Excellence in education Mokakit's goal

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Tansi, ahnee and hello.

And suddenly the sea. Standing here on a deserted stretch of rocky beach, the sound of gulls, the purple shadow of heron against the bleached grey of tree, the soft lullaby of waves on sand, the rocks themselves begin to breathe and you begin to feel

all of it as recognition of power. This is the universe.

It's morning. You gaze across to where your eyes believe the horizon should be. Where your mind believes it left it. There you find nothing but a cliff or sea or sky. The horizon a forgotten thing in this delicate joining of space. In the fog that line disappears, becoming instead, a metaphor for the spirit of a people; timeless, limitless, gentle and healing.

Some 400 aboriginal people gathered here, at the University of British Columbia for the 1992 Mokakit Conference. Its theme: Giving Voice To Our Ancestors. Its aim: to establish pathways to excellence in the education of First Nations people. Its result: a stronger, more centered core of believers that will change themselves and the education directions of their people.

The Mokakit Indian Education Research Association was formed in 1983. They recognized a need for aboriginal people to research their own educational requirements and curriculums. Affiliated with, but operating independently from, the University of British Columbia, Mokakit has worked diligently through the years to promote and foster an aboriginal direction for aboriginal education. This conference is the latest in a series of gatherings which have brought aboriginal people from international, as well as nation-wide locations, to discuss, share and implement tools to blaze a new pathway to excellence in the education of their people.

It's working.

Among our numbers we had aboriginal university professors, one who is pursuing her doctorate degree at Harvard, community educators teaching their young to learn from the land, aboriginal scientific researchers using traditional methods to teach contemporary science, storytellers implementing ancient legend and mythology to foster understanding of this modern world and teachers who recognize the need for the culture and education of their people to become a circle.

Over the course of three days, we met and discussed the future in terms of the past. Giving voice to our ancestors became a design for a functional educational process as well as a personal odyssey for many of us.

It was most evident during the sunrise ceremonies held each day beside the circle of totem poles overlooking the sea. People arrived from four directions to pray and offer thanks to the Creator for the new day they saw breaking around them. As we joined hands, stood in silence of shared words and feelings on those mornings it almost seemed like the land itself would applaud us. The circle closing, growing stronger, becoming revitalized.

When Victor Harper, a Cree from Island Lake, Manitoba, sang a sacred song of his people on the hand drum, there were tears. When Hobbema's Walter Lightning spoke quietly of the direction his elders have given him there were tears. And when Mokakit's Verna Kirkness spoke of the harmony and balance within the circle of that conference there was swelling of the heart that joined all of us.

For myself, standing in that circle and watching those people work together those three days, I came to believe one more time in the powerful yet simple resiliency of our people. The people of the prayer. Those who have never forgotten that despite everything that has happened to us over the last 500 years, that we are all, and will always be, each and every one of us, brothers and sisters.

We absolutely need organizations like Mokakit. We absolutely need dedicated, committed, traditionally minded, spiritually oriented, professional aboriginal people working towards pathways of excellence in the education of our children. Need them for our survival. Need them for the role models they are and need them for the remembrance of things past and te security of things to come.

Standing on that beach that morning was one grateful Ojibway. A stranger to the sea. But no stranger to the testament of faith, love and healing that was the core of the Mokakit conference. No stranger to the circle of brothers and sisters that joined hands upon the sand, prayed and moved forward together into the day and our common future.

As always, I was given far more than I gave away. Meegwetch, my friends, Meegwetch.

(NOTE: for more information on Mokakit write to:

Mokakit Indian Education Research Association, c/o Faculty of Education,

The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z4)