Stakeholders’ Visions of James Bay Cree Public School

Dr. Christopher Stonebanks
School of Education

PROFIL

Dr. Stonebanks is an Associate Professor with the Bishop’s University School of Education.  He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Concordia University and PhD in the area of Curriculum Studies, Indigenous Knowledge, Critical Pedagogy and Consciousness Development from McGill University. Dr. Stonebanks is interested in developing strategies that foster teachers to use their classrooms as locations for transformative change, leading to empowerment and social justice.
 

RESEARCH

Dr. Stonebanks is conducting a research project that will look to re-establish to the James Bay Cree citizens, specifically within the community of Mistissini, a voice to clarify the education they identify as needing, not what the members of the North American Power Blocks think they should have.  He is wokring in collaboration with Kathleen Wotton, Deputy Chief of the Cree Nation of Mistissini, and three colleagues from McGill University, Steve Jordan, Joe Kincheloe, and Shirley Steinberg. The objective of this research is to facilitate and disseminate a voice to the citizens of the Mistissini/James Bay Cree, the education stakeholders, in assessing the current state of education in their community and what they hope their schools should accomplish for their youth.

Statistics Canada’s (2001) census report on educational attainment demonstrates Indigenous Peoples still lag behind their Canadian counterparts on every educational front.  Although the education gap has narrowed slightly between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people at the high school level, the gap between higher education and post-secondary education attainment remains high with the James Bay Cree falling behind the Indigenous average.          This research is composed of three main steps that will be carried out over two years.  The first step deals with the question of whether the current state of schooling in Aboriginal Communities is a success or moribund.  The researchers will define the James Bay Cree citizens’ factors, both positive and negative, that have and are contributing to the existing circumstances of schools in the James Bay Cree region.  The second step involves the question: what is Native about Native education?  The researchers will identify perspectives of the community as to the function they envision their schools fulfilling.  The last step asks the question do Aboriginal people have a voice in shaping educational policy and can grassroots driven policy lead to practical changes?  In order to look at this question, researchers will develop strategies and policies, in equal partnership with the Cree School Board, political bodies and James Bay Cree citizens that will contribute to the constructive growth of the schools in accordance to the community’s wishes.

Dr. Stonebanks will be conducting community based participatory research, also referred to as CBPR, to create a reciprocal problem solving relationship between the research team and the community’s educational stakeholders.  The CBPR research method functions under the principle that community establishes an equal research agenda and direction with the research team which will be utilized to maximize participation with the community and move away from the “top-down” banking of knowledge, expertise, information and conclusions that have been historically thrust upon Indigenous communities, like the James Bay Cree, by outside institutions and researchers.  The CBPR methodological approach encourages a partnership between a research team and the community and a sharing of investigations, expertise and knowledge.

Dr. Stonebanks and his team believe that the significance of their research dilemma, the manner in which the CBPR methodological approach depends on community input and the expertise, experience and diversity of the research team will not only provide insight into the consensus of the otherwise unheard community stakeholders but offer a forum for renewable education problem solving and appropriate duplication, through dissemination, in other indigenous communities.