Youth, Education, and Marginality: Local and Global Expressions

Chapter 5: A Time for Dreams: The Right to Education for First Nations Children and Youth Living On-Reserve

chapter 5 94 the campaign named in her memory, highlighting a recent submission to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child entitled Our Dreams Matter Too (First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada [Caring Society] & Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth [Provincial Advocate], 2011). Grounded in this context, we go on to document the funding inequities experienced by First Nations children and youth living on-reserve, contrasting this picture against the international norms set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).1 We argue that the inequities in education and other services for children and youth on-reserve amounts to racial discrimination by the government of Canada and that there is absolutely no excuse for this ongoing rights violation. Drawing on letters written by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children and youth, we discuss the impacts experienced by First Nations students on-reserve and close by offering a path forward rooted in collective action and meaningful reconciliation. While the focus of this chapter is education, inequities in services for children and youth exist within the broader context of socio-economic conditions experienced by many First Nations living on-reserve. This injustice includes poverty arising from the economic development restrictions in the Indian Act, the lack of meaningful engagement by Canada with First Nations as distinct and self-determining peoples, the poor state of many homes on-reserve, and a lack of clean water, sanitation, and affordable healthy foods in some communities (First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, 2011).2 These conditions are further compounded by the systemic, deliberate underfunding of education and other services (such as child welfare and health care) on-reserve, making it that much more difficult for children and youth to realize their dreams (Blackstock, 2011a). Shannen’s Story Shannen Koostachin was a youth leader from Attawapiskat First Nation. Attawapiskat is a northern community on the James Bay coast in Ontario, 1,200 kilometres north of Toronto. The nearest road is 400 kilometres away. The first language in the community is Cree and the second language is English. Like most children and youth in the community, Shannen never went to a “proper” school. The elementary school in Attawapiskat, J.R. Nakogee Elementary, was closed the year Shannen started kindergarten due to a massive diesel fuel leak. The pipes beneath the school had been leaking for several decades, causing children and teachers to experience severe headaches, nausea, and nosebleeds. By the time the J.R. Nakogee Elementary was finally closed in the year 2000, the school grounds were contaminated by nearly 30,000 gallons of fuel (Education is a right, n.d.). A Time for Dreams 95 As a result of the closure, the children and youth of Attawapiskat have been going to elementary school in portables for more than ten years. The portables sit on the playground of the contaminated school and are so run-down that the windows do not close properly, the heat fails on a regular basis, and mice have infested the buildings. The portables were supposed to be a temporary solution, but, despite a decade of promises by three consecutive ministers representing the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (INAC), Shannen finished her elementary school years without ever setting foot in a real school. Shannen and her peers endured the portables for eight long years, and they wanted better for the next generation of children in Attawapiskat. They saw children in the community losing hope and dropping out by Grade 5 (Blackstock, 2011a). Shannen knew that the school conditions and inequities in education were not something non-Aboriginal children and youth were forced to endure, and it was simply not right that First Nations students had to suffer. She worked with other young people in Attawapiskat to launch the Attawapiskat School Campaign, inviting non-Aboriginal children and youth to join with First Nations students to demand a proper education. The campaign employed YouTube, Facebook, and the Web as communication media to ask children and youth to write to the government of Canada and demand a new school for Attawapiskat and other First Nations in need. Thousands answered the call (Education is a right, n.d.). Halfway through Shannen’s Grade 8 year, Attawapiskat received a letter from Chuck Strahl, then minister of the INAC, saying there would be no new school for the community. Shannen’s class...