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Many aboriginal women do accept this responsibility, but in order to exercise that responsibility to the fullest, they must have a voice regarding the educational opportunities that should be available in all the communities in which they live. This would be their way of ensuring that not only the curriculum content but also the pedagogy and/or andragogy are culturally appropriate, as well as reflecting their needs and priorities.
NWAC fully subscribes to the philosophy of lifelong learning. We know that to succeed in life, one needs to continually update skills, challenge one's own belief system, self-assess abilities, and expose oneself to current thinking.
One of the reasons lifelong education has become so important is the acceleration of scientific and technological progress in today's society. Despite the increased duration of primary, secondary, and university education, somewhere between 14 and 18 years, depending on the area of the country, the knowledge and the skills acquired are usually not sufficient for a professional career that spans three or four decades.
Basic supports. For aboriginal women, access and increased integration into lifelong learning initiatives are essential. However, basic supports are just as vital as the access itself. This is particularly the case for single-parent women, low-income families, and those living in rural, remote, or Arctic communities. Essential environmental supports include affordable housing for aboriginal women, with a priority for single parents on and off reserves; adequate funding for basic living expenses as well as educational resources and technological hardware; and safe, reliable, and accessible child care facilities.
Aboriginal women, for too long, have had to make the choice between providing for their families in low-paying jobs or struggling and going without to make ends meet while they continue their education. In fact, many aboriginal women living in poverty not only have to look after themselves but also must care for elderly parents, raise children, and/or tend loved ones who are in ill health, often with only a single income. These living conditions are not the best for furthering self-esteem and for achieving educational goals.
Rather than having to make this choice, positive steps are needed for creating a learning culture in aboriginal communities. Providing meaningful support can challenge even those most reticent in continuing their education or skills development. A relationship/partnership model brings together aboriginal and mainstream communities for a wide range of community partnerships to support lifelong learning needs. It would encourage a lifelong learning trend and fill the gaps for those who require upgrading and/or skills development.
Curriculum research and development. This area must prioritize aboriginal culture and recognize the traditional learning methods and tools that are used by aboriginal people. Educational programs, from kindergarten to post-secondary levels, must be enhanced with accurate historical aboriginal content and appropriate cultural teachings. Aboriginal women must be integral to the research, the design, the development, and delivery of curriculum in all institutions. Greater emphasis is required to incorporate within aboriginal curriculum the traditional roles of aboriginal women within the community. Further, gender equality issues and teachings on positive relationship-building between men and women and in family life is an urgent priority.
Additional gender-specific research is greatly needed to determine all aspects of lifelong learning initiatives. Other options could explore learning, with accreditation in the workplace, allowing programs to integrate work practicum with advancement opportunities for women. These approaches provide the flexibility for aboriginal women to meet their lifelong learning goals.
Sustainability and capacity-building. Aboriginal youth comprise the fastest growing segment in the Canadian population. An investment in education, skills, and training for trades will fill the gaps in the market for professionals and skilled tradespeople.
Additional ways of sustained lifelong learning include, one, giving aboriginal learning institutions priority to evolve into public institutions to enable access to funding formulae that are available from provincial governments; two, incentive programming with remuneration agreements for graduating students; and three, employment options within communities for certain terms may help to support funding and demands for human resource development.
In terms of other essential factors, the federal government must clearly articulate support and provide adequate financial resources for the transfer of jurisdiction and control of education to aboriginal-controlled educational institutions. Government policy must support aboriginal learning institutions and educational programming at all levels, whether primary, secondary, or post-secondary.
Governments must recognize that learning happens through many non-traditional methods and must provide aboriginal women with sufficient support to access these opportunities in ways that are most suitable to individual circumstances. Leading researchers acknowledge the validity of traditional knowledge for filling gaps in western and scientific knowledge.
Aboriginal women must be assured an equal role in decision-making at all levels of education, from governance to policy reform. Aboriginal women must be included in developing and maintaining partnerships among mainstream public authorities, education service providers, the business sector, different associations, guidance services, and research centres.
Education and training systems need to recognize competencies acquired not only in formal but in non-formal and informal settings. This must be established between the government and academic partners. Law and government policies need an approach to lifelong learning whereby competencies can be certified irrespective of how they were acquired. Competencies acquired through work should be assessed and potentially recognized in the same way as those acquired through formal institutions.
Federal transfers to the province and territories must be increased to support educational programming and for lifelong learning to be accessible for aboriginal people, for example, whether they live on or off the reserve.
Educational programming from kindergarten to post-secondary levels must be enhanced with accurate, historical aboriginal content and appropriate cultural teachings. Aboriginal women must be integral to the research, design, development, and delivery of the curriculum throughout all institutions.
I'm now going to move to the recommendations.
Incentive mortgage rates through CMHC or through partnerships with federal commercial banks need be made available for aboriginal people, in particular aboriginal women returning to school and achieving accreditation
Priority must be given for northern remote and Arctic communities to have access to telephone lines, Internet connections and/or hardware, and resources such as mentoring and coaching for learning at home and within the community
The federal government needs to establish learning centres for aboriginal women that respond to local choices and needs. Each centre must be provided with adequate resources to create programming that includes access to information, technology and learning facilities, self-directed and modular training, and distance learning through video conferences and community websites.
In conclusion, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the racialized, sexualized violence that aboriginal women experience all over this country. A 1996 INAC study showed that the mortality rate because of violence is five times higher for aboriginal women than it is for other Canadian women between the ages of 25 and 44. The correlation between poverty and violence has been established, and the major reason aboriginal women continue to struggle with being impoverished is lack of education. High rates of violence experienced by aboriginal women definitely have negative impacts on youth and children, and the cycles of violence keep being perpetuated.
Low education levels create poverty, and poverty often breeds violence. It is only through empowerment through proper education that aboriginal women and their roles in the family, in the community, and within their first nation can once again gain the respect that they always held in the traditional communities. Higher learning allows work within communities, which in turn achieves a higher life quality.
We trust that you recognize, as we do, that educated aboriginal women provide much-needed support for the entire family's learning, that a fundamental concept is that education of women and girls is central to the process of community development, and that the gains and advancements accomplished by aboriginal women benefit everybody.
Meegwetch.
Thank you.
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Let me thank you and the committee for the decision to provide an early focus in this Parliament on aboriginal education. I know that it's a priority of the new government and a great concern for all aboriginal leaders, all of our organizations, and all of our communities.
We don't have a lot of time today, so I want to try to focus on key issues and questions to prompt the start of a new dialogue between us, as aboriginal representatives and as representatives of Canada's formal political structure of government. Before I do that, I have a quick word about the congress, our mandate, and our constituency.
Some of you may hold the view that real first nations people have status cards, belong to Indian Act bands, and are represented by the Assembly of First Nations. This is simply wrong. The congress represents the interests of as many, and perhaps more, first nations people across the country as are able to vote for the people who vote for the AFN's national chief.
Both the AFN and the congress share this constituency. I wish we were more forthright and cooperative in this shared obligation. We respect the AFN's mandate and task, and we merely ask you to respect ours. I invite any of you who have questions about this to address this matter simply and straightforwardly today. Then we can move on to the substance of education.
Some of you may also take the view that the only real Métis in Canada are part of the Métis nation, which is based on the prairies and affiliated with the Métis National Council. Again, that is simply unfounded. The congress includes elected representatives of Métis communities and people in Labrador, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and B.C. We have a protocol with the only land-based Métis in the country, which is in Alberta.
I also invite you to refer to the documentation we have provided as attachments to these speaking notes. They provide an overview of aboriginal peoples, including our constituency. This may also give you a better understanding of the sometimes blunt and subtle distinctions, differences, and boundaries separating aboriginal peoples, even when they are members of the same family.
This may also help you to understand why approaches to aboriginal education now in place are fundamentally flawed. The attachments also provide a wide range of analysis and the recommendations on aboriginal education issues, from pre-K to post-secondary, and lifelong learning. I will return to the highlights of those recommendations in the course of setting what I regard as the key questions this committee should be addressing.
First, it is important to recall our vision. You have heard from other submissions, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and from numerous studies and reports how all aboriginal people regard education as part of a life-learning and holistic experience that embraces all strands of our existence--not only for K to 12 and post-secondary, but from infancy to old age; not only for scientific or western economic goals, but also for traditional values, spiritual growth, cultural and linguistic survival; and not just one for one type of aboriginal person or group defined arbitrarily by outside criteria, but for all our peoples.
This holistic stance is of no less importance to aboriginal people in urban, rural, and remote areas living off-reserve than for those living within reserve boundaries or in the far north. They are often of even greater importance, since there are few defences against the twin onslaughts of modern Canadian society: assimilation and discrimination.
Let's be honest. Outside of a few off-reserve schools controlled by aboriginal education boards, such as in Winnipeg, the accommodations made for aboriginal students in urban or rural areas are minimal at best, often token, and even more, often entirely absent. So our vision of holistic education, first and foremost, is based on the need to treat our people, our nations, and communities as what they really are, which is part of this country's founding peoples, no less essential to respect and support than the other two founding nations.
Our vision does not pretend that status under the Indian Act makes a difference to educational need, because it does so only indirectly, and in a negative way. Our vision is not to pretend that provinces can, or will, embrace or respond effectively to aboriginal principles about cultural and community education and learning, at least not without clear, strong federal involvement, leadership, and funding--because they won't.
Finally, our vision is to work with you, as parliamentarians, to move Canada to the point where our future as aboriginal peoples is secure, not just economically but spiritually, culturally, and communally. In order to achieve those ends, we have made a variety of specific recommendations.
We recommend a national aboriginal centre for education and training. All aboriginal students, from preschool to adult training, need a national integrated support institution to assist communities, schools, universities, and skills development delivery agencies to provide the best lifelong education possible.
A national centre that bridges the existing divides between preschool, K to 12, post-secondary, and adult training is needed, which is status and residency blind.
We recommend special assistance funding for post-secondary education. Métis and first nations people off-reserve have little or no access to the Department of Indian Affairs $300 million funding for post-secondary support program. Provinces do not support an alternative, and the only resort is hard-pressed, community-funded scholarships. The discrimination must end.
A national assistance fund for off-reserve first nations and Métis people should be introduced, with unconditional federal investment and inducements for provincial, territorial, private, and non-profit sector contributions.
We recommend clear targets for first nations and Métis off-reserve. Educational attainment reaching national standards must be set, and funding should be tied to making those targets achievable.
We recommend equity and skills development and labour market training. Access to skills development is very uneven in this country, especially for non-reserve first nations and Métis peoples outside the prairies. All national aboriginal groups have to be equal partners and decision-makers in accountable programs for adult training. This principle has been upheld by the Federal Court but continues to be largely ignored by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.
We recommend delinking politics from educational expertise. A new balance is needed between expertise in education and training and in accountability to the communities. Too many decisions affecting education and training are being taken for short-term political reasons. Favouritism is all too common. Educational and training authorities are needed that allow communities, through their leaders, to set broad directions and budgets without interfering in areas of expertise or disrupting merit or needs-based access to support programs.
Key questions for this committee. These recommendations highlight where we want to go, but to get there we have to address some core policy questions, questions that go way beyond tinkering with existing program guidelines or funding formulas.
In closing, I would put three questions to this committee. First, I would ask you to frame a statement on what the committee regards as its fiduciary duty and obligations to aboriginal peoples in relation to education and lifelong learning.
Parliament holds its own share of the Crown's broader fiduciary relationship with aboriginal peoples, but simply acknowledging a vague fiduciary duty is of little practical help in judging the merits and directions of proposed legislative or program-based measures. A clear and precise assertion of Parliament's unique obligations would be far more useful.
Secondly, I would invite the committee to investigate the situation of discrimination in federal education programs for aboriginal peoples, and by that, I mean discrimination on the grounds of arbitrary and irrelevant criteria such as status under the Indian Act. I think you will unearth, as we have, that such discrimination is very much at the core of the sad and unacceptable failure of current educational social policies, whether federal or provincial.
Finally, the committee should ask itself and fully debate the role that aboriginal governments and democratic accountability to all those involved can and must play in improving the outcomes we all want to witness.
For the congress, the time has come to end ineffective and arbitrary forms of aboriginal governance. There are church library committees that have more effective accountability and capacity. The time has come to get serious about recognizing aboriginal educational authorities and ensuring they are accountable in a comprehensive way.
Merci, and thank you.
Thank you for your presentation today.
I have to come back to the jurisdictional piece, because it would be extremely troubling. In my province of British Columbia, there are significant numbers of aboriginal students in provincial schools. In one of the schools in my riding, a primary school, almost 60% of the students are aboriginal. So we have a clear provincial jurisdiction over education for off-reserve children.
In the past, where the federal government has funnelled funds for particular initiatives, whether they're aboriginal or non-aboriginal, provinces have strongly resisted any accountability measures. We can go back to the agreements in 2001 and so on, and there were two separate child care agreements that, in my province, resulted in child care spaces being cut even though the federal funds were supposed to create child care spaces. I understand that some of the housing money that has recently come, in theory, for off-reserve aboriginal peoples is going to be used to build houses for non-aboriginal people.
So when you're talking jurisdictional issues, I know this is a problem that even constitutional experts can't come up with solutions to, but I think a simplistic solution that says we'll just get the federal, provincial, and aboriginal organizations to get together and have a conversation about this isn't going to wash. We need something more concrete. If you want the federal government to start mucking around in provincial government territory on education, I think you need to provide us with something more in that respect.
:
Thank you very much for your comment and question.
On the comment, I have never been shy about being called a radical or not. As a young leader--the youngest leader in this country, national-wise anyway--I can say it's time for change. I'm personally sick and tired of the rhetoric. Let's start doing instead of talking. I think there's been enough talk.
Secondly, with respect to Kelowna, yes, we were there in Kelowna as one of five federally recognized national aboriginal organizations. Of course we support the targets that flowed from the discussions in Kelowna. Yet, leaving Kelowna back in November, we were a bit perplexed, because on the second day, when we got a copy of how the moneys were going to flow, we had the $5.1 billion tag on it.
It's always been our position that, first of all, this was never voted in by Parliament, so in our view it's still an imaginary figure. Secondly, it's not just a question of throwing money at problems to solve them; it's to have cooperation between different levels of government and within our own aboriginal organizations as well.
But the fact of the matter still remained that after an 18-month process, most of the funding was going to be geared towards status Indians who lived on-reserve. I have no issue with that, because there are some serious problems in the reserves. We also have been advocates to eliminate the Indian Act, but I think that's another discussion. But if you're going to target a problem, you have to target the problem from all angles.
One example is that if you have a physical abuse situation between a man and a woman, what do you do? Do you give resources to the man to get counselling, or do you give the woman resources to get counselling? If you do either one or the other, you're not going to solve the problem, because somebody is being left out. But if you provide resources for both to get counselling, then you make a strong attempt at solving the problem.
It's the same thing with Kelowna. If you're going to target aboriginal poverty, you can't just target people who live on-reserve. You have to target the majority of the aboriginal population, who now reside off-reserve. Seventy-nine percent of the total aboriginal population in this country reside off-reserve. As I mentioned earlier, 51% of status Indians also reside off-reserve. These are not our numbers; these are numbers from Statistics Canada.
That's why we were a bit baffled when we left Kelowna. I mean, sure we want to target poverty, but let's let everybody have a chance at getting the resources that are there to try to solve their problems.
Thanks for your presentation, Mr. Brazeau.
I think one of the things that we've been getting a conflicting message on was when we had the Indian affairs department talking about population at one of our previous committee meetings. For example, 60% are on-reserve and the trend is growing upward. Secondly, on post-secondary funding off-reserve, it's my understanding that, at least in Saskatchewan and in certain other regions as well, a lot of on-reserve post-secondary funding programs actually fund regardless of residence. I know that has happened. There is off-reserve post-secondary funding. Is there enough? No, there's not. I agree with you on that point. Do we need improved mechanisms to do that? Absolutely.
I'm glad you clarified that all five national organizations were in Kelowna.
In regard to the money, at a finance committee meeting, a senior federal official said the money was there. Unfortunately, the government decided to go a different route.
One of the big issues is with respect to moving forward. I agree that what you're talking about is interesting. I'm probably one of those guys who would like to see some radical change. How do we get over some hurdles today when we need to address the realities of the students today? There's a pressing need.
The Métis in Saskatchewan say they represent all the Métis, regardless of residence on-reserve or off-reserve. The first nations in Saskatchewan say the same thing. What is your view on the portability of treaty rights in that context? How would you attempt to reconcile the relationship?
Unfortunately, I'm giving more of a Saskatchewan context than anything else. You didn't mention Saskatchewan before on organizations regionally.
How would you begin to reconcile it in time to address some of the day-to-day issues that we have right now?