Huge breakthrough coming for Prince George First Nation students 

Marlene Erickson is vice-chair of the Aboriginal Education Task Force and chairperson for the Aboriginal Education Board in School District 57, which runs schools in Prince George, B.C., and surroundings, "We reported on the task force findings Feb 26 08."

The report was delivered to the school board and the Aboriginal Education School Board. Erickson has been working for over a decade to bring about the fundamental changes required to make education an acceptable opportunity to these youth from First Nations.

She began to work to bring about change in the previous decade when Erickson volunteered for Native Student Services Committee in the school district, which was a precursor to the Aboriginal Education Board. The Aboriginal Education Board was formed in the area in the mid-1990s and Erickson joined as a board member, then two years ago she was appointed to the chair.

The recommendations made by the Aboriginal Education Task Force, which Erickson vice-chaired, "will take several years and we certainly hope to get started right away." For Erickson the priority is simple, "The biggest issue is to increase the Academic Achievement levels to open the doors for First Nations kids to enter post-secondary institutions and get higher learning.”

The process of designing a program and building relevant curricula will take advantage of research done by other jurisdictions where Aboriginal education engages students with cultural acknowledgements and practices within a protected learning environment.

"We are discussing a 'choice' school and eventually it will deliver an Aboriginal-specific curriculum," said Erickson. "We think we can make rapid progress because the initiatives have SD57 trustee support and results of the task force indicate strong community-level and grassroots support for program changes and design."

Erickson said a city like Prince George needs to work as a community to help struggling kids, "We want a choice school so other kids from non-Native families can access the program. We want the program to emphasize cooperative learning techniques, which seem to benefit the First Nation student more than the learning model that demands high grades and forces ambition into a fiercely competitive mode."

All students in this particular choice for Aboriginal-oriented education will benefit from added levels of support, and, no, “this is not a return to Residential Schools," which Erickson said has been one of the criticisms.

As Aboriginals, "We are already at 25 percent of the school enrolment and it is increasing every year. We have some schools in the city of Prince George already at 75 percent Aboriginal students in the population," and, she said, this will make the development of a 'choice' school a reasonable alternative.

Why hasn't it happened before now? "There are a whole bunch of reasons why the proposal is new," because, she said, "it is essentially new again." They tried proposing a choice school five years ago but the city wasn't ready to listen to the suggestion.

If Prince George's polity thought it had bigger problems and perhaps bigger fish to fry, well, "We are trying to impress on the community that the education system in the city is failing the student population and it amounts to a crisis. We will face mounting social costs, strains to the justice system, and continued dependencies on social welfare programs."

In order for the recommendations to come to pass, including the one about an Aboriginal choice school, community consultations are impending and they could become noisy. The SD57 board has approved the idea, nevertheless, the community needs to be consulted, and consultations can become noisy, especially when the topic is what to do about an population that inhabits the city but transplants an alien paradigm of reserve poverty that is host within individuals of an inevitable propensity toward social insurrection.

It is a population bent on living like they have nothing to lose. Poverty and much repetitive shock throughout the generations has created people with sharp humour and even sharper edges. But let us remember two tiny kids froze to death this winter outside the very homes supposed to be their shelters. Lest we forget already, three babies burned to death this week in Pukatawagon. These unspeakable horrors are just the ones we hear about. These places within and without the 'actual' reserve are flooded with lives running in and with others in perpetual conflict, and most are entirely victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, sometimes victims and perpetrators locked into perpetual grip with each other. The kids are entirely mixed up in it. They grow into it instantly, and indeed, enjoy the benefit of appropriate archtypes that assist their fitting in.

The SD57 area of jurisdiction covers more than the city of Prince George and includes east to Valemount, north to Mackenzie and McLeod Lake, and only slightly west of the city. Some of the district's schools contain a vast majority of Aboriginal kids in their population.

"Our plans for Prince George will possibly benefit places like McLeod Lake and they will be watching closely because they sit on the Aboriginal Education Board.”

Erickson knows the grassroots includes the teachers, "I think the teachers and support workers in the existing school system are seeing the problems up close. Many are performing duties above and beyond the call, and they are really looking forward to a lot of these recommendations."

She hopes adoption of the recommendations will ameliorate against the burnout being experienced by teachers under the present circumstances.

Marlene Erickson comes by her concern honestly, "I am at the college (of New Caledonia) as the First Nation Coordinator of Aboriginal Support Services, and one of my jobs is to recruit students to the college from the community. I found myself on the Native Student Services Committee trying to recruit from too shallow a pool of students."

It was impossible to meet quotas. "First Nation kids do not see grade 12 graduation as a goal." Asked why, she said, "Poverty issues are first, and they are urban as well as rural," and First Nations are transplanting reservation-like poverty and social flux into poor city neighbourhoods.

"Look at all the urban areas of Canada and you will find Aboriginals living in the poorest conditions. Another problem is the sense of identity and pride of culture. We need to find the ways to deal with it, break kids out of the cycle. When you ask the kids, for instance, if their parents went to residential school most of them do not know the answer."

Erickson said the Aboriginal Education Board will have an important role to play in the implementation of the AETF recommendations.

Lois Boone is the chair of the AETF and elected as a trustee of SD57 and she said, "A new school is a different scenario for us. An Aboriginal ‘choice’ school would be based on First Nations philosophies of learning and would be open to everyone in the community," said Boone.

"Our thinking is that we would get a mix of students in the school," and, furthermore, "it would be possible to turn one of the existing schools into the 'choice' school that we envisage."

The task force contained a cross-section of community members totalling 13, and including Boone and Marlene Erickson, then two principals, two teachers, two Aboriginal education workers, an assistant school superintendant, two First Nation parents, and an Elder.

"We had a tight time frame and wanted to have a report done in February so we could meet budget discretion for the next school year," because, ideally, they would like to open an Aboriginal 'choice' school in Sep 08.

In fact the SD57 board is already hiring a 'district' principal for the Aboriginal Education program, whatever form it takes.

"We have to change the way we do education,” said Boone. “We need more cultural stuff in the classrooms, more cultural education and background for teachers and assistants, more interaction with Elders, music, regalia, and other cultural identifiers. What is there now is not working. The higher rates of failure are too much."

Boone said the SD57 board will meet with the Minister of Education Shirley Bond to go over the report. It is a matter of good fortune perhaps that, "Ms. Bond was elected in 2001 to represent the riding of Prince George-Mount Robson and re-elected in 2005."

The government website said, "Before her election to the Legislative Assembly, she served three terms on the Prince George School Board, the last as chair. She also worked with the continuing education department of the Prince George School District."

Trustee Boone said, "There are going to be some costs associated with setting it up," and because of the constraints of population this proposal includes only Kindergarten to grade 7, for at present there are not enough Aboriginal high school students to fill seats in wider high school program.

"We are open to suggestions, however, and if we could somehow fit a choice program into an existing high school," this may become an option.