It is sad to realize that one of these three young people is one of those fifteen native young people who overdosed themselves on morphine one week ago. And it is is also sad to realize that in reporting these overdose incidents, the media, in an attempt to be politically correct, don't report the young teens as being aboriginal.

Timothy Shire has recently explained the social predicament of our aboriginal population being marginalized and their young people driven to a life of crime and prostitution. Also, there is an understanding by the RCMP that more education is needed for our young aboriginal population.

In the course of my writing I have strongly emphasized the need to address the need of an ever growing young aboriginal population, and this social need was contrasted with the ever regressive governmental direction of addressing the health needs of a growing older population.

Governments have no understanding of the root of our social problems and their sole interest is the perception of a government run like a business on behalf of politicians and their friends. Our politicians must understand that our overall  growing older population has been effected by the regressive economic and social policies which have forced thousands of our young working people to emigrate to other provinces; at the same time, these same demented politicians rejoice on the related consequence that our unemployment rate has been for years one of the lowest in the country.

Some time I hear that our young natives are at fault for their own social predicament as our government has so many generous educational programs available for young natives which are not available to others. And I say that our young natives are not at fault for feeling desperate and therefore being driven to a life of poverty and crime. I contend that our educational policies towards our young people are dead wrong and presently I have been thinking a lot on the implications of Humberto Maturana’s biological origin of cognition.

It is worthwhile to remind our government and our educators of whatever I wrote on the need to transform our educational system. The many generous educational programs available for young natives are worthless within the present educational thinking of transferring knowledge from the brains of the teachers to the brains of the students. And this is an extract of what I wrote:

The teacher and the students have different languaging and emotioning histories and therefore every member of the classroom would bring different explanations to the experiences presented by the teacher. This implies that the teacher should get to know the histories of every student, that every member of the classroom should interact with every other member, and that we all learn from each other including the teacher. The need to interact between all the members of the classroom is further supported by the fact that knowledge is "doing interpersonal relationships". This interaction between every member of the classroom implies the exercise of the processes of reflection and explanation on any experience presented by the teacher.

Our government doesn’t language and emotion with our people as our governments have become private contractual deals. And our teachers don’t language and emotion with their students as knowledge per se and standardized testing have become the sole factors for determining educational success.

References

Note. Languaging and emotioning are two verbs created by biologist Humberto Maturana. Languaging refers to the natural coordination of behaviour among people within the environment. What we call normally language is an abstraction and it is part of languaging. Emotioning refers to bodily predispositions which reveal themselves in our behaviour, for instance love and fear.

Pertinent articles published in Ensign

Nipawin youth overdoses on morphine for a second time CBC Saskatchewan, August 19, 2002 http://sask.cbc.ca/template/servlet/View?filename=morphine020819

Teens in hospital after mass morphine overdose CBC Saskatchewan, August 15, 2002 http://sask.cbc.ca/template/servlet/View?r=681078960&filename=morphine020815

Yesterday The Sun Came Out Timothy Shire, August 15, 2002 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/loosends/yesterdayThesuncameout/ytsco.html

NEED OF TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGES IN SASKATCHEWAN: The biological origin of cognition and implications for Education By Mario deSantis, September 27, 1998 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/desantis11/desantis11.html