How do we link curiculum knowledge to the biography and personal meanings of your students?

I have always thought of curriculum as a tool and a guide for teaching, but after several encounters with Aboriginal students who are just not learning anything from some of the classes that they are taking, I am not sure if the Sask. Curriculum is a tool or guide anymore. I am beginning to think of it as a hindrance, a blockade, a stumbling block.....a tool of distruction! What else is there? Is our tree of knowledge slowing deterioating to resemble a stump? Where is the new new curriculum now? What should we be teaching our students if they are not "getting" it anymore? Do we put our hands up in the air and say, "I give up".
An Elder once told a group of graduates, "We graduate some many people today who fail life." Is that what our curriculum is doing to our young Aboriginal students??