, in

disrespect of the latter’s potentialities; they impose their own view of the world upon those they

invade and inhibit the creativity of the invaded by curbing their expression” (p. 133). This

process describes the colonialist policies imposed on Canadian Aboriginal nations in the

Maritime provinces, from first contact with French settlers through the 17th-century British

invasion of Acadia until the 1970s First Nations sovereignty movement.

The Indian Acts of 1867 and 1880 served to dissolve Indigenous rights to self-

government and render their children wards of the state (Curwin Doige, 2001). This resulted in a

particularly extreme form of ‘banking education’ in government-run Indian boarding schools,

which executed paternalistic aims by force: “First Nations children were removed from their

homes, taken away from the influence of their parents, their Native language and their culture, to
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schools where they could learn to be white” (Pushor & Murphy, 2010, p. 28). The policies

underlying such practices constituted acts of institutional and cultural genocide against the

Maritime Aboriginal peoples.

The deleterious effects of these policies, which resulted in the forced removal and

re-education of approximately 150,000 Indigenous children across Canada between 1880 and

1970, are long-ranging and worth examining through the lens of Freirean critique. Aboriginal

speech language pathologist Sharla Peltier (2010) identifies the negative individual effects of

internalized oppression: “(t)he powerful forces of cultural conflict can lead the Aboriginal child

to reject his or her own language and culture. It is not uncommon for Aboriginal students to opt

out of Native language and culture courses offered at school” (p. 125). When viewed through a

Freirean lens, this internalized passivity, self-violence and sense of cultural inauthenticity and

inferiority are the inevitable side effects of cultural invasion and the forcing of previously

independent peoples into the violent dialectic relationship of oppressor and oppressed. In

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire argues:

The more invasion is accentuated and those invaded are alienated from the spirit of their

own culture and from themselves, the more the latter want to be like the invaders: to walk

like them, dress like them, talk like them. (p. 134)

In terms of Maritime Aboriginal education and literacy, this would suggest the promotion

of English/French-only pedagogies in the schooling of Aboriginal Canadians furthers the harms

of cultural invasion and perpetuates the false generosity of the oppressor. A body of indigenous

Canadian research and scholarship has arisen in resistance to cultural assimilationist forms of

‘banking education’; recommendations include the acceptance of hybrid, non-standard

Aboriginal English dialects as well as native language immersion into Aboriginal schooling
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(Battiste, Kovach & Balzer, 2010; Peltier, 2010; Usborne, Peck et. al., 2011). Battiste, Kovach &

Balzer (2010) examine current research that indicates building on Aboriginal literacies and

knowledge students already possess “enables them to use their linguistic understandings to

access standard English as a language of power in the educational and political realms without

relinquishing their local language, a language of power in community” (p. 8). This approach, in

which literacy is not measured by reading and writing skills in the dominant language but in the

ability to ‘code-switch’ between multiple dialogic and linguistic modes, is an asset-based

approach which seeks to increase cultural literacies in Aboriginal students rather than limiting

them to the assimilation of English and French competencies.

Mi’kmaq Literacy: A Case Study

If we further examine approaches to indigenous education in the Maritime

provinces, we also find Freirean applications within contemporary Mi’kmaq literacy issues. The

independent Mi’kmaq nation, which was traditionally comprised of seven districts legislated by

their Grand Council, attempted to ally with French colonialists (who first arrived in Nova Scotia

in 1605) against the 17th-century British invasion of the Maritime provinces. Although the

Mi’kmaq initially hoped to coexist with the victorious British colonizers through treaty-making,

British encroachment threatened and eventually subsumed Aboriginal sovereignty. Since the

1970s, provincial and national First Nations initiatives have resulted in indigenous activism and

scholarship attempting to re-establish sovereignty, language revitalization and cultural pride

among the Mi’kmaq. Mi’kmaq scholar Marie Battiste “maintains that the Mi'kmaq displayed a

well-developed literacy in their pictographs, petroglyphs, notched sticks, and wampums, all of

which existed long before the arrival of the first French settlers” (Curwin Doige, 2011, p. 118).
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FREIRE AND INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE

Current indigenous scholarship remains grounded in this centralization of pre-

existent Aboriginal literacies and its rejection of banking models of literacy rooted in

ethnocentric deficit-based approaches to Aboriginal languages and dialects. Tammy Caplin’s

(2006) study of Mi’kmaq students’ attitudes toward education found “they preferred a multi-

modal approach to acquiring knowledge, which included both visual and verbal methods of

learning” (p. 66); these findings support contemporary Aboriginal research suggesting

educational success comes when Indigenous students are allowed to learn and think in both

native and standardized dialects. Similar studies found teaching Aboriginal cultural literacies

honoring the Mi’kmaq language and dialects fostered student self-pride in their Mi’kmaq

heritage (Critchley, Timmons, et. al, 2007); others found native language immersion programs

increased abilities in the Mi’kmaq language without harming abilities in English, suggesting

such programs may be beneficial both in increasing students’ cultural literacies and in native

language revitalization efforts (Usborne, Peck, et. al., 2011).

These findings suggest an ongoing need for the development of critical pedagogies that

honor and respect the multiple cultural literacies indigenous students already bring into the

educational encounter. Programs that allow students to switch between indigenous and Western

modes of thinking without deeming one culturally inferior or inappropriate for the classroom

environment are crucial to the development of self-pride and critical awareness among the

current generation of young indigenous Canadians; such programs can only help in addressing

the gross human rights violations visited on the previous ‘boarding school generation’.

Implications & Future Possibilities

In many ways, the tension between teaching indigenous and Western systems of

knowledge reveals the tension Freire himself encountered in trying to introduce dominant-
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FREIRE AND INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE

language literacy campaigns into indigenous regional contexts. We have analyzed and

historicized the complicated relationship between Western and indigenous literacies by

examining Freirean critical pedagogy in the context of literacy campaigns in Guinea-Bissau,

Nicaragua and rural Andean societies; we then applied a Freirean critical lens to current issues in

indigenous Canadian literacy education. The continued presence of complications and

inequalities between indigenous and dominant literacies implies the need for more scholarship,

dialogue, and activism in favor of a critical pedagogy rooted in multiple cultural literacies and an

ethical commitment to resisting destructive narratives of cultural oppression:

It is not enough to hear the Aboriginal voice and to acknowledge the Aboriginal

presence; Aboriginal people must be valued as an integral, important part of their own

education. Also, who Aboriginal people are as human beings must be valued and

treasured. (Curwin Doige, 2011, p. 127)

This honoring of the historically oppressed ‘other’ as a subject capable of self-

determination and the transformation of his/her own reality through critical praxis is aligned both

ethically and spiritually with Freire’s (1998) Pedagogy of Freedom, in which he argued against

dehumanizing policies from an ethic of human agency: “Respect for the autonomy and dignity of

every person is an ethical imperative and not a favour that we may or may not concede to each

other” (p. 59). This ethical position, which seeks to decentralize and decolonize education, calls

for an approach to indigenous literacy focusing on the expansion and equal honoring of multiple

cultural literacies instead of the oppressive, dehumanizing effects of a pedagogy based solely in

assimilation into the dominant language and cultural ideology.

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