The Modern Treaty Era
We have brought up the issue of education in several chapters, since education affects so much of life, from employment and economic potential to equity and reconciliation.
Traditional Education
Indigenous communities emphasize that children need traditional knowledge, disseminated in traditional ways such as story-telling, learning-by-doing, and observation of the Land. Traditional teaching helps establish a healthy sense of identity, connects children to their culture, history and community, offers a perspective to challenge and enrich other types of knowledge, and provides information and tools with which to navigate the world.
Especially in rural areas, traditional knowledge helps people understand and utilize the available natural resources. It can inform climate, ecological and other studies.
Understanding and transmission of traditional knowledge is enhanced when students know their native language.
The 2022 National Indigenous Economic Strategy (NIEDB et al, 2022, call #39) recommends that governments provide funding so that Indigenous communities can study and archive their traditional knowledge. It also suggests the creation of an Indigenous Knowledge Institute which would not only collect and archive traditional knowledge and research related to Indigenous peoples but also develop culturally appropriate research ethics and protect Indigenous intellectual property rights (calls #70 and 72.)
Mainstream academic education
The Census gives us the good news that, as can easily be observed in society, Indigenous educational attainment as commonly measured is constantly improving. High school completion rates rose between 2005/6 and 2015/6, by 9% for Métis, by almost 10% for First Nations on reserve and Inuit, and by 12% for First Nations off-reserve.
There remains, however, a significant gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous educational achievement, especially for Inuit and First Nations. It has been estimated that eliminating the education and training gaps between non-Indigenous and Indigenous would result in 8.5 billion dollars of additional income for Indigenous people.[1].
In the following chart we observe that the percentage of non-Indigenous people without a high school diploma is much smaller than First Nation, Metis and Inuit percentages.
The graph does not show that only four out of ten young people on reserve graduate from high school compared to seven out of ten First Nations off-reserve.[2] What might be the reasons for these discrepancies?
Barriers to Educational Achievement:
From what we have learned so far, we can identify several barriers to mainstream educational achievement in First Nations communities, all of which are amenable to change.
First, Indigenous peoples have experienced dispossession and discrimination. Many Indigenous families have lower income and are headed by parents with lower-than average formal education. Lower socioeconomic status is correlated with lower educational achievemen