Decolonizing Indigenous Education

An Amazigh/Berber Ethnographic Journey

S. Taieb

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137415196
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Geschichte der Pädagogik

Using auto-ethnography, Taieb narrates the journey of developing a educational philosophy from and for the Kayble of Algeria and undertakes to write the sociological foundations of an Kayble education system.

1

Journey into My Land

I have traveled the world extensively for over 15 years. During those years, I challenged the way my French ethnocentric education made me perceive the world, while my indigenous culture and family traditions guided me through the different lands. I was searching for the origin of that voice that was talking within me. The voice became stronger as I decided to travel my ancestral lands. The journey took shape as I was writing my Kabyle life journey narrative.

Drawing the Journey

From Native American Education in Canada

I studied to become an elementary school teacher in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I worked in Francophone schools outside of Quebec, where I taught French to English-speaking children in immersion classes. I then returned to Quebec to teach in the outskirts of Montreal, in an underprivileged, economically deprived, area of Montreal North. The difference between the two cultures was already vast, but then I was hired by a band council in Northern Quebec where I taught in native schools. My experience of the educational systems in these different locations, and especially in the Innu schools, made me want to stop teaching. It had nothing to do with the people but more with the educational agenda for native students. The better the teacher I became, the more the Innu heritage disappeared in my students. That educational experience contributed to my reflection on my own schooling experience in France. I decided to take a year off to travel in Asia. I wanted to leave for one year, but the little money I saved by teaching allowed for only a six-month trip. I had to bargain for every piece of bread during my trip. Luckily it was culturally appropriate to do so there.

The journey was one of my most important life experiences. I decided to let go of my need to control my future as well as my insecurity toward money and career. I was just going to enjoy the hazards and blessings of the road, meet new people, eat new types of food, and, above all, take time to distance myself from my previous experiences. I then decided to do a master’s degree in education at McGill University. After all the experiences I had as a teacher, I needed to find a way to protect native culture from assimilation. I wanted to support the work of the elders and the families working hard to protect their heritage. First Nation Elders in Canada taught me to take care of myself, as a piece of the heritage of this world, so that I could help my own people. I felt rejected at first, but then I understood. The medicine wheel is what most of the North American First Nations recognize as the mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical holistic system of reference. The medicine wheel places us in an interconnected system of sharing, where all of us can be ourselves and bring our full participation to the world.

I learned about the medicine wheel from Grandfather William Commanda, the spiritual chief of the Algonquin nation. Grandfather William was the teacher of the Innu family I lived with in Northern Quebec.

The four teachings of the medicine wheel: Healing, Community, Wisdom, and Vision, also represent the four directions, East, South, West, and North. From each of our cultural locations of the world we can bring healing to the planet. It is mainly with that advice that I decided to concentrate on my auto-ethnography, “Education as a Healing Process.” My master’s thesis was probably one of the most difficult tasks I have ever accomplished. My own education, looked at through the eyes of an indigenous man, was an ugly story of assimilation and enculturation surrounded by the sweet coat of so-called positive intentions. The aim was to integrate the Berber people into their so-called beautiful and welcoming French society!

To Tafsut Imazighen (Berber Spring) in 1980

Every summer, I go back to Algeria to my village. I enjoy the simplicity of a cultural retreat. I take care of my house, visit my family, walk up the mountain to go to my Ancestor’s grave, and have a drink at one of our springs. As much as the village is a geographic location developed around the physical needs of the body, close to gardens and rivers, the spirit of the people travels far away from that place. The spirit of the land transcends the physical space to reach each and every one of us, descendants of the Ancestor, wherever we are in the world.

The community used to meet in the village on a regular basis, but today a trustee carries messages from one family to another. Often today, in the village, decisions are made without a consensus, and problems arise that are not being dealt with, either because of lack of interest or unclear communication. Most of the people have left the village but continue to remain members. The meetings in Tadjmaith (a building where the men of the village gather) are being replaced by the sermons in the mosque on Fridays. The sermon is given by an Imam, who is hired by a government that still denies us our culture. It is not the people speaking anymore, but the government dictating its agenda. An Arab population of Islamic believers is replacing the Berber village-republics; an Islam shaped more by the religious and political tensions in the world than the actual culture of the people. Ait Menguelet sings: “Avlid I tsou meden” [The Forgotten Road]. In the song, he says that on the trails that people do not walk anymore, the grass keeps growing. The road is disappearing quickly, and the people are getting lost. Our villages and our cultures are becoming lost memories. However, the “baraka” charisma and gifts of the Ancestor are still strong. At every Muslim celebration the mountain is covered with pilgrims who come to ask for the support of my Ancestor, who is still considered an intercessor to God. People still gather in great numbers to honor his example and his name.

Caught among the pressures for a secular state modeled after France, other Western images of success, and an Arab religious state with an Islamic image that does not fit the people’s traditions, the Berbers feel their desire for cultural expression torn apart, shaped, and reshaped. The Western world pulls the Berbers in the direction of capitalism, and the Algerian government pulls them toward assimilation with the Arabic Islamic state. The subjugation of our identity on our land pushes us to leave in order to protect our dignity. The consequence is exile. Like trees from which we remove the bark and fruits, our culture sees its men leaving their families to look for work elsewhere. This leaves the trunk exposed to the air, and the cycle is interrupted.

During the War of Independence, the French army took the women from their houses, undressed them in front of the village, and took pictures of them naked to dishonor the whole community. Today, the constant call for human resources in other countries strips our society, exposing our land and culture to abuse. The capitalist system of production takes away the protective bark of our culture and abuses its heart in a never-ending cycle of consumerism. To make more money, the people of the village migrate to foreign countries and abandon crop-sharing and a culture of local subsistence for a more profitable and consumerist power, a power that they unfortunately never get. I had a conversation with one of my informants regarding his daughter’s dental health. I said that she might be lacking certain vitamins. He owns a grocery shops and sells vegetables and fruits, which is why I was surprised by her deficiency. He said the fruits in the shop were for selling, and he was making so little money that he and his family could not eat their own products.

This situation of oppression led to the Tafsut Imazighen (the Berber Black Spring) in 1980, during which there were strikes in Kabylia and in the city of Algiers. The objective was to ask the government for cultural equity for the Berber people and the recognition of Tamazight, the Berber language. The first outcome, however, was the arrest of 24 Berber men and the repression of the Berber cultural initiatives organized by the Berber Cultural Association in Universities.

The pressure for the Berber youth was considerable. On April 18, 2001, a young Kabyle, Massinissa Guermah, was killed inside the police station of Beni Douala, a Kabyle town not far from my village. This marked the beginning of riots opposing the Kabyle movement to the military services. In the riots 132 Berbers were killed and 5,000 were injured. The country was heading toward destruction. The government, after sending the army to shoot the protesters, decided to take calming measures.

Since then, Tamazight has been implemented into the educational curriculum and is now a national language. A commissariat of Amazighity has been created in Algeria. Yet, these institutions cannot birth and sustain the language or the culture. They can only represent it. It is in the villages that the magic is happening.

The Journey had already been Written

My journey follows the rivers of my culture into the veins of the Berber tree of life. I narrate the journey of the Berber education and how it has evolved to the present day. Amazigh and Marabout culture are supported by a deep value system. I would have not been given access to the land before I had learned or shown these values. I am talking of Nyia and Niff: humility and respect. Without these, my family would have never given me access to my heritage. These values constitute the ontological and epistemological guides of my Kabyle life story narrative. My family members and informants from the Amazigh Cultural Association in France have been wonderful in providing me with support and advice. However, even with the best guides, only I can, and must, walk the path of my genealogy. The answers are in my blood as much as on the land. That journey makes me honor the names of my father, my Ojibwe—adoptive father, and my grandfathers. From my student identity in the library of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, to the anonymity in Tizi Ouzou, one of the biggest cities in the Kabyle province, I am drawn into the spiral of conscientization, awareness, and learning that brings me closer to my village. Once I have passed the gates of anonymity onto the streets of the big city and made my transition into the Kabyle culture via the House of Culture, I get closer to the inner circle of the village that enables me to develop a partnership with my own community. I share the sounds, stories, and personal narratives gathered and recorded in my journal, showing the complexity of the debate about Kabyle culture. I continue to listen to the Berbers’ messages today, looking more closely at the different influences that I see shaping the Kabyle mental landscape: the religious discourse of the Evangelist Church, the Catholic Church, the Muslim religion, and conversations on women’s rights. In my indigenous culture all these dialogues take place around the heart of our culture, the kanun, the fireplace of the house. It is here that our value system, the qanoun, is held together. I bring my life experiences from overseas to feed the fireplace of my culture.

Going to the heart of the community, I become aware of the sociocultural, organic, and spiritual essence of my identity. I take a step forward to learn more about the Marabout people. This work, designed as a parallel experience in academia and Berber culture, has today the possibility to root me back in my village. It was challenging to find the right methodology. The cultural difference between academia and Kabyle society, as well as the fact that I was raised in France, made it complicated to choose the right tools for the inquiry.

As I revisit the indigenous social organization. I reconnect all the fragments of my experiences from the field, relating the interconnectedness in my Kabyle life story narrative.

The Cherry Tree in front of my Grandfather’s House

Narrative Episode 6: Simply Home, Summer 2009

I sat in the shade and had a nap at the bottom of the mountain. The shepherds used to bring their sheep here for the night, and they found refuge in one of those holes left by the erosion of the limestone. After the sleep, I met my uncle in his little house, an old, one-room house, where he kept some of the food he needed to supply the small number of villagers left in the area.

The village used to be shared by four clans, the descendants of each of the four sons of the Ancestor. Located on the Djurdjura (Atlas) Mountains of Algeria, my village is a Marabout village, like many other villages, which means that it was founded by a Marabout, a Saint. The descendants of the Saints are also called Marabout. Situated close to the top of the mountain, the village is hidden between the fig trees and olive trees. The fragrance of the fig trees welcomes us and reminds us of the generosity and kindness of our land.

During my fieldwork I would ride up the mountain with my informant, Malick (Pseudonym). He would stop midway, and I would follow the trail to my village walking with his father, probably a septuagenarian.

Malick knows the history of this mountain and knows what games are being played, and have to be played, in order to survive there. In my conversations with him, it felt at times like I was talking to a wolf and at other times to a sheep. In both cases, I learned a lot and never felt directly in danger. He showed me the plants and places, giving me their Kabyle names and their use in our culture. He had plenty of interesting and amusing stories attached to them. Usually, he decided the route to the village. There is the official road, the traditional path, and the little trails left by the shepherds and their sheep. We sometimes went straight to the mountains and enjoyed the refreshing water, and at other times we would go directly to the grave of the Ancestor to leave an Ouada, a donation. I usually stayed there alone for a bit and then joined my uncle in the cemetery where we would sit under the olive tree and exchange a few words.

Inside the building where my Ancestor is buried, there had been plenty books and information left behind by our Ancestor, but the French army destroyed them during the occupation. The books told the story of his journey from Sequya el Hamara, a city in the Sahara desert, as well as some ethnographical work on our village and some Muslim treaties.

After a little while, Malick would go to my grandfather’s house. It was a little house built by my father, when he was a child, for his father. It was very basic in structure and had two floors with two rooms. There were two doors, one facing the direction where we could see the remains of a stable, and the other at the back leading out to the mountain. The room downstairs had one small window, probably for security. It used to be the kitchen. It had a little hole in the floor for the kanun. The walls were still green, the color my aunt painted them a long time ago. There is a cherry tree just in front of my grandfather’s house.

Every time I return home, I enjoy going back to the mountain to drink from the source next to my village. I sit beside my grandfather’s cherry tree and observe it. Thought to be almost dead, one of the tree’s branches has grown stronger again. The branch grows around the trunk in a spiral that seems to keep the tree from falling. It looks like that branch feeds from its core, but at the same time gives back some of its strength to feed the roots. That tree is very symbolic for me as I describe in Narrative Episode 7.

Narrative Episode 7: Looking at the Village from My Grandfather’s Tree, Summer 2009

I sat outside, in front of the house. There was a little bench made out of rocks. There was very little land between the house and the ditch, but on the slope, going down to an improvised parking lot, stood my grandfather’s cherry tree. I imagined that it must have been a great pleasure sitting under that tree during the warm season. That tree had appeared pretty much dead for a while. For a long time people thought it was actually dead, but then during the last couple of years a little branch started growing. It has not given any fruit yet, but I liked seeing the tree becoming stronger and stronger . . . I became worried about what could happen to that only branch, that one branch that seemed to be giving life back to the whole tree.

Supporting that tree in its growth became the motivation and a key metaphor for my inquiry. The tree represented the roots that sustain my cultural heritage. It also represented the relationships between the diasporic people and their villages. The Kabyle are spread all over the world. However, the one commonality of the people of my village is the attachment to our land and our cultural heritage. Different identities and politics have tried to shroud the heritage, but we have claimed our place in the village through our sacred heritage.

The Form and Movement of this Inquiry

I reiterate intentionally that the purpose of my study is to contribute to the field of Indigenous education as I make sense of all my experiences in the recovery of my personal story as a Kabyle. The image of a Kabyle-coherent society today is still best represented by the image of a tree and the life that moves within it like a spiral.

The Berber tree keeps growing in a culture that never abandons its people, wherever they are in the world. After two generations, the children born in the village or the ones born in far away lands are...