Using Multiculturalism as a "New Way of Seeing the World": Ontario Aboriginal Educational Policy According to Foucault

By considering the Ontario First Nation, Metis, and Inuit Policy Framework (2007) from a Foucauldian perspective, this paper presents a policy discourse of knowledge, power, and identity from a multicultural education framework. Through Foucauldian theoretical perspectives, the paper creates alternate possibilities in confronting the ways to understand public educational policy--considered the purpose of multicultural education. It invites teachers, administrators, district leaders, and policy makers to consider how educational policy in one Canadian province strategically situates Aboriginal peoples in a historical context, exercises Foucauldian notions of power and care, and potentially endorses the subjectification of Aboriginal peoples through recommendations of self-identification practices.