Résultats de recherche

1. Objectifs

Intentions :
« In this article, I examine this new role as a healer and Master that some of the elders have decided to play for a generation that has lost its points of reference. » (p. 15)

2. Méthode

Type de traitement des données :
Réflexion critique

3. Résumé

The inappropriateness of school education and the generation gap are important issues in many indigenous societies. This is precisely why we find this experience of returning to the land, in which young Crees are initiated into their own culture by an elder, to be exemplary. It provides an avenue of inquiry for finding solutions to counter the effects of excessively rapid social change. I first of all present the general context in which an indigenous child grows up in a modern community in the 1990s in Canada. The radical change in the way of life, the distance between the culture and the ways of life of parents and grandparents and those of the children, the distance between what they learn at school and in everyday life, may perhaps explain the significant failures confronting the school system recently set up in these communities. [...] I will thus describe what has been called by the Harmony list the ‘‘bush school’’, which is an original and especially fruitful attempt by the Cree elders to transmit their culture and knowledge, not only to the generation of their children, but also to that of their grandchildren. [...] I will reflect upon the roots of the elders’ success. Failure at school is a serious problem for the indigenous populations, and it goes far beyond school. As a result, many young people are forced out of the system: they are neither graduates nor hunters, nor even unemployed, if they have never had a job. School distances youngsters from their language, their way of life and their parents’ values without giving them in exchange access to another world. One may fear then that this cultural loss could lead to a situation of social anomie.