Education: A Path to Indigenous Empowerment?

Canada is known internationally for its respect for diversity, human rights, and democracy. However, the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children in former Catholic church-run residential schools in Canada has resurfaced the country’s dark colonial past. Although Canada is currently embarking on reconciling its relationship with its indigenous peoples, the intergenerational educational disparities between Indigenous and Canadian youths continue to embody a roadblock towards substantive progress.

As the original inhabitants of present-day Canada, the indigenous population is an overarching term that embodies the First Nations, the Métis, and the Inuit populations. Under the Amendments of the Indian Act passed in 1894, Indigenous children were forcefully separated from their families to attend one of the 139 Canadian government-sponsored, church-run schools across the country to “assimilate” them into mainstream Euro-Canadian culture. Unfortunately, the assimilation process soon turned into a devasting “cultural genocide,” where many Indigenous children experienced severe psychological, emotional, and physical abuse. Although the last residential school in Canada officially closed in 1996, this deep-rooted trauma has created negative intergenerational impacts that continue to contribute to high addiction, violence, suicide, and school drop-out rates of Indigenous youth–, while 88% of Canadian youth have completed high school, the graduation rate for First Nation on-reserve youth was only 44%, as of 2018.

(Chart: OECD, 2016) Comparison of the educational attainment of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples by province and territory, in Canada.

It is undeniable that the Trudeau administration has viewed educational empowerment as a critical component of the reconciliation process. This effort is particularly evident in the New Policy and Funding Approach for First Nations Kindergarten to Grade 12 Education, published by the Indigenous Services Canada in early 2019. The newly developed framework specifically emphasises the creation of a path to an Indigenous-led, adequately funded, and culturally appropriate First Nations education system. However, progress doesn’t necessarily mean that the education gap has been bridged.

Every Big Funding Problem is Really an Education Problem

The lack of adequate funding for First Nation Schools has been an ongoing problem. Although public schools and educational policies typically fall under the provincial government's jurisdiction, First Nations schools are funded by Canada’s federal government. In 2016, this alternative funding method was estimated to create a funding gap between $336 million to $665 million. The average funding for a student attending a First Nations school on the reserve is solely $6,800, compared to the estimated budget of $11,000 for a student attending a provincially managed school that is 10 minutes down the street.

Having recognised the severe funding disparity between First Nation Schools and the other provincially funded schools, the federal government implemented a new “interim” education funding formula for First Nations schools across Canada in April 2019. Under this interim funding formula, First Nation schools are designated to receive provincially comparable funding along with additional funding for language and culturally specific programming.

However, this new, seemingly optimal funding method is only an incremental step towards true education equality across Canada. In particular, the new interim funding formula is problematic in two ways. Firstly, under this formula, First Nations’ schools are still held hostage to the power of the provincial governments’ decision. The Indigenous population are known to have low turnout rates in both federal and provincial elections due to the trauma associated with their colonial past. Allocating the Indigenous population provincially-comparable funding is questionable, as the funding is always dictated by politicians who don’t necessarily represent the best interest of the Indigenous population’s education preferences.

Secondly, as mentioned previously, most First Nations schools have been chronically underfunded for centuries. Using the provincially-comparable funding model eliminates a more profound funding disparity but does little to fill in the pre-existing educational gap. First Nations schools are often located in remote locations, have more outdated infrastructures and learning resources, and require more special education assistance. It is evident that additional funding is needed to ameliorate the existing education status quo. Thus, the comparative funding method can only ensure funding equality but not educational equity.

(Image: McGraw Hill, 2019) The contrast between equity and equality in education.

Education Equity in the Pandemic World: When the Internet Becomes a Necessity

Unfortunately, the lack of adequate education funding has only further exacerbated the infrastructure and digital gap in First Nations schools in the post-pandemic world. Importantly, First Nations schools across Canada had poor school facilities and learning resources even prior to the pandemic. It is not uncommon to find First Nation Schools without clean drinking water and the school premise being infested with rodents. The ongoing pandemic only made the education gap steeper as many Indigenous students have limited internet and technological access. As evident in the survey conducted in 2016, 96% of Canadians have access to the internet compared to 79% of the Indigenous population. Even for the more fortunate Indigenous individuals who have access to an internet connection, only 27% of the internet users can access broadband internet.

Undoubtedly, this blatant digital divide has shaped drastically different learning environments for Indigenous students relative to their non-Indigenous peers during the pandemic. In particular, CG Law has vividly depicted these two radically different environments by stating, “When Canadian students are learning on Zoom, high school students attending the Matawa Education and Care Center in Thunder Bay are forced to talk to their teachers over a landline and get their lessons via fax.” At the same time, the school curriculum for the Indigenous students is more susceptible to COVID disruptions as many land-based teaching practices and group interactions emphasised in the Indigenous education curriculum cannot be conducted virtually. While educators and students across Canada have been grieving over the year-long shared loss of missing academic opportunities and experience, it is often underestimated that many Indigenous students need to deal with the aftermath of a more complex and nuanced post-pandemic reality.

Shortage of Inuit teachers and culturally equipped non-Inuit teachers

Meanwhile, the Inuit population - an Indigenous group inhabiting the Arctic regions including Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut - are educationally impeded due to teacher shortages and low staff retention rates. This phenomenon is particularly worth examining because while the average annual starting salary for grade school teachers is $51,046 in other Canadian provinces, teachers’ salaries range from $75,000 to $117,000 in the High North. Yet, despite the fact that territories like Nunavut have one of the highest teaching salaries in the country, these High North communities continue to struggle to hire and retain qualified teaching staff.

Three reasons can justify this peculiar paradox. First, the lack of housing and infrastructure are associated with low teacher retention rates. As there is a severe housing shortage in the High North, many teaching staff are deterred by the need to live in shared accommodations with poor amenities. Second, there is a high non-Inuit teacher turnover rate due to a steep cultural learning curve. As many non-Inuit teachers often have little knowledge about Inuit language and culture, they can often be bewildered by the bilingual education system and feel a low sense of efficacy if they solely approach teaching using a Eurocentric mindset. Finally, there is a shortage of native Inuit teachers due to a lack of information dissemination and proper mentorship programs. In particular, in a survey conducted in Nunavut, only 21% of the interviewees said they had received adequate information regarding the application procedures for a teacher’s college.

Although the current teaching shortage may seem like a common problem across Canada due to the COVID pandemic, the higher teacher turnover rates in the High North mainly reflect the deep-rooted systemic educational inequality. This pattern reflects the findings of scholarly research conducted in the U.S., where teachers in high-poverty, high-minority schools are shown to have higher rates of turnover. Interestingly, the low retention rate of non-Inuit teachers in the High North also mirrors the second part of the study. Teachers of color, who are disproportionately represented in these schools, are also more prone to quitting their jobs. As a low rate of teacher retention can disrupt the continuity of a student’s learning experience and weaken the teacher–student relationship, how to better equip non-Inuit teachers while broadening the talent pool for native Inuit teachers remains a top education concern for the Inuit population.

What Education Empowerment is and What it is not

In 2019, Canadian high school students were among the highest achievers in the OECD PISA study. Ironically, a lack of adequate funding, access to the internet, and teacher shortage are key points that contribute to the substandard educational experience of their Indigenous peers, who shared the same land. As Nelson Mandela once said, “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Education empowerment has become an idée fixe to strengthen the well-being and independence of the Indigenous population. However, this type of empowerment is merely an illusion in a broken education system.