Trudy Cardinal, assistant professor of Elementary Education, has always loved books. As a young girl, she says she was the “quintessential bookworm.” As an academic today, her research interests include narrative inquiry, teacher education and the identity negotiations of Aboriginal children, youth and families in and out of schools.

A two-part professional development workshop focused on integrating First Nations, Métis and Inuit music and culture into elementary music education had a successful launch at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education this June and is expected to return to campus in the fall 2016 term.

The question of how to serve Aboriginal students in educational institutions that have sometimes been seen as a source of harm is a potent one. And it’s one the Faculty of Education’s Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) addresses head on.

Canada's last residential school, the Gordon Indian Residential School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, finally closed in 1996. A dark chapter of Canada's contemporary history that was largely ignored until the recent report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the schools were a perversion of the very idea of education, destroying the culture, identity and traditional knowledge of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples in the name of assimilation.

By Rochelle Starr

On January 31, 2014 a teach-in on Treaty Rights, Indigenous education, and the First Nation Education Act, was held at the U of A’s Faculty of Education south building.

This teach-in (an informal lecture and discussion on a particular subject of public interest), hosted by I:SSTRIKE, Indigenous Students Strengthening Treaty Relationship through Indigenous Knolwedge and Education, was a complete success.  The room was filled to capacity, people also stood to listen from the hallway.

By Peter Boer

In response to a question in the EDU 211 class asking why it's necessary for students to better understand racism when it comes to Aboriginal people, one student wrote the following:

“I believe the change in Aboriginal education begins with us future teachers and only once that change occurs within us can we be the change we want to see in the world.”

A lot can happen in 10 years. When the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) first got started here at the U of A way back in 2003, Jean Chrétien was still Prime Minister, Facebook wasn’t yet invented and the idea that we could one day be celebrating a successful first decade of a program that was dedicated to enabling Aboriginal teachers to receive their BEd degrees and teach in locations around Northern Alberta was just a dream, a goal that Dean Fern Snart, ATEP Program Director Evelyn Steinhauer and others dared to aim for.

“It's a warrior that goes out and brings the means back to the people and today, those means have become education, and our weapon is the knowledge…”

Assistant Professor Jonathan Anuik believes the most important thing he can do for his students is nourish their learning spirits, and that didn’t change when he taught his first course via distance learning last fall.

“I aimed to build an environment that stimulated reflection and animated my students’ hearts and minds,” says Anuik who taught EDPS 341 (Concepts of Childhood in History) online for the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP).

Most school mornings for Melanie Quinn, '09 BEd, and her students at Saddle Lake Cree Nation’s Kihew Asiniy Education Centre begin with a ceremony of traditional Cree songs and prayer.

“The morning ceremony is a way for us to honour our rich heritage and share our passion for our culture,” says Quinn, who teaches language arts at the Nehiyaw (Cree) high school.