Some universities make students take a math course before they get an arts degree, just as some engineering students are now being schooled in the liberal arts.
Starting next fall, undergraduate students on two Canadian campuses, the University of Winnipeg and Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., will be required to take a three-credit course in Indigenous culture or history to graduate.
It’s a big, bold move meant to combat racism and foster reconciliation in cities where Indigenous residents continue to face discrimination and titanic barriers.
Last winter, the student association and the University of Winnipeg Aboriginal Students’ Council jointly submitted a motion to the University of Winnipeg Senate asking that students be required to take one of the university’s 100-odd Indigenous studies courses before graduation.
They include courses on race and justice, one on Inuit art, and one that examines encounters between Christian and Indigenous religious authorities.
The approval came March 26, and followed months of emotional debate on race relations in Winnipeg, sparked by the murder of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine.
The Indigenous girl’s remains were found last August in a garbage bag in the Red River, just a few blocks east of the university. “Racism is unacceptable, and bigotry is unacceptable. This requirement is not a solution, but it represents a big step forward for the university, and for Winnipeg in general,” said Mcleod Arnould, 25.
Three years ago, the aspiring economist, who grew up in the white, middle-class Winnipeg neighborhood of St. James, took a class on inner-city issues. He remembers “choking up” after hearing an Indigenous presenter describe a vicious beating at the hands of white police officers.
“There was this entire side of Winnipeg I didn’t know about. Sometimes you need a bit of a push to look outside yourself, at what people around you are experiencing,” he said.
In Canada, “we teach history from one perspective,” adds Kevin Settee, vice-president of the UWSA. “That missing information is continuing to have a negative effect on Indigenous people.” Indeed, there’s a lot the country’s creation stories currently miss: the withholding of food from starving people to force them to submit to treaties in the 1870s, the virtual imprisonment of Indigenous people under the pass system.
Indeed, there are 49 First Nations just north of Lakehead, with a population of 50,000. The school’s graduates will require an understanding of treaties and the changing legal climate.