The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 42, No. 2 - 100

Verna J. Kirkness * Ray Barnhardt

expertise and leadership needed by First
Nations communities.
* It can be seen as a means to demystify
mainstream culture and learn the politics
and history of racial discrimination.
From the extra-institutional point of view of
a First Nations student who is "going" to the
university for any of these reasons, the problems they encounter along the way are not
constructed as matters of attrition and retention, which make sense only from an internal
institutional perspective. Rather, the issues
are likely to be framed in more humanistic,
culturally-sensitive terms, such as a desire
for "respect," "relevance," "reciprocity," and
"responsibility," and as such, reﬂect a larger
purpose than simply obtaining a university
degree to get a better job. First Nations students and communities are seeking an education that will also address their communal need
for "capacity-building" to advance themselves
as a distinct and self-determining society, not
just as individuals. In this context, a "job" may
be important, but more as a means to an end,
than an end in itself.
In the effort to sustain their own cultural
integrity, there is an urgent need for First
Nations people to assume roles as teachers,
doctors, lawyers, administrators, comptrollers, architects, historians, etc. This need is
reﬂected in an observation by Chief Simon
Baker, an elder from the Squamish Nation in
British Columbia who has often pointed out
that, "Having White lawyers running your
band government is not First Nations selfgovernment." These sentiments are echoed
by Patricia Monture, a Mohawk and professor of law at Dalhousie Law School, who has
pointed out that getting a university education

100

is an indispensable, if often unpleasant step to
attaining self-determination. She goes on to
state, however, that "Canada is not making an
effort to talk to us. We're the ones who have to
do double-time and learn how to talk to them"
(Harrington, 1991). How then can the monolithic/ethnocentric institution of the university be reoriented to foster a more productive
two-way exchange that increases its capacity to
respond effectively to the higher education and
human resource needs of First Nations students and communities? To begin to respond
to that question, let us examine more closely
the implications of the "Four R's" of respect,
relevance, reciprocity and responsibility.

RESPECT OF FIRST NATIONS
CULTURAL INTEGRITY
The most compelling problem that First
Nations students face when they go to the university is a lack of respect, not just as individuals,
but more fundamentally as a people. To them,
the university represents an impersonal, intimidating and often hostile environment, in which
little of what they bring in the way of cultural
knowledge, traditions and core values is recognized, much less respected. They are expected
to leave the cultural predispositions from their
world at the door and assume the trappings of a
new form of reality, a reality which is often substantially different from their own.
The physical and social environment of a
typical university campus is intended to protect
faculty and students from "the real world," or
put another way, it is a reality unto itself. It is
a literate world in which only decontextualized
literate knowledge counts, and that knowledge
must be displayed in highly specialized literate forms. As an institution for perpetuating

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 42, No. 2

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