A critique of mandatory aboriginal courses

Last year's report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended a compulsory course in aboriginal history and culture for all students of social work, medicine, nursing, law and journalism. The University of Winnipeg and Lakehead University have taken that idea a step further and made a course mandatory for all students.

But not everyone is sold on the idea. Will Landon, the aboriginal student representative for the University of Manitoba Students' Union, says the courses could do as much harm as good if not handled well.

"My biggest concern is what I see with other mandatory courses, so people who just take their math and sciences just to get it over with," he says. "If it's not done properly... people who walk out of these courses will be able to sort of wash their hands and say oh, I took an indigenous studies course and be able to just kind of say whatever they want after that, and not really understand the knowledge that's been given to them."

Landon argues universities should consider integrating indigenous knowledge and ways of learning into courses across disciplines, rather than focusing on one mandatory course. 

"In my personal opinion, the Western paradigm of education needs to make way for how we would treat knowledge and how we teach it, so that it would make way for our traditions, our protocols, our way of knowing," he says. "It has to be done in such a way that it relies on us as indigenous [people] to use our skills and our mindset and our traditional ways to pass on that knowledge."

Click on the button to hear the interview.