>> It is my great pleasure to introduce Angela Mashford-Pringle, who is an instructor in the Aboriginal Studies Program at the University of Toronto. Welcome, Angela. Tell us a bit about yourself and the work that you do. >> I, I am an urban Aboriginal person. And I've been working for the Aboriginal Studies Program for a number of years now. I have taught in Undergraduate and Graduate courses. I've done research with on-reserve and off-reserved communities. And I currently teach in urban, in, in, urban Aboriginal peoples and the Aboriginal Health Systems course here at UT. >> One of the things that I've noticed in your work is when you're looking at how health and education are related, very closely. I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about, about that. >> Well you need both. You need Aboriginal education to get to more knowledge so that you can have better health, and you need better health so that you can get better education. So, if you don't have health, then you're likely to not be able to sit through to get the education that you need and if you don't have the education, you're likely not to know when to go to the doctor to get the edge the, the prescriptions or the medicines that you may require to get you better and on the road to health. So, the quality of life might be down and it might reflect in your employment, it might reflect in your physical environment, it might reflect in your social support because you may move away from your family. You may be transient. You may not have as much time with social support systems that you would ordinarily have on reserve. So, if you're talking on-reserve, we also have a number of issues with historic trauma, so talking about residential schools and how that reflects on your health. It not only has an impact on your, on your emotional health but it has an impact on your mental health, your physical health, and your spiritual health so if you look at a medicine wheel, it's likely that you would have to have the balance between the four to be able to get to your education. Unfortunately, the education system that most people have interacted with has been traumatic for them. And so, they don't know how to balance themselves again. And they needed help both mentally and, and emotionally to get back on that balance. >> When we look at the population as a whole for Aboriginal people, health status and educational achievement are much lower than for the Canadian population. >> Mm-hm. >> Why is this the case? >> Well, I think that there's a number of reasons again. Residential schools are one of the issues. There's the issue with the Sixties Scoop. There's the issue with not having themselves represented in the educational system or the health system. So, the one thing that we've noticed in research studies is Aboriginal people don't see themselves reflected and don't feel good when they go to institutions like education or in health. And so, they'll go to a doctor and they don't feel there's a trust relationship built, because the way that biomedicine works is you come in and you tell me what your problem is, and we only look at that problem. They're looking for a more traditional approach, that's holistic and looks at the whole of them, and it's not necessarily just the symptoms that we see today, but the root causes, and that's similar for education. We, we often say, okay, well, you've gotta pass these tests and this is how you pass them. But we forget to say that, you know, these people don't have the same kind of education with life skill education that we anticipate, so when they get to testing, they're not ready for it. And, you know, they've heard from their ancestors, whether it's their immediate family or their extended family, their experiences with the education system so it further depletes it and makes that gap get larger. The other problem that I've, recently been working on is looking at pregnancy. And so teen pregnancy while that traditionally was acceptable Western culture or mainstream culture doesn't believe that you should have your children till you're much older. So, they tend to want to put their education off, so they can raise their children and so, when you start putting education off, it also has an effect on your employment and it has an effect on your physical and, and supportive environments and so, you know, those types of things also change that gap. So, you'll look at some of the statistics and it looks like there's a huge gap, but when, in fact, you start to look at them five, ten years after, that time frame, the gap starts to lessen and they start to look a little more like mainstream Canadians, but there is still a, a gap that needs to be looked at. >> Mm-hm. You, you mentioned residential schools and the Sixties Scoop, can you tell us a bit about what the Sixties Scoop is and how that's impacted learning today? >> The Sixties Scoop, which essentially ran from the late 40s or early 50s through to the 90s depending on whose literature you look at occurred when the non-Aboriginal Child Welfare agencies would come in, and they would take children away for a number of reasons. Not necessarily the reasons that we would anticipate. Poverty being one of the biggest. And, of course, Aboriginal people do live in poverty. So, when you do that, you're taking away children but you're not really taking them away for the benefit of them. The, the family may not have money, that doesn't mean they don't know how to raise a child. The other thing is non-interference. We, we often hear about how parenting is about non-inteference and how, you know, you, you let a child explore their environment and unfortunately, in Child Protective Services, that's seen as neglect. And so, a lot of children were taken in the Sixties Scoop, about 11,000 according to the Federal government. And they were taken and adopted around the world, not just to Canada but United States and into Europe and these children are now in their 30s, 40s and 50s and they're just starting to reclaim and revitalize their culture and language. >> Mm-hm. So, this non-interference ethic and being seen as neglect, this is an example of cultural world views in collision. >> Yeah, most definitely. When you look at the, the ethic of non-interference parenting, which is the way that traditional parenting would happen versus the way that we view parenting in a mainstream way, there is a huge conflict in terms of Child Protective Services who see non-interference parenting as one of the reasons why they need to take the child. The child may hurt themselves, they might not be told when or when not to be in a certain situation, and so they see that as neglect, and so that's causing more and more children, even today, to be taken. If you look up the work of Cindy Blackstock, that's a good place to start in the First Nations Family and Child Caring Society. >> Mm-hm. Well, speaking of early childhood education, you've done some work in this area. Can you tell us a little about the significance of starting early. >> Well, what we've found with Aboriginal Head Start in particular Urban and Northern communities in Canada, which was started in 1993 we found that if the children are given a head start at an early age they are more likely to reduce that education gap that we were talking about earlier. So, if you get them into school situations where they are feeling a positive sense of self which Aboriginal Head Start does, then they're more likely to feel like they belong to the school system, so they start to respond in such a way that they can actually learn more and they start to get ahead. So, when they do get to Kindergarten, we found that the Kindergarten teachers say, they're more in tune with the day to day classroom activities. They're more likely to pick up on their ABC's, even though in Head Start, we do try to bring in culture and language so they would have learned one of the traditional culture cultures and language in their Head Start. But then, they have that positive sense of identity and they want to stand up and say their first nation, or they want to stand up and say they're Aboriginal, this is a first for us. >> Mm-hm. So, this seems like the cultural self-esteem and identity are really important attributes for successful education experience and achievement. Have you seen any examples or cases that are good examples of, of this blending of cultural identity and mainstream education achievement? >> Well, Head Start being one. >> Mm-hm. >> So, when we're talking about early childhood, in particular, as we get to these children before they're six years old, we also have a chance to, to work with their parents. So, we can also have an educational effect on their parents. And that can also have a down plan health so we are talking about health and education, that's one of those places if you start to educate people about the health of themselves and their children and they are more likely to continue that education into other areas, not necessarily just health. >> Mm-hm. >> Now, when we are talking about how do we, how do we bring that cultural identity into the programming, well, in mainstream, we don't have very many Aboriginal-specific schools. We do have First Nation School here in Toronto. It's meant to give you a head start, but only 200 students get to attend that school. So, I don't know that we're reaching as many as we possibly could. And but when you get to post-secondary education, we're obviously reaching out and trying to bridge that gap, both at college and university levels. So, you'll see a lot of access programs, which means that there's a different kind of admittance program for the Aboriginal students. You also see that Aboriginal students get to come and go with the mobility that they need which isn't necessarily true when they're in younger grades. So, when you're at university or college, you can kind of decide you want to take a term off to go home to help a family member. When you're in K to 12 you can't do that as, as easily. And so, if your parents have to keep going back and forth to your community or to where there are family and extended family live, sometimes that has a detrimental affect on your educational attainment.
