In terms of isolation, I think the general socio-economic conditions in the community have had huge impacts on learning. The example I was sharing with you, within the Island Lake area alone.... It's hard to believe, but we've only had an audiologist for the last year. When our audiologist went into these northern first nation communities, they found rates of hearing loss of up to 25% of the entire student population.
Up until now, these children have never had amplification systems and many children have not had hearing aids. The children who live with deafness have not had access to American Sign Language, so how do you succeed in education when you can't hear what the teacher is saying? They're eliminated from any possibility of success within that system, so it's about providing those supports, as Lorne Keeper said, using economies of scale, and training people from those communities.
I used to travel up into the Island Lake communities 20 to 25 years ago and it was all non-first nations specialists going in. They would do a quick assessment, leave and charge the communities an incredible amount of money. Our leaders and our education director said, “Let's stop that. Let's build the capacity in the community. Let's train local people.” You go to a community and say, “We would like you to have your own psychologists.” Our school psychology program, out of the University of Calgary, is training 15 first nation school psychologists, and four of those individuals are from Island Lake.
We're so proud. I call St. Theresa Point the school psychology capital of Manitoba. They're going to have their own psychologists who speak the language and will be able to deconstruct that western concept of psychology, which tends just to label and create deficits for first nation learners.
Isolation is a very crucial factor, and having worked in those communities for years, I know it's really important to build that local capacity.