Calls to Action for Education:
These Calls to Action include recommendations to change curriculum, fix funding gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and schools, and to teach in culturally appropriate ways. The goal of this area was to close the gaps in educational opportunities (and the associated outcomes) between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. It is important to fulfill our Treaty obligations, and part of that entails providing quality education to Indigenous students. Education is a fundamental human right, and it affects all aspects of life.
The Calls to Action in the Education category are as follows:
- We call upon the Government of Canada to repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada.
- We call upon the federal government to develop with Aboriginal groups a joint strategy to eliminate educational and employment gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians.
- We call upon the federal government to eliminate the discrepancy in federal education funding for First Nations children being educated on reserves and those First Nations children being educated off reserves.
- We call upon the federal government to prepare and publish annual reports comparing funding for the education of First Nations children on and off reserves, as well as educational and income attainments of Aboriginal peoples in Canada compared with non-Aboriginal people.
- We call on the federal government to draft new Aboriginal education legislation with the full participation and informed consent of Aboriginal peoples. The new legislation would include a commitment to sufficient funding and would incorporate the following principles:
- Providing sufficient funding to close identified educational achievement gaps within one generation.
- Improving education attainment levels and success rates.
- Developing culturally appropriate curricula.
- Protecting the right to Aboriginal languages, including the teaching of Aboriginal languages as credit courses.
- Enabling parental and community responsibility, control, and accountability, simi- lar to what parents enjoy in public school systems.
- Enabling parents to fully participate in the education of their children.
- Respecting and honouring Treaty relationships.
- We call upon the federal government to provide adequate funding to end the backlog of First Nations students seeking a post-secondary education.
- We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments to develop culturally appropriate early childhood education programs for Aboriginal families.
Out of the seven Calls to Action for Education, none of them have been completed (as of August 2020). Five of them are in progress, with plans either proposed or in action, and two of them have not even been started. This is definitely discouraging to hear, as the Calls to Action were released in 2015. However, some progress has been made. I will go into detail about each individual Call to Action in separate posts, explaining exactly what it is asking for, what has been done, and what we can do to help.