Teaching First Nations Children in a Public School: Rude Awakenings of a Black Ghost

This essay shares some episodes of rude awakenings and epiphanies that I experienced during my time teaching English to First Nations children, in Lytton, BC. In the essay, I map the contexts for my rude awakenings and epiphanies, and explain my miseducation in the British colony of Jamaica in the 1950s and early 1960s. As importantly, I show how my post-secondary education followed the same “civilizing mission” at The University of British Columbia. Finally, I pay tribute to three First Nations colleagues, whose innovative, research method of storytelling and life writing, influenced the topic and research methods I subsequently adopted in my doctoral dissertation (2005).