A “historic” agreement to promote the educational success of First Nations in Quebec will lead to an investment of more than $1.1 billion over 5 years, announced Thursday, in Kahnawake, the Canadian Minister of Indigenous Services, Patty Hajdu.
“It’s a historic day,” she said of the deal, which includes $310 million in new investments. The agreement on elementary and secondary education concerns 22 aboriginal communities in Quebec.
“It’s a gesture of reconciliation,” added Minister Hajdu. The latter pointed out that the envelope will allow First Nations to hire and retain more than 600 teachers and education professionals to transmit current and ancestral knowledge.
This agreement, the existence of which had been revealed by The duty in June, was expected by the indigenous communities. The latter have been calling for years for more autonomy in education and more measures to protect their languages and cultures.
“Decolonizing Education”
The agreement follows a commitment by the Trudeau government to “decolonize education” after the residential school trauma experienced by Indigenous people.
This is an opportunity to “decolonize our ways of doing things”, underlined Ghislain Picard, regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador (AFNQL). The agreement will enable Aboriginal people to break out of the “mould” imposed by governments in terms of education.
For each of the 22 communities, the funding will be distributed “according to the vision and autonomy of the latter,” said Denis Gros-Louis, director general of the First Nations Education Council (FNEC).
An approach was developed to seek out professionals capable of “adapting the content proposed by the provincial government according to the culture and local knowledge of each community,” explained Mr. Gros-Louis.
Although the AFNQL represents 43 communities in total, only 22 of them are signatories to the agreement. Picard said some groups have “more specific corridors” to negotiate with the federal government, including nations that have treaties.
Bill 96
During the announcement, John Martin, head of Gesgapegiag and responsible for the education file, however denounced the adoption of Bill 96. The CAQ reform of the Charter of the French language erects “even higher walls separating the First Nations from their educational success, he lamented.
In recent months, Ghislain Picard had criticized Law 96, which would have an impact on indigenous languages, according to him.
“We did not choose our colonizers,” he said on Thursday. We have tried to adapt for decades and even centuries. Why are we the last to have a choice in this matter? »
With Marco Fortier