Mr. Chair, it is all about partnerships. I was a school board trustee before I came here. I was on the executive of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association. I was a member of the Saskatoon board of education for a number of years. It is partnerships.
For the first time ever, we worked with the former aboriginal affairs minister, John Duncan, for two to three years in our city, and the Whitecap Dakota First Nation. The graduation rates for indigenous students in this country are deplorable. What are we going to do? There are two things we can do. We can leave them the way they are right now in this country, which is horrible, from Newfoundland to British Columbia, on the island, or we can do something about it.
Through the former minister, John Duncan, we made a partnership with the Whitecap Dakota where our teachers in the Saskatoon public school division had a chance to go out and learn treaty education right on the reserve. We paid our teachers and our principal to go out there and to teach first nation education. Also, in doing that, we went to the grades 3 and 4 on the reserve, and then we welcomed them back into our city. In fact, we named a school after Chief Whitecap. It is in my riding.
Members should think about that, the partnership of the Saskatoon board of education and the Saskatchewan school boards reaching out to the Whitecap Dakota, one of the founders out there, and we named our school Chief Whitecap School. It is part of our education system, one that we in Saskatchewan are very proud of.