Aspirational Formulas

"I personally believe that the First Nation Education Act will be transformational, like no other measures that have been taken in 50 years, 100 years".
"However you cut it -- whether you look at those social indicators. Suicide rates. Violence against aboriginal women and girls. Incarceration rates."
"All of these things are affected by what? At the bottom of it all, it's education."
Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt

 
First Nations people are joined by supporters during the Walk for Reconciliation in Vancouver, B.C., on Sunday September 22, 2013. The walk wrapped up a week Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada events in the city. From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 aboriginal children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools in an attempt to assimilate them into Canadian society. They were prohibited from speaking their languages or participating in cultural practices. The commission was created as part of a $5 billion class action settlement in 2006 - the largest in Canadian history - between the government, churches and 90,000 surviving students. Photograph by: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck , Postmedia News

"Following the Prime Minister's historic apology to former Indian Residential School students, the Government of Canada is committed to moving forward in a spirit of reconciliation."
"A legislative base that respects Aboriginal and treaty rights, provides a commitment to quality, and enables First Nation control over First Nation education is a tangible demonstration of that commitment."
Introduction to draft document Working Together for First Nation Students, outlining the First Nation Education Act

A draft of the federal government's proposed First Nation Education Act has been posted online at the Aboriginal Affairs website. The draft there for all who are interested in what it contains to peruse, to evaluate, to comment on, to await fulfillment of in due time. Response from the Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo has not been long in suspension. 

In an October 10 letter addressed to Aboriginal Affairs Minister Valcourt, signed by Chief Shawn Atleo and AFN Nova Scotia Regional Chief Morley Googoo, a complaint was lodged that aboriginals had not been adequately consulted on the matter. "An initiative which has the goal of improving First Nations education should not leave First Nations peoples guessing", they observed with a certain piquancy.

What, one might wonder, is there to guess about? For it would appear that the Department of Aboriginal Affairs has done its due diligence on the matter. The website hosting the draft states the following:

Update on Progress to Date on First Nation education
On October 22, 2013, the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) released for public review the document Working Together for First Nation Students: A Proposal for a Bill on First Nation Education, which is the result of input and feedback received from First Nation Chiefs and Councils, First Nation organizations, provincial governments and others with an expertise or interest in First Nation education on the Blueprint for Legislation consultation document.
The draft legislative proposal has been shared with more than 600 Chiefs and Band Councils and every First Nation community across the country, as well as provincial governments, for further input prior to legislation being introduced in Parliament. Once introduced, the Parliamentary process will offer additional opportunities for input.

Consultation was indeed, it would appear, assiduously tended to, as might and should have been expected. So what is it that troubles the chiefs about the document? Is something missing in it that should be there and is not? The 32-page working document, Working Together for First Nation Students has a clause-by-clause format indicating what the completed bill will hold.

Government anticipates that the new education system will be in the finishing and presentation stage with the 2014 school year.

The bill is prepared to accept that the schools are to be community-operated through First Nations, or alternately through an agreement with a province. Standards for qualifications of teaching staff and curricula and graduation requirements for students will all be in place. Regulations respecting discipline (codes of conduct and policies on suspension/expulsion) instruction hours, class size and transportation are all to be clearly delineated.

Nothing appears missing.With all that consultation, all the concern at the federal level that the government finally get at least this important education file for First Nation children right, it's concerning and perplexing both that the same old criticism is emanating from the AFN chiefs. So what are they guessing about, and what, precisely is it that has them champing at the bit of annoyance?

Aside from the usual accusations that Canada's federal governments, the entire succession of them over the generations of treaties, bargaining and human relations attempts to settle the problems facing Canada's First Nations simply represent the governments acting as usual: "paternalistic at best and assimilationist at worst". Predicable, sadly so.

The missing element in the draft document was eventually disclosed. Funding.

No mention anywhere in the document of the funding to be released; whether it will be in a sum greater than previously spent for First Nations education, as urged by the AFN, or whether the funding won't change, but the expectations will; that First Nations finally get on track to directing themselves to the future of their children by helping to provide them with a truly quality education.