Aboriginal education: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This ethnographic inquiry is based on Dorothy E. Smith's (2006) institutional ethnography. In this study, I examined the positive supports behind six Aboriginal grade 12 students who graduated in June 2009. The students found their parents provided the main supporting factors behind their school success. To obtain a clearer picture of their school experiences, I used Smith's (2006) approach to scrutinize the relationships between these Aboriginal students and the rival discourses. Institutional ethnographers begin their research with the experiences of the participants, for example, based on interviews, observations, and documents as data' (Campbell & Gregor, 2004, p. 8), to see the interconnecting social relations in their lives, as well as to uncover the institutional power relations that are covertly arranged by discourse and texts to govern their everyday living experiences. The discourses identified in this study include the helping educators, school documentation and reports, the School Act, and the curriculum. I argue that those who hold power have seen to it via ruling relations that Aboriginal students are disempowered in their schools in much the same way that society and societal institutions deprive their communities of their power (Cummins, 2001, p. 180). I greatly hope that his study will somehow help to reverse this racially based disempowerment at both the school and community levels. --Leaf ii.