Changing Perspectives on Introducing Online Classical Music Education

to
Rural Aboriginal Communities
ETEC 521 64A
Kimberley Haas
17997099

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K. Haas
One of my goals as a Music Educator in the MET program is to be
able to bring music education to communities and areas that would
otherwise not have the opportunity to experience this type of music
learning. This comes from a place within me of wanting others to
experience something that has been so important and so influential in
my life. Music has shaped who I am, and the choices I have made in
my life. Also, I am a Metis person whose family members have lived on
and off reserve, and a few of which have experienced Residential
Schooling, I wanted to be able to reach people classical music and
teach them what I know. The stigma of Residential Schools still beats in
the heart of many of my family members, and I have always wanted to
be respectful of these experiences and prejudices, while also providing
a new opportunity.
In these beliefs and goals I thought that I would be opening doors
and providing opportunities for these communities. I would be able to
give them an educational experience they otherwise wouldnt have
had. After completing the readings, assignments and discussions in the
ETEC 521 class I find myself with a new perspective on this idea.
Perhaps my traditionally classical teaching experience and method
would not be welcome in a rural aboriginal community. Perhaps the
enlightenment that I believe myself to be bringing to these

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communities is actually privilege that is not wanted or needed. Perhaps
even this would be a way that traditional musical knowledge and
learning would be pushed to the side to make way for this classical
musical learning. These are not at all the goals or ideals that I wanted
to bring with my Music Education, but I can see now how they are all
likely to be felt and believed by members of that community.
To start off there are many differing opinions and beliefs when it
comes to online education and the media required to make it. Even
when the media is directly created for the continuation of the
aboriginal culture, there are still deep-set concerns. Marker (2008)
states, (b)ut in the early days of Indigenous participation in digital
media, many elders and traditional people worried that sacred and
protected knowledge would be degraded and stolen in media
productions. Those concerns have not gone away, and for good reason:
Indigenous peoples have a terrible history of being crushed under the
machinery and tangled in the circuitry of modernitys technological
progress. This quote clearly describes the pull found in these
communities, they want to preserve their culture and engage in new
ways of learning and teaching their descendants. On the other hand,
they have had a long history of being overlooked and not honoured in
the process of documenting their traditions and practices, and

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therefore have many concerns about how they are represented and
who owns the final product.
This example of the use of media in educational materials merely
scratches the surface with regards to the issue of bringing music
education into rural communities. I had wanted to start out with a
research study, where I could compare the efficacy of face-to-face
music education with that of online music education. After taking my
Research Methodologies class, I thought that I had an excellent plan in
place to test the validity of my hypothesis by testing these two
methods of instruction against one another. There were some factors
that would need to be figured out, getting instruments to the
community and the technological abilities and connectivity were the
biggest two hurdles to over come. The idea that the community might
not want to participate, or that there might be a stigma around the
idea of research never even occurred to me. After reading Smith (1999)
I was able to understand the terrible connotations with the word
research in aboriginal communities. To bring this idea home Smith
(1999) refers to reaction when research is brought up with aboriginal
peoples, it stirs up silence, it conjures up bad memories, it raises a
smile that is knowing and distrustful. It is so powerful that indigenous
people even write poetry about research. This is a really powerful
statement for me. To know that something that I have generally

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positive connotations with is so distrusted and hated that they are
expressing it in poetry is amazing to me. I also feel ashamed that I am
a member of the aboriginal community, and I have very strong ties to
its people and traditions, and I didnt know this. When Smith (1999)
goes on to state, (j)ust knowing that someone measured out
faculties by filling the skulls of our ancestors with millet seeds and
compared the amount of millet seed to the capacity for mental thought
offends out sense of who and what we are. If this was my experience
with research, of course I would feel hostile towards it. To use such a
ridiculous method of comparison to base the worth and intelligence of
an entire people is horrifying, and completely not based in scientific
fact. I do believe that research can bring about good, and can come
from a genuine place of wanting to help and learn. After having these
experiences the aboriginal peoples feelings need to be honoured and
respected. I feel like I would have failed to do that appropriately before
the learning that I have experienced in ETEC 521. Another assumption
that I had made was that I thought that the community would be
happy to have any resources to opportunities that they could have.
What a horribly narrow-minded view! There are many musical
traditions that are deeply intertwined into the everyday and special
occasions of the aboriginal peoples. Bringing in my classical music

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training could feel like a replacement or a judgment of their own music
traditions, which of course is not my intent.
This is all not to say that the two types, traditional and classical,
of learning and music couldnt work together for those students that
have interest. The best example I have seen of combining traditional
knowledge with 21st century knowledge is the Axe Handle Academy.
This combination of subjects working together leads the students to be
able to understand and contribute in both a traditional setting, with
soil, animal and regional knowledge, and a technological based setting,
with email, global and media knowledge. This local, global, earth and
technology mix of knowledge is revolutionary. It places equal weight on
knowing about your neighbors as it does the processes that a piece of
email goes through. I think it is common in both the Western world to
devalue the knowledge of the land and their community, as is
sometimes the way of the aboriginal community to not see the need to
know about the global economy and technology. This combining gives
me hope that if done with sensitivity and respect that these two types
of music can reside within and be learnt by one person.
All of these lessons have lead me to reimagine my initial goal of
bringing music education to rural aboriginal communities. At the core
of my beliefs is the desire for others is to experience music education,
in whatever form that may be. Perhaps I should be attempting to flip

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this idea, and work with aboriginal communities to help them teach
their traditional music and instruments to the city kids that I teach.
This would take place with clear ownership rights laid out ahead of
time, as well as the understanding that these lessons are for the
specific class that I was teaching. I am hopeful that we could work out
an arrangement that would make the community feel comfortable, as
well as giving my students the opportunity to learn something they
otherwise would not have had contact with. While I was in high school
we had a percussion class, and a traditional Native drum maker came
to class and taught all of us students how to make deer skin drums. It
was a profound experience for me because it was the first time I was
able to see my love of music and the love of my culture mixed together
in one class. I was proud that day when we were able to, create drums
and learn some traditional songs and their role in traditional life and
ceremony. I wish this was something I could recreate for my students,
but the use of animal skin might cause a problem in todays public
schools. Still, it is something that I plan to look into and see if I can
bring this into my school. I also wonder if there is a way for me to offer
my music education on specific instruments via online learning to
communities and teach on a person-to-person basis. This would allow
the students who have the most desire to learn an instrument in this
way could have the opportunity to, without the lessons having to be

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taught to the whole class. There have been some studies done that
show the efficacy of one-on-one music learning via online learning, and
it has shown to be very effective. This would also be an amazing model
run in reverse, where teachers from the aboriginal community could
teach drum making or traditional songs one on one with people who
might be far removed from that community. My ancestry is Cree, and I
would love the opportunity to work with someone in the Plains to learn
about the traditional music of my culture. I look forward to
investigating this possibility further, not only for myself, but also
members of my family.
After reflecting on this course, I am amazed by the ways that my
eyes have been opened through the readings, media and discussion
boards in ETEC 521. There were so many subjects and ideas that I
started out with an idea or feeling about, that were totally changed at
the end of reading an article, or watching a video. I also have taken a
lot from the discussion forums in the course, my colleagues have had
insights and ideas that have changed the way I looked at the course
materials. I had believed myself to be someone who could speak in the
best faith for my aboriginal culture, and I see now that is not the case. I
had definitely also believed myself to be open minded and nonprejudiced about my aboriginal culture. I understand now that I was
working under the idea that everyone would want to be enriched by

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classical music. This, of course, is a close-minded view. The truth is
that the aboriginal cultures have so many deeply ingrained musical
practices that are equally worthy of study as classical music. I am
thankful for this redirection in my goals as an online music educator for
the future, as well as in my own beliefs and views of mine and other
aboriginal cultures and communities.

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References:

Marker, M. (2008), A Long Time Ago in the Future: Indigenous Media in

the Digital Age. Found at: https://nacla.org/article/long-time-ago-futureindigenous-media-digital-age.

Smith, L. (1999), Introduction to Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and

Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books Ltd, 1-18

Scollon, R. (1989), The Axe Handle Academy: A Proposal for a

Bioregional, Thematic Humanities Education. Sealaska Heritage
Foundation