First Nations Education: The Need for Legislation in the Jurisdictional Gray Zone

• Main Author: Wilson, James B.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: UBC Faculty of Education 2021
• Subjects: Canada; Indian; First Nations
• Online Access: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/CJNE/article/view/196426; https://doi.org/10.14288/cjne.v30i2.196426

Caught in a conflicting jurisdictional gray zone between provincial Public SchoolsActs and the Indian Act, Canadian First Nations schools and educators findthemselves without the guidelines, standards, and supports that maintain a desiredstandard in mainstream Canadian school settings. The gray zone is generated byconflicting and overlapping areas of jurisdictional responsibility for the education ofFirst Nations peoples. Is First Nations education solely a federal responsibility, asproclaimed by federal interpretations of treaties and laid out in the Indian Act; aprovincial responsibility as authorized by the provincial public schools act(s); orstrictly a responsibility and sovereign right of First Nations themselves? This articleexamines several options and seeks to answer that we as First Nations peoples musttake the final responsibility for the education of First Nations students throughoutManitoba and Canada. The article concludes by examining the need for andimplications of a First Nations Education Act (FNEA) as a tool to address theprofound disparities between the educational opportunities available to mostCanadians and those available to First Nations people.