EDUCATION - TRANSMISSION

There was a time when the transmission of knowledge was natural. The principle of survival stronger than everything. To learn how to live in the woods and in tents, one had to learn how to tan caribou skin, weave snowshoes, fish with a harpoon, and bake bread in ashes. We educated children through example. They learned through observation. Given that all of this was necessary.

Recognition of the role of Wise man or Elder is not a matter of age. Our Wise men are conveyers of stories, narratives, traditions, they are guardians of our culture.

Children also have an important place in our societies whose cohesion is ensured through respect rather than through authority. It is with their parents that children learned, by living in their shoes and discovering for themselves why they had to obey. A parent's role is to guide, without imposing, so as not to interfere with the spirits which also guide the child.

From the creation of reserves, from the sudden change in lifestyle, such knowledge has become an accessory. And since school was the school of life, transmission no longer had any support, neither in practice nor in the leading function of things to be built.

The education practiced by Europeans upon their arrival was much stricter than traditional education and the shock of residential schools was even greater for our children.