ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with a Mi’kmaw First Nation’s school in Eastern Canada, where the goal is to create an alternative science curriculum in which a dialogue is created within the educational system between the traditional knowledge of the Mi’kmaq and science as it is currently taught in the provincial schools of Canada. The term education is used in its broadest sense and reaches well beyond the common notion of school. The chapter focuses on two concepts of how meaning is negotiated and constructed. The first is the theory of the ‘cultural production of the educated person’ as presented by educational anthropologists Dorothy Holland and Bradley Levinson. Second, it draws on the concept of ‘emergent’ culture proposed by Raymond Williams, a concept relevant to understanding cultural continuity and production. In the language of the Mi’kmaw people of Eastern Canada the term anku’kamkewey was used for treaty.
