Schools, Prisons and Aboriginal Youth: Making Connections

This article examines the school­to­prison nexus for Aboriginal youth in Canada. The author calls on educators to examine their complicity in the overrepresentation of Aboriginals in Canada’s penal system, and suggests four overlapping areas that point to this need: the racist and colonial histories of law and education for Aboriginals; the disciplinary culture of schools; the lack of diversity in the Canadian teaching force, understood as a larger problem of systemic Whiteness; and the overuse of paradigms of cultural differences to explain Aboriginal under­education. Introduction Aboriginal[1] peoples make up 3% of the Canadian population, yet represent 17% of the total inmate population (Correctional Service Canada, 2012). In the province of Saskatchewan, young Aboriginal men are more likely to go to prison than to finish high school (Therein, 2011). The issue of Aboriginal overrepresentation in Canada’s penal system has been a mainstay in media reports, government publications, and scholarly research for the past several decades. The problem has received a considerable amount of attention in the areas of law and criminal justice, but is not usually considered an issue for educators and schools. Linkages made between education and incarceration for Aboriginal peoples rarely goes beyond citing the low levels of education amongst inmates, or making recommendations for improving the educational opportunities of those already incarcerated. Dominant discourses suggest that schooling is an attractive and available alternative (Simmons, 2005) to incarceration. In the United States, the racial disproportions in the penal system amongst Black and Latino populations has prompted educational researchers to examine how schools are complicit in the movement of youth from schools to prisons. This area has come to be known as the school­to­prison pipeline, defined by Sander (2010) as “systemic setbacks that gradually shepherd students away from positive school connections and academic success and into increasing criminal activity” (p. 4). Scholars have documented school­based practices that increase the likelihood of future incarceration for students, including disciplinary measures, alternative education and streaming programs, and the shaping of select youth as needing surveillance and containment (Meiners, 2007). Raible and Irizarry (2010) point out that “given similar social dynamics . . . across the globe and the historic uses of schooling to manage minority populations, [Canadian researchers] should be able to contribute research that uncovers the connections between schooling . . . and the overrepresentation of minority populations in the penal system in their local contexts” (p. 1196). As I shall argue, there are indeed under­examined links in the Canadian context between schooling for Aboriginals and incarceration. Simmons (2004, as cited in Meiners, 2007) contends that “linkages between schools and jails are less a pipeline, more a persistent nexus or a web of intertwined, punitive threads” (p. 32). The nexus metaphor “captures the historic, systemic, and multifaceted nature of the intersections of education and incarceration” (Meiners, 2007, p.32), and it is from this framework of understanding that I shall discuss the connections between schooling for Aboriginals and incarceration in this article. First, I provide the historical contexts of Aboriginal education and Aboriginals and the justice system. Second, I present three further areas I contend are part of the school­to­ prison nexus for Aboriginal youth: systemic Whiteness within Canadian education, the disciplinary culture of schools, and lastly, the overuse of paradigms of cultural differences to explain Aboriginal under­education.