Good morning. On behalf of the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre, I am very glad to be here with my colleagues, Donald Shackel and Shirley Fontaine.
Historically, Manitoba first nations started local control back in 1970. “Wahbung: Our Tomorrows” has been our leading light. Long before the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre was formed, our first nations leaders and people spoke to the need to develop an education system that would support the retention of our ways of knowing, primarily through the teachings of our ancestral languages and cultures. To be effective, education must be nurtured in relevancy, commitment, motivation and identifiable purpose. The process must be part of the community activities and community progress. The beauty of our first nations education system was that it was failure-proof.
The Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre is the largest first nations education service delivery organization in Canada. At present, we have over 250 service delivery staff and over 340 staff employed in 10 first nations schools, which are part of our newly created Manitoba First Nations School System. There are about 51 schools in Manitoba. We currently provide accredited training for over 300 first nations professional staff in various education fields, including school psychologists, speech and language therapists, and practitioners in a variety of other clinical fields.
As I mentioned, our philosophy is based on “Wahbung: Our Tomorrows”, a collective thought and approach. Our work is grassroots and community-driven. We work with first nations communities throughout Manitoba. Our big focus is on community-based programming and a capacity-building approach, so that we can build our own....