Education Key To Native Well Being
May 31st, 2008 | By admin | Category: EducationThe first issue to settle in discussing aboriginal affairs is who defines the issues and who is supposed to solve them.
Pierre Trudeau was quoted in Morris Shumiatcher’s book Welfare: The Hidden Backlash, as saying “all of us feel a sense of guilt, not so much toward the Indian, as toward the fact that we haven’t really addressed our minds to his problem.”
His statement, says Mike Maunder, a Winnipeg adviser on inner-city life, captures a preconception of our general society. The aboriginals have a problem, and we – the non-aboriginals – have to take the initiative to solve it.
Only if these assumptions can be transcended, says Maunder, can all Canadians undo the system of relationships that now exist and allow something new to emerge.
Trudeau’s 1969 white paper on aboriginal policy argued for the elimination of reserves and the treatment of “registered Indians” as individuals with rights and obligations identical to those of other Canadians.
Every time a child dies a tragic death on a reserve – as has happened recently – Trudeau’s plan pops up again. But the white paper didn’t go far because it was seen to impose a “solution” on aboriginals concerning “their” problems.
A better plan, I’m going to argue, is to work with aboriginal people on what many of them identify as a core problem – education.
Individual aboriginal persons should decide whether they want to stay on a reserve or not. Many have already made that decision. The 2006 census shows that a clear majority of aboriginal peoples live in urban areas.
Improving educational systems will mean that more aboriginals will be able to make a “free choice about where they live,” unencumbered by a lack of knowledge about their culture, life outside a reserve, or the skills needed to get a job in contemporary society.
Canada needs aboriginal workers. In 2007 every province and sector suffered from a shortage of qualified labour because of a generally strong economy and an aging workforce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said in March. A record high of 309,000 jobs were open for at least four months.
To get good jobs, people need at least a high school education.
But, says Wayne Helgason, executive director of the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, the 2006 census information released this month shows Manitoba’s aboriginal community has the highest percentage of adults without a high school diploma – 41 per cent. Other provinces have similar statistics. Fewer than one in five non-aboriginal Canadians didn’t get through high school.
“In the race of life, many aboriginals start well back of the starting line,” says former prime minister Paul Martin, who has been studying aboriginal issues.
Helgason told the Winnipeg Free Press that on-reserve education – the responsibility of the federal government – is a patchwork of systems that is not working.
The federal government, says Martin, in many instances invests about half of what the provinces spend per capita on education.
A recent study, Martin adds, “found that aboriginals who do have a high school diploma tend to find jobs that not only equal, but can exceed the success ratios of other Canadians.”
Of course, the Kelowna accord would have helped aboriginal education – and assisted in aboriginal housing and health, all important to the education of aboriginal students. But the Harper government dumped it.
John Richards, who holds the Roger Phillips chair in social policy at the C.D. Howe Institute, says successful schools “incorporate aboriginal cultural content into the curriculum; they engage aboriginal parents and local aboriginal leaders in school affairs; principals encourage teachers who engage aboriginal students; they maintain academic standards in core subjects.”
In the election campaign two years ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said a Conservative government would have “a fundamental obligation” to improve “the educational and economic opportunities of all aboriginal Canadians.”
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