Every Child Deserves a Decent Life

"I would like to talk to you about what it is like to be a child who grows up never seeing a real school. I want to tell you about the children who give up hope and start dropping out in Grade 4 or 5. But I want to also tell you about the determination in our community to build a better world. School should be a time for hopes and dreams of the future. Every kid deserves this." Shannen Koostachin

These were the words used by a Cree teen-aged girl, Shannen Koostachin, who desperately wanted the opportunity to study and become well educated, and wanted that opportunity for other children like herself, who have been so ill-served by their community and their country. That young girl began to attend a school outside her community, in northern Ontario. But she met her death in a highway accident when she was just 16.

Shannen also made it a personal responsibility to meet with federal Members of Parliament, to describe for them the needs of children on reserves that were not being met. She also did a bit of travelling in various cities, speaking to various interested groups and in schools, addressing students, telling them what life was like for her and her peers. She began a campaign that is ongoing.

Although Shannen is no longer present to continue with her campaign, another young woman is, Chelsea Edwards who was Shannen's best friend. "We are the children who have been sitting at the back of the bus our entire lives and we don't want to be there any more."

The degraded misery of young children growing up on Indian reserves within Canada is a dreadful blot on this country. With all the funding that is forwarded through the newly re-named Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development there are still inadequate funds for decently-constructed and -maintained schools in which to instruct Aboriginal children. Fact is, schools for First Nations children are under-funded, as compared to the funding for schools elsewhere in the provinces.

Other children, nation-wide, appear to have taken up Shannen Koostachin's determination to convince the Government of Canada that additional funding is required to ensure that First Nations children receive an education at least commensurate with that of other Canadian children. But of course there is more to this story than just paying for better schools. Children on reserves drop out of school for other reasons, too, reflecting their dysfunctional family lives.

A young teacher from Attawapiskat, where Shannen came from, described the hopelessness of the situation in teaching there. There was no discipline among the students, they were scornful and disobedient, unwilling to commit themselves to lessons. There was no respect for public property for there is no private property on the reserves and the knowledge that outside reserve property people have to pay for their homes and tend to them, was a matter of astonished dismissal.

Those who campaign for better educational opportunities for aboriginal children are right to do so and to be committed to ensuring that this becomes reality. But those opportunities have to be accompanied by a decent home life, by life in a community that takes pride in itself, where parents care about what happens to their children and don't neglect them while they drink and carouse.

Those are the familial, community values being imbibed by the children. Little wonder they drop out of school. In middle-class communities elsewhere in Canada, crowded school conditions mean that many children will never see classes outside of temporary classrooms called 'portables'. Those portables are cold in winter, hot in summer, and have no bathroom facilities, and they are inconvenient.

But those inconvenienced children largely come from within communities that are considered to be stable and socially conscious, and from families that are relatively intact with values that are reflective of those of the larger society. Shannen was so right that she and her peers needed and deserved better, far better than they got. But what they need and deserve goes beyond the school accommodation.

They desperately need a better life.