Songs of challenge, songs of peace: Nisga'a cultural performance in education

The Nisga'a people on British Columbia's northwestern coast have a rich cultural base. Features of identity intertwine and are expressed through cultural performances, forming the foundation of Nisga'a identity. Music, dance, dramatizations, art and material culture are vital expressions of Nisga'a identity, and reflect the social, historical, political, economic, spiritual, and educational dynamics of the culture. By compartmentalizing the arts into distinct subjects or disciplines, the provincially-prescribed public school curriculum is in direct conflict with Nisga'a views of the arts and song, dance and dramatic representation as a total experience. This work seeks to document Nisga' a views of cultural performance as a feature of identity and provide recommendations for its inclusion into school curriculum. A participatory approach was taken for this research, involving collaboration with community-wide representatives of the Nisga'a nation in education and the performing arts to ensure the ongoing relevance of the project for the Nisga'a. Community-based resource group meetings, semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and personal communications were the primary sources of information for exploring the role of cultural performance in identity and education. Research participants provided recommendations on culturally suitable ways of increasing the understanding of cultural performance activities through schooling. These recommendations, in conjunction with the Orff approach to music education, were then used to guide the teaching of Nisga'a songs in a School District 92 (Nisga'a) school. An inductive approach to coding guided the analysis of the collected data. A model of education fostering the growth of the whole child emerged as an important step towards healing from the impacts of colonization. By making Nisga'a voices heard in this thesis, it is hoped that this research will promote the practice of Nisga'a cultural performance in the community and its schools.