Evidence of meeting #56 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was language.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
4:40 p.m.
Bloc
Marilène Gill Bloc Manicouagan, QC
Ms. Osborne, I was unable to ask you the same question I had asked Ms. Mertens and Ms. Rowles earlier. We talked about conditions that could improve graduation rates in First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities, specifically.
What do you think should be done to achieve this goal?
4:40 p.m.
Teacher and Graduation Coach, Keewaytinook Internet High School
I look at this question in two ways. If we look at the short term, we need to create conditions where students are coming to school more regularly—so attendance issues....
I'm not sure if your question is about the physical conditions. Most of our schools are tiny portables. There's definitely some need for repair and upkeep. It's not uncommon for our schools to be without running water, to be without heat. There are many school closures that affect our attendance issues in our communities.
I also want to talk about the long-term conditions needed to improve graduation rates. Again, that goes to equipping students early on with the academic skills they need. It needs to happen by working with the local education authorities at the elementary school level, so having indigenous teachers in their schools is so important.
I was in Deer Lake First Nation for four years and the turnover of non-local teachers is an issue. It's hard to build on progress when you have people who are leaving. We need to make sure that we are investing in those early childhood education programs to have the success we want later on.
4:45 p.m.
Bloc
Marilène Gill Bloc Manicouagan, QC
That does not give me enough time to go any further.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jenica Atwin
Thank you very much.
This is going to bring our first round of questions and first panel to a close.
Thank you so much, Nikki Osborne, Rebecca Mearns and Shelagh Rowles, for your testimony this afternoon. Thank you for giving us your time. I know it will greatly contribute to our study. Thank you so much.
We'll briefly suspend as we set up for our next set of witnesses. Thank you.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jenica Atwin
I'm going to call us back to order here.
I just want to note that there will not be Inuktitut interpretation for this round, only Plains Cree, as we don't currently have the technology to support two third languages at this time. It's certainly a wonderful treat that we'll be able to have that interpretation this afternoon.
Appearing before us, we have Kevin Lewis, assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan and the Kâniyâsihk Culture Camps. From Cape Breton University, we have Marie Battiste, special adviser to the vice-president academic, and provost on decolonizing the academy. From the Université du Québec à Montréal, we have Marco Bacon, director of the office of inclusion and student success.
Each of you will have five minutes for your opening remarks.
We'll begin with Mr. Lewis.
Thank you.
4:50 p.m.
Dr. Kevin Lewis Assistant Professor, University of Saskatchewan, Kâniyâsihk Culture Camps, As an Individual
[Witness spoke in Cree, interpreted as follows:]
I want to greet you all. I want to talk to the Creator. First and foremost, I have to thank the Creator for giving us this day.
The reason I am here today is to talk about the graduation rates of our first nation students, our youth and the ones who are going to universities and colleges. I really want to thank the standing committee for inviting me again, and I really would like to thank you for allowing me to speak in my own language.
If we are to talk about our own children, language should be at the forefront of teaching. My own reserve is Ministikwan. When we teach our children we always take our students, our elders and our parents who are involved in our Cree immersion school programming.... It is up to the elders They are wanting us to take all our kids to the land...to know where they come from and to try to retain the language, bring back the language, in my own reserve in Ministikwan.
In 1976, and in the early 1980s, when we first opened our school, a brand new school, it went up to grade 9, and then up to grade 12. When our students came there, English was taught in that school. The Cree language wasn't even taught. Then our elders came and assessed it. This is when our elders were crying out that there was no Cree language taught.
At one time when we were teaching the Cree language to kids in our school, lots of parents who came to assist our school programming were able to read and write in our own language. We piloted this program from Onion Lake Cree immersion school. How was it that these kids were able to read and write and do the numbers in their Cree language?
I really want to talk about where we went for our Cree language teaching training. We went to the University of Alberta. That is where we all went to learn how to teach Cree. In that school, they were telling us that it is better to teach these kids in their Cree language. These kids are most likely to be very successful in finishing high school. They have to be taught in Cree and in English. When we first started in nursery school, kindergarten, and up to grade 2, by the time we got to grade 3, we saw the progress, how these kids were learning their English and Cree language at the same time. They were very successful. They were able to retain their language.
We really need to keep our language alive in our own schools and in our community, and where we come from in Ministikwan. We are very fortunate in our own reserve. We still have lots of elders who are urging us to teach and retain our language right in the classroom. We are starting to see the language loss in our schools today.
When the epidemic came, there were a lot of social problems and family violence that came. The reserve was very very [Inaudible—Editor]. There were a lot of social problems. With that poverty comes family violence, but then the elders are urging us just to keep teaching our languages. We are also wanting to teach our own children. They will be very successful.
In terms of kinship, we need to bring back the language. There, we talk about relationships. We talk about kinship. This is our very strong relationship with the land.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
Dr. Marie Battiste Special Advisor to the Vice President Academic, Provost on Decolonizing the Academy, Cape Breton University
Kwe. Halu. Greetings. Bonjour.
I'm honoured today to be invited to speak to you on unceded Algonquin territories.
I'm here to recommend to your committee the continuing resourcing of indigenous education, learning from indigenous perspectives of success, and a trans-systemic alignment and commitment to indigenous peoples' knowledges as the foundation of first nations' learning and success.
I am a Mi’kmaq educator from Potlotek First Nation, an author and a professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan with my colleague, Kevin, where I have completed 28 years in teacher education, having taught courses and supervised graduates in first nation, Métis and Inuit education, anti-racist education and decolonizing education.
I'm currently working part time as a special adviser to Cape Breton University on decolonizing the academy, now in my home area of Unama’ki.
For a period of my career at the University of Saskatchewan, starting in 2005, I was the co-director of one of the five nationally funded projects of the Canadian Council on Learning—called then the aboriginal learning knowledge centre—which served learning for first nation, Métis and Inuit communities.
One project was to review graduation rates across the country and identify ways to improve them. From literature reviews, we reviewed graduation rates of indigenous students compared with other non-indigenous Canadians. We found that often these metrics were being interpreted through a deficit lens of indigenous students—in other words, what Indigenous students lacked compared to others, not what they had.
Indeed, those rates illustrated more clearly the failure of assimilation policies of residential and public schooling and their ongoing intergenerational damage to indigenous families and communities.
This realization led us to generate community workshops and collaborations with first nation, Métis and Inuit leadership and communities to identify what success meant to these communities and how learning supported it. They defined success in multi-layered processes leading to three first nation, Métis and Inuit holistic learning models. Learning was described as holistic, life long, experiential, communally activated, grounded in the language and cultures of the communities, from their land, and involving their spiritual and relational world views and growing roles and responsibilities in those places, with each other and their ecology. It also included the braiding of diverse knowledge systems of diverse indigenous peoples and conventional western education.
These themes have largely been the foundations in first nations' control of their education, as you've been hearing. Within them, graduation rates have been improving.
However, to generate better outcomes first nations schooling must have foundations that are transferred from and aligned with provincial schools and post-secondary education to create what I call a better trans-systemic fit. Without that, indigenous students are limited in the transfer of their learning from their community schools to public and post-secondary education.
Decolonization of public and post-secondary education is unpacking the colonial structures, content and outcomes, and rebuilding new structures and impacting disciplinary knowledge traditions. These are still a struggle that's unfolding.
Today, the mandate for reconciliation from the TRC calls to action, indigenization and decolonization requires new trans-systemic learning, new opportunities, and different theory and practices, some of which are not yet available in current post-secondary teacher education. A return to a type of resourcing and support for indigenous knowledges that the former aboriginal learning knowledge centre offered can mobilize the needed foundation for a pan-Canadian architecture that is supportive of the infrastructure that is needed across Canada.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is now enacted in Canada, affirms inherent indigenous rights in Canada, but only as potential unrealized learning opportunities in and through education—public, federal and post secondary.
Learning for success is a focus on building for the future, on sustainability, on collective identities and on indigenous rights, a reconciliation that Canada and its institutions must continue to address.
For indigenous parents and elders, passing on what we know is an act of love, not just to our children but to the seventh generation. This can only be achieved when we re-examine the educational purposes of learning, the requirements for that education and what it purports to achieve with the graduation of indigenous students.
It is about the continuous scrutiny and alignment of indigenous knowledge content with learning in schools and systems and the honouring of indigenous contributions to the cognitive advancement, self-determination and well-being of our people. It needs to continue to affirm and honour excellence in the experimentation, exploration and diffusion of indigenous knowledge, languages and traditions that contribute to the uniqueness of the institutions and knowledges of Canada while also ensuring that graduation contributes to self-determining, flourishing communities by their successes in multiple knowledge systems.
Wela'lin, Nakurmiik, thank you, merci.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jenica Atwin
Wela'lin, Madam Battiste.
Mr. Bacon, you have the floor for five minutes.
March 27th, 2023 / 5 p.m.
Marco Bacon Director, Office of Inclusion and Student Success, Université du Québec à Montréal
[Witness speaks in Nehleueun]
Hello everyone. I greet you all.
I am very pleased to be here today.
I am a member of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh Nation in Mashteuiatsh.
I will tell you my story. I think that will be necessary for you to understand what I have to say today.
I was a student before our community took charge of education. Religious congregations taught us. For a young student starting school, it's very important to experience something profound, because it will give them the drive to continue their studies. Personally, what happened to me left a deep mark, but not in a good way. I was marked literally: I had marks on my body because the nuns knew how to use their tools very well.
Afterwards, the community took over education, but it happened all at once. Obviously, the transition was not instantaneous. So, there was a long process before the community took charge of education.
I must say that, for me, these times were not exactly happy. Going to school, that was never happy time. However, I persisted and continued following my path. At a certain point, I ended up at university. First, I did an undergraduate degree in art education, and then I did a master's degree of arts, educational stream, which let me go back to my community of Mashteuiatsh to teach.
I was truly privileged, because the first position I took in Mashteuiatsh, where I taught for 15 years, was to be a preschool teacher, meaning the kindergarten program for four-year-olds. After a few years, I moved on from the kindergarten program to teach five-year-olds. We had an Indigenous language immersion program to rekindle the fire for the Innu language in my community. Afterwards, I was able to take up my real job, that of art teacher. I taught all levels of primary and secondary school for 15 years.
I also taught CÉGEP during some of this time. Afterwards, I ended up in Chicoutimi, in Saguenay, more specifically at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. I was the director of the Centre des Premières Nations Nikanite for 10 years. The mandates at the Centre des Premières nations Nikanite were mainly to develop programs; give community members access to university education; develop research projects in collaboration with communities; develop service offerings for indigenous students; and, finally, raise the university community's awareness about issues regarding First Nations and their culture, of course.
During those 10 years, my team experienced many problems associated with university education, but I'll come back to that a little later.
After spending 10 years at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, I obtained the position of director of the Office of Inclusion and Student Success at UQAM. The office isn't necessarily reserved for Indigenous people, because it serves several populations, such as students living with a disability, students with children, LGBTQ2A+ students, international students and the entire UQAM student body.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jenica Atwin
I am sorry, Mr. Bacon, you have to wrap it up now. You may be able to add more comments during questions.
We'll proceed to our first round of questions.
Mr. Vidal, you have six minutes.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Gary Vidal Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank all our witnesses for being here today and for their contributions to our important study.
Just as a quick shout-out, Dr. Lewis, I believe your mom is here translating for us again today. That's really cool. She was here during the languages study that we did a while back. That's quite a cool opportunity, and I just wanted to recognize that.
We've heard from a number of witnesses over the last few weeks about the importance of language, culture and land-based learning in the context of successful.... I don't want to focus on just graduation rates, but on successful outcomes for students.
Dr. Lewis, you talked about children being most successful, or most likely successful, if taught in both Cree and English at a young age. Can you help us make the link between what you mean by being the most successful and those outcomes that are a result of being able to do that by, from your experience, catching them at that young age? How does that lead to better outcomes?
5:10 p.m.
Assistant Professor, University of Saskatchewan, Kâniyâsihk Culture Camps, As an Individual
Yes.
[Witness spoke in Cree, interpreted as follows:]
[Technical difficulty—Editor]
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
5:10 p.m.
Assistant Professor, University of Saskatchewan, Kâniyâsihk Culture Camps, As an Individual
[Witness spoke in Cree, interpreted as follows:]
I want to talk about myself and about my own journey towards education. I shouldn't really be bragging about myself and my own education, but when it comes to it, I went to school on the reserve. I grew up going to school there. Then I went to the nearby town school of Ernest Lindner. I also went to the University of Saskatchewan. The other school I went to was a residential school.
At all three institutions that I went to, not once did I ever see a first nations person work there, or any females work there, or even persons speaking the Cree language or talking about family relationships, family kinships and raising good families. When I went to university, it was same thing. Even though it was called the Indian teacher education program, I never saw any languages being taught there, or Indian ways of knowing, or Indian knowledge.
If you want to see how to teach children in terms of learning languages, then you have to include Cree, Nakota, Dene and even Blackfoot. If we can combine all those languages together at the university, then you'll be able to see the success rate. Here, you won't be able to see any high incarceration rates. You won't even see any poverty if all the first nations people can work together in terms of education. Even in the homes we would be able to overcome the poverty and even family violence.
We would like to see, and my dream is to see, these women, our matriarchal lineages, teach in those schools and teach in those institutions so that we can have role models. First and foremost, we need to have role models in those schools and in those institutions.
In terms of policy-making, we have to include first nations people to have some say and to have their foot in there. If we were able to put role models here in the House of Commons and on the standing committees, or even on school boards, then those first nations people would be able to speak on behalf of their first nations people.
My dream and my goal is to be able to see first nations languages taught in the schools and the universities.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Gary Vidal Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Thank you.
I'm sorry. I was waiting for the translation to finish there at the end.
I think I'm making the connection here. I don't have a lot of time left, but I'm going to give you a quick opportunity....
I know you were sitting in the back when Ms. Osborne, the grad coach from northern Ontario, was talking. She made the comment that we must give young people a reason to graduate. We have to create the opportunity for them to have a reason to want to graduate. I think there's a connection to what she's saying and what you're saying.
I want to give you the opportunity to tie those two together quickly, in the few seconds that I have left.
5:15 p.m.
Assistant Professor, University of Saskatchewan, Kâniyâsihk Culture Camps, As an Individual
[Witness spoke in Cree, interpreted as follows:]
What I wanted to say is that there is a lack of electricians. We lack carpenters. We lack accountants. We also lack people in policy-making. We lack all the ones that I named.
If they were to attend university or any colleges to be taught all these different trades, then we would be able to support ourselves. We would be able to be self-sufficient.
This is where we want our children to be taught, so that we can have role models. They would be able to grow up to follow these role models on the reserve. We would be able to see those role models on our reserves, in our schools.
We need those people.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Thank you.
To begin, I'd first like to acknowledge that I'm gathered with everyone here today on the unceded Anishinabe Algonquin territories. I come from the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples and, particularly, the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo and Musqueam nations in British Columbia. For me, it's really important to acknowledge that.
This is only my second meeting. I was only put on this committee last week, for my first meeting. It's a real pleasure to be here.
I want to thank my Conservative colleagues for the very warm welcome. It's a pleasure. I'm looking forward to working with everybody, as well as the NDP and Bloc members.
I'm still getting up to speed on what this study's about. It's very deep content. I'd like to thank each of our speakers today for the thoughts they've given us so far.
I have to say, Ms. Battiste, that your son sits in front of me. I told him that if he was here today, I was going to ask you for some personal stories. I won't put on you for the story. We'll focus your expertise in other areas. It's a real pleasure to have you here and to work with your son here in the House of Commons.
I have had a chance to move around this amazing country and live in the traditional territories of many first nations, from southern and northern Ontario, through all three prairie provinces and various regions of British Columbia, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. One of the things that I've seen related to education....
Ms. Battiste, your comments about decolonizing and unpacking colonial structures really resonated with me.
I hear from our Kwantlen community members, who say they want their kids to have a good education, but when the fish start running, they need to be out on the land. There's always this conflict between school schedules and traditional lifestyles.
We've heard from all of you about the importance of language—developing that language and language retention—as part of identity and success.
I'd like to give you a moment to talk a bit more about that unpacking of colonial structures. What does that look like?
I'm sure that there's flexibility in how we build schedules and curricula that will allow families and communities to get out on the land at the appropriate times without sacrificing or missing school time. It's about having language accessible from preschool right through the education system.
What else does that look like, as far as unpacking those colonial structures to lead us to greater outcomes is concerned?
5:15 p.m.
Special Advisor to the Vice President Academic, Provost on Decolonizing the Academy, Cape Breton University
Thank you for this question.
What I would like to see and what is present and available now are not in sync. That's why I keep saying that we need to have a better fit between those.
What we're aspiring for is self-determining, flourishing communities that have, want and are retaining all of the foundations of their knowledge through their languages and through the kinds of learning processes that I talk about as holistic, lifelong, experiential and community activated, in working through language and culture and working with the spiritual world views and so on, but what they are getting right now is an education in our communities.
You've heard already about the various communities that are doing wonderful things in the work they're doing in their communities and in schools and so on, but what's happening is that as these children move on to university or into public schools, those institutions are creating the dissonance, in that they don't then have the decolonized.... Those institutions haven't brought in languages and have dropped indigenous content into a few content areas, but it's all structured in a modern four-walled school. That dissonance creates the ongoing dissonance that students have of coming in and trying to develop new skills in another language system, and struggling with that in English and trying to struggle with the kinds of expectations that those create.
What I'm trying to assert is that we need to find a way to bring these structures and ways of learning together. In the public school systems and also in universities, there's this notion of indigenization and reconciliation, and those kinds of things need to have a tie-in with what is in our first nation community schools and how that fits.
I think land-based learning is one of the important elements. That is what we find in all of these. They do fit well with learning. We do have a university master's program in land-based learning at the University of Saskatchewan, but this is only in pockets of places—Nunavut and the University of Saskatchewan. We can't seem to get all of them on board to do these kinds of things to create this necessary fit, which is why I think we need to have some kind of other structure that will help us to build those promising practices and build new theories around indigenous knowledge traditions and braiding them with contemporary modern systems.