Aboriginal Children Count: A Campaign for Social Justice for Early Education

Kathy Mallett and Wendy Prince are conducting a research project entitled Kiskinwahamkwakewin. This is a cree word which describes the task of education or instruction.   Some of the findings were then taken and developed into the social justice campaign entitled Aboriginal Children Count.  Too often the debates happening around Aboriginal people ignore issues for young children. This campaign is to reach the grassroots and connect with parents and talk about the needs of young children. Further goals include making government more aware about the issues surrounding young children and their specific needs.

There were three stages to their work. The researchers invited families to participate in order to discuss the values they hold and what meaningful people in their lives gave them or taught them those values. The second aspect they asked the parents is what values they actually taught their children and what are the differences between the values they learned and the values they teach to their young children. Wendy and Kathy also asked the families what types of programming they wanted to see in their communities.

As an example Wendy talks about how she would yell at her children to get them to do things. She was mimicking the values in parenting she had learned from her mother, who was also a residential school survivor. Eventually she decided to ask the kids how the felt about the parenting values she was using during a family sharing circle. The children indicated that they did not like this and wanted to see greater respect. Wendy then used more Indigenous parenting techniques to convey her values to her children.  

http://aboriginal.scdsb.edu.on.ca/sevengrandfather.php 

Some of the values that the parents talked about where the seven teaching and other values such as courage, respect, helping one another, eating together, standing independently, language.

To close Kathy said that too often Aboriginal parents are stereotyped as being bad parents, but there are excellent parents who do wonderful work with their children and their research demonstrates that the values that Aboriginal peoples hold as parents are very important and positive and should be used by many different parents.

The researcher have the intent of going into other communities(i.e. William Whyte, St John's neighborhoods) to complete the learning circle portions of the research  in the near future. 

Kathy Mallet is a mother of two adult daughters and a grandmother of three boys and one girl.  Kathy is a band member of the Fisher River Cree Nation, and has lived in the inner-city of Winnipeg since the early 1950s.   In 2008 she received the Grass Roots Women’s Award, and in 2000 she received the first Manitoba Human Rights Commitment Award.  Kathy’s first award came in 1985 when she was recognized for her community work by receiving the YWCA Women of the Year Award in Community Service. Most recently Kathy received the Order of Manitoba on July 11, 2011 and the Grandmothers Keep the Fires Burning award.

Wendy Prince, Cree woman from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation and also familial connections to Peguis First Nation.  Notawiy(mother of three amazing adults), Kohkum (grandmother of two).  Wendy currently supports young parents(13 -23) in the areas of housing, budgeting, educational pursuits, finding appropriate childcare, parenting, and provides 1-1 counseling(i.e grief & loss, self-esteem, family violence, etc.) via the Parenting Student Support Program @ Mount Carmel Clinic. 

To Learn More (Interview and Podcast)

http://archive.org/download/EarlyChildDevelopmentWithKathymalletAndWendyPrince/KathyMalletWendyPrince.mp3  

Citations