University College of the North – Commentary

This article is a commentary to an article published in the Winnipeg Free Press Thursday, January 13, 2011 by Nick Martin.

The UCN was established to combine university and college education and to be established in northern Manitoba. The UCN was to address the new unique education needs of northern students. The UCN in addition to academic courses, also had an elders council established. Normally universities have two levels of governance. 1. The governing council (board of directors) and 2. Learning council (senate). UCN now has a third level of governance which is an elder’s council. The governing council represents northern residents; the learning council represents the academics. University North mandate was to incorporate to its academic programs a First Nations perspective of learning and that is the role of the elders. The issue at UCN today is whether the teaching of traditions should be mandatory or volunteer. The elder’s council feels it should be one of the required courses. The UCN learning council (academics) strongly feels that they should choose what’s mandatory or voluntary, this is called academic freedom. In this case the governing council seems to have violated this academic freedom that is exclusively within the learning council’s jurisdiction. The issue then who should decide that the teaching of traditions should be mandatory or voluntary basis. The president of the UCN has sided with the learning council (academics). Therefore they lost the confidence of the governing council. Most importantly the issue of traditions as part of a course needs to be reconciled by these two groups. The president of UCN is not able to facilitate reconciliation or compromise from both parties. The president has then lost the confidence of the governing council; therefore, they decided not to renew the president’s contract for the next five years. The importance of this issue is that it seems the president is not taking the position of teaching traditions and First Nations perspective as a priority but on volunteer basis or added courses. First Nations feel strongly that a complete university education needs to include traditions, culture, and history from First Nations perspective. Far too long university education has been viewed by European or western perspective, today First Nations perspective must be included as part of university education.
The first point is its important to understand elder’s teachings has to be willing on the learner, the student. You can’t force anybody into ceremonies and teaching and stuff, its not our way, There has to be mutual willingness and consent. The elders are using the government’s old way of doing things, forcing people to learn as was the case in residential school. The second part is the president should be able to access the real traditional knowledge and information directly from First Nation’s people. Non-aboriginal academics do not know the real history about First Nations because they can’t speak or understand first Nations language. The president wasn’t able to provide the leadership to reconcile First Nation’s traditional knowledge and modern written history.