native students. One clear example of the irrelevance of the material taught in these schools was the Dick, Jane, and Native Underachievement 4Spot stories presented to native students. Few people on the reserve were ever named Dick, or Jane, presumably few dogs were named Spot. Even though natives were forcibly subjected to a predominantly European way of life they continued to retain many aspects of their native heritage. Continual subjugation to European education, however, is proving to be detrimental to the rich native heritage. Presently natives are calling for education which caters to the preservation of the native heritage; including instruction in native language, history, cultural values, and traditions. As has been stated, "one of the things that I would like to see is equality in the education system for our people. By equality I don't mean we should apply all [these European ideas] to our education system. I mean our people run the education system the way it should be [for] Native students. We want our people to know not only their own heredity being, but their own background, their history, their languages and everything, everything that should have been part of the education system right from the start" (Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1993). This is primarily due to the present absence of native students in the Canadian curriculum, while the curriculum contains many of these aspects for white students.In the European attempt to assimilate the natives, natives were faced with an ominous obstacle, discrimination. The prejudicial views toward the indigenous people were incorporated into the educational system. "The formal education offered to the natives was not only separate from but unequal to that of their non-Indian contemporaries" (Barman, Hebert & McCaskill, 1986). This further propagated the belief that Indians were stupid. This repeated sentiment was finally so indoctrinated that the native peo...
