The case for more education on Aboriginal culture, history and issues in Saskatchewan

In December, a University of Regina student created a petition that would make Indigenous Studies a mandatory class at the UofR. Now as is to be expected with an issue as controversial as this, there have been heated debates on the UofR's facebook page, with students fiercely making their cases for both sides of the argument.

The issue that I and many others have with the petition, is that it's self-declared goal of this petition is to "curb systematic racism". While this is an admirable goal, and it could possibly be a positive byproduct of introducing mandatory Indigenous Studies, I do not believe that this should be the primary goal of this petition.

The ultimate goal should be to increase education on the First Nations in our Province in the elementary and secondary level, so that students enter the workforce and Post-Secondary institutions with a better knowledge of aboriginal culture, history and issues. This is a duty that must fall on our Provincial Government. This blog post is intended to illustrate the value of having either increased Indigenous education at those levels, or to at least subsidize this class and make it mandatory for students at Post-Secondary institutions across Saskatchewan until this can be accomplished. I've identified two main sources of value by doing this:

1) More education on the social problems and issues surrounding First Nations people in Saskatchewan will be beneficial in finding creative solutions.

It is no secret, that there are many social problems and health issues that plague the First Nations communities of our Province. First Nations people have a rate of diabetes three to five times higher than that of other Canadians. Saskatchewan has historically had one of the highest aboriginal diabetes rate in the country. Rampant diabetes stemming from poor dietary habits, a higher rate of AIDS than most demographics (15% of new HIV/AIDS infections occur in First Nations people) and Mental Health issues that stem from Residential School abuse are all examples of health issues that will only continue to grow and be passed down through the generations as the population continues to expand.

In addition to health problems, crime levels are significantly higher on reserves , and "In Saskatchewan, Aboriginal people made up 80% of those who were admitted to provincial sentenced custody, compared to their representation of 10% of the provincial adult population." That's pretty insane. The recent increase in housing prices and low vacancy rates in Canadian have greatly affected many First Nations people that live in the core areas of our cities. The living conditions on many reserves are similar to that of a third world nation.

As you can see there are significant social problems and issues that this demographic is faced with. These issues are already huge challenge to our Government's finances. Now, taking into account that this demographic is forecasted to grow at a very rapid rate in the years to come, we can see a very dark picture emerge. The problems that are currently affecting First Nations will continue to be passed down and magnified from generation to generation. The money to cover services such as health, jails and social services will balloon to budget crippling levels. I'll give you one guess as to where the finances will have to come from to cover these programs: the tax payers of Saskatchewan.

Our Province should be increasing the amount of education our citizens receive on these issues. Imagine a Province where the Engineers, Business Professionals, Trades Workers, etc were aware of the challenges and issues facing First Nations people today. Imagine a Province where the leaders of tomorrow were properly educated on these issues. I can almost guarantee you that they would be more likely to find innovative new solutions to these problems with this education than if they didn't receive it.

Critics of my point might suggest that "Well our Education programs are now making Indigenous Studies mandatory, that's good enough". This is definitely a good start to making this subject more prevalent in our children's education. However more needs to be done.

In Post-Secondary institutions, imagine the value of a mandatory "Aboriginal Health" class for Doctors, or some sort of a "Treaty Land Resource Extraction History" class for Petroleum Engineers. It doesn't need to be the same "Indigenous Studies" class offered across every faculty.

These are HUGE issues for the Province of Saskatchewan, and therefore the people that are living, working and being educated in Saskatchewan should have to learn about them. If these classes were subsidized by our government, I think many students would be willing to give up ONE free elective to take this class. It's a win-win-win situation - students get a class paid for by the Government, the Government gets the future leaders educated on aboriginal issues, future taxpayers (ie. us) save money due to creative new solutions and subsequently pay for the class. This should be a no-brainer.

2) More education on First Nations culture will allow employers in Saskatchewan to better connect with Aboriginals in the workplace and increase amount of Post-Secondary education among the demographic.

Over the past few years, there have been a swath of "we are going to need to tap into the First Nations workforce in order to deal with the upcoming labour shortage due to the boom" advertisements around Saskatchewan. Unfortunately, these ads have been a bunch of crap. We haven't done a good enough job of this as a Province.

If we look at the education statistics, there are significant discrepencies between the non-aboriginal and First Nations people in Saskatchewan. In Saskatchewan, 72.4% of non aboriginal people 15 years and older at least graduated from high school (or the equivalent) as opposed to only 50.6% of First Nations people. Of the above numbers, 44.9% or non-aboriginals received post-secondary qualification as opposed to only 28.6% for First Nations citizens. How many of you were as shocked as I was to see the percentage of adequately educated aboriginal people in our Province is so low?

Those stats alone should be enough to show that we need to do a better job of connecting with the demographic in our Province, getting First Nations children out of high school and into Post-Secondary institutions and growing this labour force. Given the rapid growth rate of First Nations people in the Province, we have access to a growing source of people that could fill Saskatchewan's skilled labour/trades/administrative/etc needs, right here in the Province!

What better way to connect with the First Nations people than to have the future workforce and educators (future hiring managers, future policy makers, etc) aware of the history and culture associated with the arguably the most significant ethnicity in Saskatchewan! The way to do this is through education. Increasing the amount of Indigenous Studies in our elementary schools and secondary schools so a general understanding of the cultures are common knowledge for all citizens as they enter Post-Secondary or the workforce.

Until that happens, a series of Provincially funded mandatory University classes could be beneficial to educate the future leaders of our Province.

Connecting the dots...

I will admit, that I'm not particularly sure what the best way of educating our citizens on the cultures and history of one of the fastest growing and historically significant demographics in Saskatchewan. But I do know that if we want to be proactive in connecting with a huge source of prospective labour and dealing with the various social/health problems that First Nations communities are facing, the key is through education. We are only hurting ourselves in the future through our inactivity. Ideally, this education should come at a young age so that the culture, issues and history of these great people are well known among our citizens before they enter the workforce or enter post-secondary institutions.

I don't believe it would hurt to have classes in a Post-Secondary setting either, but hey these are all just random ideas floating around. It's not my job to develop curriculum. This is where the Provincial government needs to step up and make something happen.

The bottom line is that bringing this petition up at the University of Regina can only be viewed as a good thing, regardless of the original intended goal As a community and a student body, we should be discussing the different options to resolve the issues that are facing our people. Education on the Province's most important ethnicity should be a high priority. Our Province's future depends on it.

Nick.