Howard Adams (Métis)
1921-2001
Revolutionary Métis Marxist scholar and professor Howard Adams grew up in a Métis community in Saskatchewan. He was a leader in the struggle for Indigenous rights, self-determination, and socialism.
Excerpt from Chapter 12: "Schooling the Redman" in Prison Grass, 1975.
"The present formal education program is irrelevant and meaningless to native people. The white middle-class values inherent in classroom instruction mean very little to native students. The curriculum is so strange that students have difficulty relating it to their frame of reference and making it part of their knowledge. Métis and Indian children drop out of school because the program is as alien to them as ballet. At the same time, the school negates native history and culture. If it were not for the "white ideal" operating within native persons, these schools would have little support from natives.""
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