Taking control

Celia Haig-Brown

Taking Control is a critical ethnography of the Native Education Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia. It presents an intimate view of the centre, focusing on the ways that people work there - First Nations students, board members, teachers - and how they talk about and put into practice their beliefs about First Nations control. The study is based primarily on fieldwork conducted in the centre during the 1988-9 school year. At that time, over 400 adult students were enrolled in eleven programs ranging from basic literacy and upgrading to 'skills training.' The author contextualizes people's notions of taking control first within the space where they work - a building specially created using cedar planks, glass, and hand-carved poles - and then in relation to the efforts by Aboriginal people to control their formal education in British Columbia. The work engages theoretically with...