Aboriginal Student Center Visit

[Christine]

So today Julia, Sippie and I attended a presentation at the Aboriginal
Student's Center on campus. The First Nations Agricultural Council of
Saskatchewan Inc. did a presentation on their mandate, and on some of
the programs they have for youth and children in Saskatchewan. This
included a 4-H program, "Little Green Thumbs Program" and an
agriculture school program all being implemented in First Nations
schools.

They also talked about their goal to "develop a strong, viable and
sustainable agricultural sector both on and off reserve for status
Indians in the province of Saskatchewan". It was interesting.

Anyway- perhaps Julia and Sippie want to expand on the presentation
and their thoughts.

What I'd like to share is my experience being in the Aboriginal
Student Center, and feeling (for perhaps one of the few times in my
life) like an outsider. While everyone there was VERY welcoming,
generous and inviting, it was very interesting to notice my sudden
self-consciousness about the color of my skin. I was a visible
minority. It was a strange feeling, and certainly unfamiliar.

I realized how much I take for granted "blending in" at the
university, and in my general community. I cannot imagine what it must
be like to feel like this all the time, to be a visible minority (with
any race - certainly not just Aboriginal). To constantly be aware of
how you are different from others (of course we should also be
acknowledging our similarities, but this is not what I found myself
focusing on when I was at the center)

Anyway- I was wondering if anyone else has had similar experiences and
would want to share? (some of us need more posts after all...) Is it
wrong for me to have focused so much on my race while in a new
environment? Or is this a natural process? Has anyone ever lived
somewhere where they were a visible minority and would like to share
some experiences?

[Julia M]

Christine, I find it really neat that you wrote about this, as I
just signed in to write about the exact same feelings. Not only did I
feel out of place, I almost felt like I was intruding. I also was
completely conscious of my behaviour, what I was wearing, the look on
my face, everything. I just didn't want to come off as fake or
condescending, but at the same time was trying to acknowledge that I
was in an environment that was theirs. I suppose these are feelings
that I will come to understand better, and in my life expereinces I
will begin to feel more comfortable with myself in these situations. I
guess my greatest fear is that I will be perceived as an ignorant
person, when I believe that I am far from that.

Aside from my own feelings, I really enjoyed the presentation. I
had no idea that the First Nations Agricultural Councal of
Saskatchewan existed, and it was interesting to get a little bit of
information about it. I feel that it is an important area of the
economy for Aboriginal people to be invovled in, especially because of
the strong ties their culture has to the land. Their focus is on
sustainability and promoting aboriginal agriculture in the province,
from farming, ranching, and wild rice.

I had hoped to have a chance to talk with Walter and Maria
Linklater, but they were tied up with other individuals. I wasn't
aware that Elders came to the campus every week (which is what Walter
and Maria do), and I think that it is a really great iniative to have
on campus. WHile I am not pretending to know what is best for
aboriginal students, I can only see positive benefits from having an
elder from your culture to talk to on a weekly basis. As I've
mentioned before, this is an initiative that is happening in other
elementary and high schools, so it makes sense to be present at the
university level as well.

Ultimately, today was a really good lesson on what it means to be
a white person in a white world, and how it feels to step outside my
comfort zone and to be a minority, even if it was only for an hour. As
empathetic as you try to be, there is nothing like personal experience
for gaining true understanding of others in our society.

Julia

[Sippie]

Yes! Quite honestly I was feeling the fact that I was a visible
minority for once too! I found it quite difficult but it really should
not have been. We do make too much of skin colour I think. Everyone
there was very very friendly despite the fact that I was a stranger.
Maria and Walter are officially a few of my favourite people in the
whole world! Very funny and they had so many good stories!!
The presentation that we coincidentally witnessed was really
interesting as well. I'm glad that there is an initiative to encourage
Aboriginal people in the agriculture area. In Native Studies we
briefly touched on how some of the land that is being given back to
Aboriginal people through the Treaty Land Entitlement is not being put
to good use for many reasons, one of them being that there is not the
skill to do it on the Reserves. Therefore I thought this was a
positive organization and, by the sounds of it, they have a large
number of initiatives and are well established.

[Heather]

Although I understand what you mean when talking about the difficulty
of walking into a new situation and being a visible minority, I think
that it may be a little "Western" to assume that minority groups are
constantly aware of their differences. Unlike our perception of their
experience, I think that, because of their diiferences, they feel a
greater sense of community and attatchment with similar individuals
than we assume. Just walking through the U of S I find that members of
minority groups seem to congragate in large groups, where individuals
have a great deal of culture in common, while, as "white people", we
walk through the university totally unattatched to one another. I know
from my personal experience of travelling in a different country where
I was the visible minorty and actively seeking out "others" like me I
felt a sense of familiarity with total strangers who were other
minorities. Although I felt out of place, i always understood that
this was temporary and I would be returning to Canada to again be the
majority. It was interesting to feel out of place, but as a member of
the white middle class it is difficult to ever truly feel what
minority populations feel, whether traveling, or in my own country. I
think it is important for member of the Canadian majority to reflect
on, and show empathy towards those members of minority groups, and
remember that what we experience on a daily basis may be avstly
different than what others experience.

On Dec 3, 3:18 pm, Christine <crk...@mail.usask.ca> wrote:

[Kim Duff]

Try being a disabled person in a non-disabled world. More still, try
being a person with an "invisible" disability in a non-disabled world!!

Kim

Heather wrote:
<snip>

>It was interesting to feel out of place, but as a member of
>the white middle class it is difficult to ever truly feel what
>minority populations feel, whether traveling, or in my own country. I
>think it is important for member of the Canadian majority to reflect
>on, and show empathy towards those members of minority groups, and
>remember that what we experience on a daily basis may be avstly
>different than what others experience.

---------------------------------------
"The tragedy [with autism] is not that
we're here, but that your world has no
place for us to be. How can it be
otherwise, as long as our own parents
are still grieving over having brought
us into the world?"
— Jim Sinclair "Don't Mourn For Us"

[Julia M]

Kim,

I'm glad that you mentioned this; it triggered a discussion I have
had in another class that I think is relevant in this discussion.

In the article "Connecting our lives with yours" by Vera
Chouinard, she gives a firsthand account of the changes in her life
upon becoming physically disabled and the challenges she faced. She
talks of ableism (which is similar to racism and sexism) in that it is
a way of ablebodied people looking down upon those who are dis-abled.

She explained how her struggles for human rights and inclusion
have helped her to realize that being dis-abled is not something that
follows inevitably from having an impaired body or mind. Rather it is
an outcome of social attitudes, relations, and practices which devalue
the lives and contributions of those who differ from what prevailing
norms and practices that ableness demand.

In our society, being disabled renders you a less valuable member
of society. In the workplace you often become labeled as
troublemakers, are the last hired and first fired, and as a disabled
women, you are paid much less than disabled men. She goes on to
mention – which is something I’ve also heard you say before Kim- that
in society there is an ongoing devaluation of disabled womens lives as
not worth living.

I think it is important to acknowledge the numerous ways in which
differences often become “hierarchies” in our societeies, whereby one
is valued more than the other. I think that this does happen for race,
sex, as well as able-bodiedness.

Julia

[Kim Duff]

Absolutely!! ... I never did send you a copy of that article "How to
Talk to an Able-Bodied Person, did I? :) It's a hilarious article that
takes the same phrases often used condescendingly towards disabled
people and uses them towards able bodied people, 'turning the tables'
and shows how ridiculous such patronizing attitudes are... it's much in
the same vein as the "Institute for the Neurologically Typical"
website. I wish i could find where it's hiding at the moment... I
never was able to find if when I looked before.

I think I've also mentioned before in my discussions about the
discrimination I faced from those grad students who taught 348 last
term, about the extreme ableism I faced from them, and how frustrating
and demoralizing it was. (I'm so glad that once I finally found out how
to file a complaint against them, the Coordinator for Discrimination
and Harassment Prevention Services was so awesome and supportive - and
outraged by how I was treated)! As I've said before, that's really the
only reason I came back at all.

And yes, although we don't always realize it, women are still treated
as a minority in lots of places even in our culture.

Kim

[Melissa]

First of all, Christine, I've had experiences like the one you
mentioned before where I felt like the minority. It's not just about
race, either, as Kim pointed out. I've been the only white person on a
bus full of ppl speaking a different language, the only non-Catholic
at mass (haha or at least it felt like it to me. Everyone else seemed
to have the liturgy memorized), the only girl amongst a bunch of guys
at work, the fattest girl in the room...shall I go on? I can relate to
the tension and self-consciousness some people talked about, and I
think it is completely natural, even when the majority group is really
accepting and welcoming. I think the important thing is to try to
focus on the experience and what you can learn from the group in which
you've immersed yourself (I mean that as long as the majority group is
civil. Discrimination such as what Kim described is wrong and should
be dealt with of course!). Also, I've found that if you can get over
being uncomfortable and obssessing over political correctness during
these kind of interactions, it can make them alot more meaningful.

Second, I think it's a good thing that agriculture is being promoted,
but I was wondering what kind of techniques were being encouraged.
Traditionally, aboriginal people have a great respect for the land,
and I was just wondering if that would be compatible with using
chemicals or possibly using natural habitat as farmland.

[Julia M]

They didn't mention specific techniques in the presentation, or on the
brochure, about how to be environmentally friendly while doing
agriculture. However, they did list several areas that were important
and needing to be addressed:

-investing in value added procesing and manufacturing within intensive
livestock operations.
-a marketing strategy that uses a Fist Nation themed approach.
-a process for the production, processing and moarking of bison and
beef.
-farm income insurance program which could potenially provide access
to equity.
creating an agricultural land management section that can help bands
achieve land management goal; and
- working in partnership to create comprehensive agricultural training
and development courses.

I'm not sure if this helps or not, but if you want more info, their
website is: www.fnacs.ca

[dwr...@mail.usask.ca]

On the topic of the Aboriginal students' centre, I would just like to
tout the importance of it. I have a good friend who is Metis. He
spends alot of time at the centre and the staff there have helped him
in many ways. What I think is the most interesting is that he is not
visibly Aboriginal, yet that makes no difference to the way that he is
treated there. I think that the centre is important for social
cohesion and that it is a great help for Aboriginal students who are
adjusting to university. I recently read a study that talked about the
importance of such centres in minority student transition to
universities in Canada. The study actually gave special mention to the
efficacy of the program at the U of S, there are not many centres out
there like the one that we have.

[Sippie]

Melissa: What I got from their presentation was that they worked with
kids through 4-H and Little Green Thumbs to learn how to grow things
and composting. They didn't talk a lot about their policies concerning
pesticides etc. It seemed to be very geared towards getting people
interested in agriculture. I'm glad you found more on that though,
Julia.

I also wanted to respond briefly to your post Danny. First of all...
I'm so proud! Good information and hoorah U of S. I guess you mention
a lot of practical help, but I wonder if just the presence of a space
on campus devoted specifically for a minority group is enough to
provide those people with a sense of security or validation. I always
think about that with the Women's Centre and the LGTBA Centre on
campus... I don't know how many people use their services but they're
there and it's enough for me just that the presence is established.

[Kim Duff]

And yet note that there is no such place for diabled students.

Kim