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Thesis (EdD)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2009. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Elisabeth Swanson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 244-265).

Most anthropologists agree today that the Indians of America came to this continent by way of the Bering Sea somewhere between fifteen and eight thousand years ago. During their years of occupancy of the northwest, they developed a culture adapted to its economy. They perfected neither writing nor formal education, but asserted their heraldry and transmitted their legends and traditions orally. Europeans, in search of a westward route to the orient, reached the American northwest late in the eighteenth century. They introduced into the native way of life a modicum of European artifacts, but also, particularly along the coast, began the destruction of the aboriginal culture through disease, liquor, and creation of unnatural villages about trading posts. Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries began to arrive toward the middle of the nineteenth century. They worked to counteract the influence of the fur-traders but, in their efforts at evangelism, helped to precipitate disintegration of the native way of life. Anglican, Methodist and Roman Catholic Churches gradually founded missions, and later schools, among Indian groups throughout the province. Sponsored entirely by Church funds and contributions from the Indians themselves at first, these schools began to receive Federal government grants as reserves became established following British Columbia's entry into Confederation in 1871. Each Church established a dual system of schooling, consisting of small day schools located on such reserves as it was practicable to place them, and larger residential schools, strategically located, at which orphans and children from outlying reserves could remain while receiving their education. Little direct government interest was shown in their education until after World War II, when census figures began to reveal the fact that the Indians were not a dying race. In 1948 a joint Parliamentary committee made recommendations which became embodied in the revised Indian Act of 1951, which has since received further revision. The Indian Affairs Branch of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration has assumed almost the entire costs of operating both day and residential schools, has erected day schools, and has appointed inspectors to supervise the system. Eighteen agency superintendents act as local school boards In B.C. Provision in the revised Indian Act for Federal-provincial cooperation has greatly increased the number of Indian students attending regular public schools. In 1958, out of a total of 8746 students at school, 6411 were enrolled in a system of 78 Indian schools, and the remaining 2335 were attending provincial and private schools. The standard of Indian education is rising but, in relation to that of the average non-Indian population element, the Indians' economic standards are declining. Integration of the Indian into the Canadian way of life; ethnically, culturally, or economically, is not taking place. Ethnic integration is not being really sought; cultural Integration is. It cannot proceed until some degree of economic parity has been achieved. Indians today cannot afford the impedimenta of White culture; to date the destination of the Indian, educated or not, is the reservation whence he came. In remote localities Indians should he trained for their way of life rather than ours, until civilization advances to meet them. Wherever possible, the adult Indian must be granted fair employment and a fair representation in a unified provincial educational system. Only then can his children become acculturated. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

This dissertation is an ethnography. It explores the ways that people within a First Nations adult education centre make sense of taking control of education. Michel Foucault's open-textured analysis of power frames the research. He argues power not only represses but also "forms knowledge and produces discourse." Control and power as used by the "new" sociologists of education, and the National Indian Brotherhood in its policy statement Indian Control of Indian Education further locate the study. Extensive use of the participants' words allows a consideration of meanings inscribed in discourse. The study is based on a year of fieldwork including interviews, observations and the researcher's direct participation as a teacher in the centre. It places expressions of people's understandings of control within a series of contextualizations. The centre exists in contemporary Canadian society. Documentary evidence of British Columbia's First Nations efforts to control formal education and re-presentation of the centre's twenty years of growth and development illuminate an historical context. The study examines the current significance of the building where students find "a safe place to learn." Biographies, furnishing additional context for people's words, situate the study in relation to life history. Their engagement in a variety of the centre's programs provides the immediate context. Students and teachers explore what it is to be First Nations people seeking knowledge which will enable them to make choices about employment and education in First Nations or mainstream locations. References to the document Indian Control of Indian Education reveal its continuing significance for those people who are taking control. Study participants identify as crucial many of the issues raised within the document such as Native values, curriculum, First Nations and non-Native teachers, jurisdiction and facilities. At the same time, their discourse reveals the complex process of refining the original statements as policy translates to practice and people ponder the implications. A final chapter, something of an epilogue, argues that the dialectical contradiction is a useful analytical tool for examining the dissonances which arise in attempts to meet First Nations needs and desires within a predominantly non-Native society. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

In the last twenty years a great deal of research into training for creativity has been conducted (Blank, 1982). Guilford (1950, 1959, 1962) and Warren and Davis (1969) reported that productivity increased with training for creativity using the morphological synthesis technique. Research in creativity training has been concerned generally with white middle class school children. There has been no research on training for creativity in Canadian Native Indians (Blank, 1982). The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of training for creativity on fluency, flexibility, and originality of Canadian Native Indian children. Children from the Chahalis Indian Reserve of British Columbia (grades three through six) were assigned to control (n=7) and experimental (n=7) groups. The control group received no training for creativity while, the experimental group experienced two weeks of training (20 minutes per day) for creativity with blocks, sticks, and tanagrams. Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking were used to assess creativity. Pre-training scores of the control and experimental groups were compared using one-way ANOVAs. Group differences were deemed non-significant. These results indicated that the assignment of children to the groups was not biased in favour of the more creative versus the less creative and that the post-training results of the groups could be compared for gains in potential creativity since both groups had exhibited similar levels of creativity before training. The results of post-training one-way ANOVAs indicated significant gains in originality scores of the experimental group for the Incomplete Figures Test and the Circles Test. ANCOVAs, which included pre-training scores as covariates, had the same outcomes as post-training one-way ANOVAs. Paired t-tests comparing pre- and post-training scores within groups indicated that there were no significant improvements in control group test scores. The experimental group showed significant, improvements in flexibility and originality scores of the Circles Test and in originality scores of the Incomplete Figures Test. Factors which influenced the results of this study were discussed and suggestions for further research were given. In spite of these factors, the results of the data analyses indicated that creativity of Native Indian children will improve with training. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The present study attempted to examine reading and writing behaviors of Musqueam Indian children in kindergarten and grade one to see if a similar profile of reading and writing behaviors existed within this urban unilingual Native Indian population. The relationship these behaviors had with parental provision for literacy activities during the preschool years and school attendance was explored. It was hypothesized that there would be no similar profile of reading and writing behaviors within the Musqueam population and that there would be no correlation between the variables, the index of parental provision for literacy activities during the preschool years, total school absence and reading and writing performance in kindergarten and grade one. Individual administration of the Diagnostic Survey (Clay) at kindergarten and grade one yielded a description of reading and writing behaviors. Subtests measuring knowledge of letter identification, concepts about print, sight words, and writing vocabulary were administered in both grades. Subtests including oral reading of passages, writing level, and dictation were added in grade one. Group means, standard deviations and range of scores were calculated for the Diagnostic Survey subtests at kindergarten and grade one and examined for similarities. A questionnaire was used to establish an index for parental provision for literacy activities. Total school absence was obtained from school records. The relationship subtests of the Diagnostic Survey had with the Index of Parent Suppport for Literacy Activities and School Absence was explored using Pearson Product-Moment correlational analysis. Results indicated that no similar profile of reading and writing behaviors existed within the Musqueam population. Excluding the sight word subtest at K, Pearson Product-Moment correlations between all subtests of the Diagnostic Survey and the Index of Parental Provision for Literacy Activities were found to be significant (p < .05). No significant correlations were found between survey subtests and total school absence. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

In the late nineteenth century, middle class Canadian reformers tried to use education to change the values and rhythms of working class, immigrant, and Indian children. They used boarding schools, however, only in the case of Indians. Educators expected boardingsschoolstto give them complete control over the environment of their pupils, thus making it possible to rear a generation of culturally and occupationally assimilated Indians. They did not expect their efforts to be blunted or reshaped by existing Indian rhythms. Because Indians were outnumbered, and because their culture was under attack from many directions, historians too have generally assumed that native rhythms had a negligible impact on residential education. Most accounts of the schools portray them as either assisting or victimizing a decimated and essentially helpless minority. This thesis uses Government reports, school records, correspondence, and oral accounts to investigate the way educators and Indians made attendance decisions. It shows that Indians played a vital role in deciding whether children went to residential school; which children went; at what ages they enrolled; how long they stayed; and how much contact they retained with their families and culture while in attendance. It clarifies some of the emotional, economic, and cultural needs which conditioned Indians' attendance decisions. By examining how existing native patterns of life modified a very determined campaign to control and alter Indian society, the thesis hopefully sheds light as well on the gradual, adaptive, and fluid process of "directed" cultural change. Residential schools were not simply an "imposed" social experience, but a mutual and changing relationship shaped by Indians as well as whites. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

But for the Rennaisance there would be no atory of the Indians in these United States. Our American poet, Joaquin Miller, makes clear the hazards of adventurers incident to the discovery of an unknown people: My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak. The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of Balt wave washed his swarthy cheek. "What shall I say, • brave Admiral, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" "Why you shall, say at break of day, Sail on! Sail on.