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341 Bridges here was an ancient soul of the people, cleansed of all past human interests and ambitions and coming back again fully charged with the pure, eternal power of the Great Spirit, Chisa-mahn-dou. Ayimuwun (the Eeyou language) holds concepts and words conveying the idea of the gifts contained in the soul of a child, which this individual must have the absolute freedom to explore and actualize for the benefit of her or his society. Besides, the excellence of the contribution of such individual, over a lifetime, will in large part depend on society’s respect for that freedom to discover and develop those innate gifts. This foregoing brief description of the Eenou’s ancestral attitudes and views about children and their birth aims to introduce some of that society’s concepts and ideas about education.First,there is a need to question whether conventional Western notions about education can adequately reflect Eeyou ideas about the meaning of education.For instance,the English word ‘educate’itself implies the idea of leading someone ‘out of’ something negative or dangerous (e: out of + ducere: to lead).Thus, considering only the meaning of this essential word, we would already be very far away from the Eeyou view that the child (the new member of society freshly arrived from the world of spirits) has the power (which society will use) to bring society back to a state of balance, order and grace (instead of away from a state of disorder and possibly danger, as the word ‘educate’ implies). We thus see how the concept of ‘education’ itself may run directly against everything that the Eeyou believe should be the meaning and purpose of the training of children and/or young people in formal (especially non-Aboriginal) learning institutions. In pre-European Eeyou society, Elders played a very central role in the training of children.Since the community was,and behaved as,one large,extended family,next of kin were not the only ones,or even were not always the ones who had the main role in determining and cultivating what a child’s unique gifts were.Of course,mothers,grandmothers,aunts and other women had a primary role in identifying the core, innate qualities and traits of character in a child. Later on, upon reaching the age of puberty, boys (some girls also) went on a vision quest (it sometimes took more than one such quest) under the watchful eye of a specially appointed seer who alone, because they could base themselves on close and long observation of a specific child, could ‘see’ the essence of a A Reflection on Eeyou/Eenou Education 342 child’s soul, and thereby help him or her discover the sense of his or her life in relation to society. A definite advantage for the positive development of an individual’s inner qualities and gifts was the fact that knowledge was easily accessible, even for young people. Great orators spoke and no one was impeded from listening or attending, except perhaps at some war councils. Following proper protocol, anyone could seek counsel and obtain knowledge from the most prominent sages, curers, seers, artisans, artists, traders and other knowledge-bearers. Besides having the most solid mentors in given fields of knowledge,every child, especially if he or she showed respect, love and compassion to his or her Elders and community, had unlimited access to the most competent advisors in every domain and field of knowledge. The Post-Contact Period Since the appearance of humans on earth, there certainly did not occur an encounter of two more different civilizations as the one that took place between Europe and America on and after October 12, 1492. So violent was the shock that we can rightly speak of a terrible accident, rather than an ‘encounter’: on that day, the most linear-thinking societies in the world came unknowingly crashing against the most integrally circular societies on earth. So catastrophic was the clash that 515 years later, hardly anyone has yet been able to fully ascertain what truly happened and know how to talk or write about it. Indeed, if this were not the case, the world would be busy learning about life as a great Circle of relations and about how we should all live by the Circle, instead of continuing to force everyone to believe that life is a linear process, and that all living beings are merely matter to be transformed into the material...

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