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Aboriginal Adult Literacy: Nourishing Their Learning Spirits

Aboriginal Adult Literacy: Nourishing Their Learning Spirits is a literature review on Aboriginal literacy from the perspective of Aboriginal literacy worker Ningwakwe George. The documents used in the review were written by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal literacy practitioners and health, science and adult education professionals on topics related to the holistic and healing approaches to education, literacy and life. This paper is designed to provide information and possibly direction for the Aboriginal literacy field and its stakeholders, as to the efficacy of comprehending and nourishing the Learning Spirit.

The literature points to a number of reasons for the challenges Aboriginal learners and their teachers face, most of which can be categorized as the following:

• historical (assimilation policies of education, particularly through but not limited to residential schools);
• geographic (many Aboriginal people live in remote and/or rural communities away from centres where secondary and post-secondary school programming takes place);
• cultural (practices in the institutional educational system differ from that Aboriginal culture, particularly in the non-recognition of the role of Spirit in learning);
• individual and personal barriers (finances, daycare, transportation, histories of trauma and competing priorities such as family, to name a few); and,
• systemic (racism, disparities in resources, as well as the policies and practices of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) which do not adequately address the high level of need in education).

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