Last Thursday, McGill’s Aboriginal Sustainability Program and the Sauvé Scholars Program hosted a talk by Louellyn White, who discussed her time studying the Akwesasne Freedom School as part of her PhD dissertation.

White, who is part Mohawk, is an assistant professor in First People’s studies at Concordia University. In the talk, she shared her experiences visiting the school and suggested that other schools could learn from its example of holistic cultural education. 

White first came to do research at the freedom school because of her interest in its Mohawk language immersion program. Soon, however, she became fascinated by the school’s unique approach to education. 

“The school itself is about so much more than language immersion,” White said. “It’s about cultural identity, self determination.”

The school is located on the Akwesasne reserve, which straddles New York State, Quebec, and Ontario. Akwesasne, which literally means “land where the partridge drums,” underwent a period of extreme unrest in the 1980s when a group of Mohawks set up a two-year barricade to protest the arrest of their people following protests against an imposed system of governance. 

During these two years, a group of parents decided to start their own school rather than send their children across the barricades to school. 

“They did it in the most grassroots of ways,” White said. “They used living rooms. They used garages. They used toolsheds.”

Today, 30 years later, the school still exists and has managed to stay true to its mission of providing an authentic Mohawk education.  

“The most unique thing about this school is that it’s self-sufficient,” White said.  “They’ve stuck with those original goals of self-determination and self-education.”

The school receives the majority of its money through fundraising. One of their biggest fundraisers is a quilt auction that can bring in as much as $20,000. The school owes much of its success to the dedication of parents and other members of the community. 

“There are parent committees for everything,” White said. “Parents have to be very, very committed … This is how it’s really sustained itself over the years … because it’s driven by this organic place. People are very immersed in it.”

The school itself is very small, with only 60-65 students at a given time, and goes from pre-kindergarten until grade eight. From Pre-K to grade six, all the students are in complete Mohawk immersion.  

During her time at the Akwesasne Freedom School, White learned that language is not the only way the school helps students regain their Mohawk identity.  

“When I talked to these students I said … ‘does language make you Mohawk?’ and the majority of them said ‘no,’ it’s ‘do I know my songs? Do I know my dances? Do I know my history?'” White said. “The language is important but it’s just one part of identity.”

White explained how the school cultivates values such as respect, responsibility, co-operation, leadership, and stewardship through this type of cultural education.

“I think other communities, non-native communities, can look at situations like this, at schools like this and see [a] culturally appropriate curriculum, grassroots experiential forms of education, [and] value systems,” White said. 

White spoke about the importance of self-governed Aboriginal education, especially in light of the fact that many Aboriginal people are still suffering from their experiences at residential schools. 

“Education is very important within the Aboriginal community,” Allan Vicaire, project co-ordinator on the Aboriginal Sustainability Project, said. “It is a topic that we continue to address to our youth, to educate oneself. I think that there is such a strong stance on education because of the realities that we live in.”

While the transition from Akwesasne to high school can be rough at first, White said that the freedom school students have better values and a stronger sense of their own identity than many students from other schools.  

David Searle, a McGill graduate in history and political science, in attendance enjoyed the talk, as did many others.  

“It’s really wonderful how they’ve integrated their local culture [and] their history into their education,” Searle said.