Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Aboriginal Peoples
Issue 6 - Evidence - April 29, 2014
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 29, 2014
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples met this day at 9:40 a.m. to examine the subject matter of Bill C-33, An Act to establish a framework to enable First Nations control of elementary and secondary education and to provide for related funding and to make related amendments to the Indian Act and consequential amendments to other Acts.
Senator Dennis Glen Patterson (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome all honourable senators and members of the public who are watching this meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples either here in the room or via CPAC or the Web. I'm Dennis Patterson, chair of the committee, from Nunavut. Our mandate is to examine legislation and matters relating to the Aboriginal peoples of Canada generally.
This morning, we will begin testimony on an order of reference authorizing us to examine the subject matter of Bill C-33, An Act to establish a framework to enable First Nations control of elementary and secondary education and to provide for related funding and to make related amendments to the Indian Act and consequential amendments to other Acts, in advance of the bill coming before the Senate.
I should tell members of the public and committee members that at our regular meeting tomorrow we will be hearing witnesses from the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, and they will be giving us a detailed overview of the act.
Today, I'm pleased that we will hear from Larry Steeves, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Regina. Following his testimony, we will have a very brief in camera meeting.
Before proceeding to the testimony, I would like to go around the table and ask members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator Dyck: Senator Lillian Dyck from Saskatchewan.
Senator Moore: Good morning. I am Wilfred Moore from Nova Scotia.
Senator Watt: Senator Watt, from Nunavik.
Senator Meredith: Senator Don Meredith, Ontario.
Senator Beyak: Senator Lynn Beyak, from northwestern Ontario.
Senator Wallace: John Wallace, New Brunswick.
Senator Ngo: Senator Ngo, from Ontario.
Senator Greene Raine: Nancy Raine from British Columbia.
The Chair: I would like to welcome Associate Professor Larry Steeves. Some members of the committee will recall hearing from Professor Steeves when we did our study on First Nations education in 2010-11.
We look forward to your presentation. You can expect questions from senators following that.
Larry Steeves, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Regina: I appreciate this opportunity to return to speak again about some of the issues. When I was here four years ago, the message I tried to leave with this committee was that in the end it comes down to teachers working with students in classrooms. Fundamentally, what can we do to provide stability for that action to occur successfully?
Nothing has changed from my point of view. We're currently doing this in Saskatchewan with New Zealanders who have developed Te Kotahitanga, probably the only large-scale reform we have been able to find that actually produces student learning gains. It is all about that issue. Culture and language are very important, but in the end it is about the teacher working with students in classrooms, and teachers understanding and appreciating culture and language is part of that; it is critical to success.
They talk about a culturally relevant pedagogical relationship. This means huge commitment to capacity building with teachers. You can't do that unless there's stability within the educational environment. My comments today speak to many of types of those things.
Why am I here? Well, I was here before, but I think the contributions I can make today are partly because of the academic research over the last seven years. Also, at least as important were the 14 years I spent as a director of education or school superintendent, depending which jurisdiction you're in, and nine years working with the provincial government as an associate deputy minister or Deputy Minister of Northern Affairs, and for part of that time as Associate Deputy Minister of the Department of Learning, as it was then termed.
I look at these issues from a variety of perspectives. I suspect you don't have the presentation because we didn't get it to you in time to have it translated.
The Chair: Excuse me, professor, but I have taken the liberty, with the committee's permission, of passing out your PowerPoint presentation, even though it has not been translated. I trust that's agreeable to the committee members.
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: It has been given to them. It is being translated for the future.
Mr. Steeves: I apologize for this coming rather late. These things happen quickly.
This is research that colleagues and I did about five or six years ago for the Saskatchewan ministry's advisory panel of student achievement in terms of indigenous student achievement. You can see that leadership and governance leads the issues. Language and cultural programs is another key one, as well as a whole raft of issues around teachers, instruction and curriculum, effective schools, community and parenteral influences, student characteristics. At that time I didn't really have a lot there. I can tell you right now, though, if you want to know one of the critical issues in terms of students doing well in school, to use American terminology, it is a "strong tribal identity."
An individual named Donna Deyhle, who is at the University of Utah, her research, which is increasingly being supplemented by others, speaks to the fact that kids need to have a strong sense of who they are. Their own sense of "indigeneity" is critical to that. If they don't have that, you are likely to end up with, as Emile Durkheim talked about in terms of the issues, anomic suicide. In Regina, recently, a young indigenous student was wielding a knife in one of our downtown shopping areas. We really do need to pay attention to the issue of self-identity.
Assessment related to instruction and planning is a key issue, and I can tell you the schools in country that have done a good job. About 20 of them were identified and talked about how assessment fit in.
And there are appropriate levels of funding. I don't need to say a lot about that. I suspect you have heard about those in the past, and will again.
I have included a couple of quick slides as a positive thing. Students who are indigenous can do well. We, in Saskatchewan, have spent some time over the last couple of years building relationships with folks in New Zealand, Maori and their work with Te Kotahitanga is frankly the only large-scale reform we have been able to identify that actually produces student improvement gains. I won't spend a lot of time on this with you because we don't have time here this morning, but I can tell you that learning improvement can occur. You have to create the right conditions for that to happen.
Some of this you may have seen a few years ago, but a couple colleagues and I did research with Yorkton Tribal Council focus groups. We started looking at what various groups — teachers, school administrators, parents, students, elders — were looking for from the Yorkton Tribal Council. It turned into a discussion about what needed to happen in education.
Student participants were pretty clear. They wanted well-qualified teachers who had teaching experience and the ability to make the content interesting. A lot of that is capacity building, in my experience.
School administrators worried about improved teacher retention rates, the need for greater security and protection. They don't mean so much physical security; they mean security of employment when they say that. Teachers talked a lot about security protection issues. Again, I use that in context. They need to make the job attractive to hire the best people, longer term contracts. They talked about the impact of local politics on job retention. And I think those things remain.
In terms of the focus group feedback on leadership and governance, they talked about difficulties associated with the lack of local control over educational affairs. They also referred to local politics and the debilitating role it often exercised over school operations. Participants saw a need to separate school and educational operations from band office politics.
I refer to one principal, who is First Nations himself and from the area, expressing frustration about this very issue. His comment was there needs to be a separation of church and state. The elders talked a lot about this too in that focus group.
Thank you for inviting me here. More importantly, I'm grateful that this work is being done because I think it is critical. I know that it is not without controversy. My experience is that most things that are important are not always easy, and I think this is one of those things.
I want to talk about two key issues. The first is language of instruction. In terms of my comments, it's a relatively minor issue. The larger issue is what I term accountability framework and the need for clear reporting structures.
For language of instruction, subclause 21(2) says:
Subject to the regulations, the council of a First Nation is to offer English or French as the language of instruction and may, in addition, offer a First Nation language as a language of instruction.
As I refer later into the potential regs, I see there's more provision made than is immediately apparent with this comment. I think wordsmithing here would be helpful. As the folks in northern Saskatchewan tell me, "For a White guy from the south, Larry, you're not too bad." I took that as a compliment, by the way, and I made many good friends there.
From my experience working with First Nations colleagues in Canada and the U.S., first, lots of research talks about the fact that the use of a native language — and you'll forgive me; that's my American time. I'm on sabbatical this year, spending time in Arizona and other places. In general, the use of a native language in the initial years of schooling may produce overall learning gains. Increasingly, there's a fair bit of research to support that.
So if I were a First Nations person and I read that, I would be tempted to think, "Gee, here we go again; they still don't get it." So even if it's wordsmithed, it would be helpful to take a look at those words because words count. The words used here send a signal that I don't think the drafters probably intended to send. But, personally, that wording is not helpful; it should be more inclusive of First Nations languages as a language of instruction. Certainly, that was not the way I took it when I first read it. As I say, that's probably not what the drafters intended, but it strikes me as somewhat problematic.
There's more information there talking about the role of culture in learning and language of instruction, so I won't spend time because I know we're on a tight time line.
The larger issue I do want to raise is that of educational accountability. My background is that we used to call ourselves bureaucrats in the Government of Saskatchewan as a title of honour in some ways, and my own research subsequent to that has included work on accountability frameworks, specifically applied to education.
I included a slide here — and this is dated now — on an accountability framework from Treasury Board, 2005. My friend Jim Marshall, with whom I worked, helped me with this work.
I can't take the time to explain that, but basically this is not an issue specific to First Nations education; it is not an issue specific to education. It is not even an issue specific to the public sector. It is an issue that has deep roots in organizational thinking, and this happens to be the Treasury Board's frame of it now about a decade ago.
Page 7 of my presentation relates to a model now that's been subsumed by other things, but it still talks about the issue of accountability frameworks. As I used to say to my students, this is how the Ministry of Education in Saskatchewan applies accountability frameworks to the educational sector. Basically, boards — the system of individual school jurisdictions in Saskatchewan — had a two-year reporting structure based on critical priorities identified by the ministry, supplemented by individual school divisions, reporting on their success and meeting those.
By the way, this is very typical. I just spent, as I say, a fair bit of time in Arizona. I can't tell you I like some of the things they do, but the structures are remarkably similar. They maybe use them for models that I personally would struggle with in terms of being pretty hard-edged, but I still think there's a pretty typical model in place here.
I refer, then, to the model I see here. We have a principal who is responsible for the school's success plan. As I read the clause 35 dealing with the director of education, that individual is not responsible for the school success plan. Then there's a school inspector over here who is responsible for coming in at periodic intervals to take a look at how the school is doing, and particularly looking at the school's success plan. So I don't see a clear reporting structure here.
Now that's not just education. I'm a former bureaucrat; those are bad reporting systems, okay? I think this makes it overly complex, and since people don't really know who they're responsible to, it creates all sorts of issues that I think are not helpful. I've been there as a teacher, principal, director and provincial senior administrator, and having taught the stuff, I can tell you this doesn't create effective organizational structures and reporting systems.
If you don't have that, you are not likely going to have everything you want, because for a principal — okay, so who is really important here? Is it the director or the school inspector? Who am I responsible to? That kind of thing.
This is controversial, but in North American education typically, directors of education and superintendents of schools have an educational background. I don't see that indicated here. I think that's problematic, frankly. We had a great debate about this about three or four years ago in Saskatchewan, and that requirement continues.
Typically, these people have an educational background. It is very difficult to be a director of education in this kind of context; you don't have a good sense of what you're dealing with. Ideally, they should be First Nations. Ideally they should be an educator as well. That's one issue that is problematic here.
More importantly, the principal in clause 36 is responsible for "preparing and implementing a school success plan" — that's (a) — and the school success plan should be the vehicle by which you transmit what you've set out to do and how you've done it. We did the same thing with the provincial government, and every organization pretty much operates in some kind of model like that. So the principal does that and the principal should do that.
But the director doesn't receive that. So there's no clear reporting relationship here. That's a problem. In terms of any kind of accountability framework I've seen anywhere in North American education, that's at variance, frankly.
Then we have a school inspector, which, to be brutally honest, strikes me as an opportunity for retired educational bureaucrats to find self-defined meaningful employment, to be really blunt about it, but I digress there. This person comes in, works with the school and produces a report that goes to the educational authority and, by extension, the ministry.
Would it not make more sense to have the principal preparing the school success plan, et cetera, which then goes to the director, which then goes to the educational authority, which then goes to the ministry? That's how every other place does it. Why would First Nations education in Canada be different?
I understand that they're thinking they need somebody here who can kind of be an independent observer. If you are about professionalization — and I hear that word used in other places in this act — then it is about giving responsibility to educational professionals who are then responsible for making sure that things get done properly.
I don't think this provision does that. For me, that is problematic, more than anything in terms of why I came here today. My first reaction was "I'm really busy; we're working on this other research and I may not come." I concluded I needed to come to give that message to you because I think that is tremendously problematic.
Frankly, First Nations governance and education is sometimes political. It is always political in education, because, in my case, I reported for 14 years to an elected board of education. It gets even more political in this context. This just makes it worse, so why would you do that?
My plea to you would be to take a look at that issue and see if there's some way you can clarify the reporting relationships.
Also, that school's success plan needs to be critical to this operation. I don't care if I'm talking about Saskatchewan or I'm talking about Arizona. They both have very similar reporting relationships. In Arizona, it is about the school meeting what they call their AYP targets, annual yearly progress targets. If they don't meet them, that's a problem in Arizona; it that might shut the school down, even. That's very harsh in my opinion, but the models are the same.
I don't really see any reason that First Nations education should be different. Quite frankly, it strikes me as a little condescending to think that we will have to second-guess them. In many ways, that's what's going on with the school inspector.
Thank you. I apologize for being at 17 minutes, but I look forward to any questions people might have.
The Chair: Thank you, professor. I will take the liberty of asking a couple of questions that arose from your presentation before we turn to the deputy chair.
You talked about your concern in clause 21 with reference to the First Nations language of instruction. I think you suggested that the wording could be improved and may not be, as I think you might have wanted to say, not as strong as it might have been especially following on the reference to English and French being offered as a language of instruction.
Did you also look at clause 43 on funding, specifically subclause 43(4), which requires the ministry to include an amount to support the study of a First Nation language or culture as part of an education program? That's a must. That's mandatory. Did you consider that subclause when you felt that clause 21 could be strengthened?
Mr. Steeves: I did. I said in my earlier comments that I think the intent in the later sections of the act are quite honourable. For that particular wording, I defer to First Nations people and educators in this regard in terms of what their opinions would be, frankly. I'm not First Nations; I'm White. It's not for us to do some of these things for First Nations people, but my sense when I read it was that in some ways the act doesn't give itself credit for the things it does later. The wording that says it must be in French and English — I think a little wordsmithing there would be helpful to send a different signal.
I also talked to First Nations colleagues about the wording and they thought, "You're right, Larry; that's frankly a little colonial in its approach." That would have been the word one person may have used.
I think there are a lot of things in here that are really good. That strikes me as something that could be improved with a little bit of wordsmithing.
The Chair: Thanks for the overview you have given us today of your work and the principles that should be involved in success for First Nations education. When you spoke with us before, you made a strong point, and you made it this morning again, about more funding and training seats for First Nations and Metis teacher training. You talked about the need for stability in terms of teacher tenure, salary and working conditions issues. I wonder if you had any comments about whether the bill makes progress in these areas. It does increase education funding and is aimed at providing stable predictable funding and it is tied to a 4.5 per cent escalator. This would seem to help bands to plan for the long term and provide more stability and incentive for teachers to stay and teach on reserves. Do you think we're making progress in those respects with this bill?
Mr. Steeves: I would be hopeful, senator. My personal experience, working with colleagues and First Nations communities and First Nations schools, is that they'll try to get teachers' salaries up to the provincial level and not always can they keep it there. A multiplicity of studies are increasingly saying there is a shortfall in funding. They don't all say that, and you will be just as aware of that as I am. My own conclusion is that at the school level there is a shortfall of funding.
I know there are comments that First Nations teachers get special considerations given some of those situations. So that would mean that we would be more likely to hang on to First Nations teachers because they get tax benefits. That means we will have greater tenure, more stability and keep people longer who can do better things with students. That's an important priority and the issue of increasing funding is helpful.
The other thing I would say, from my own experience watching colleagues working in that sector, is that the degree of conditional funding that exists is problematic. You get a three-year plan and do you get the money or not? Does it keep on going? I think that's problematic for educational professionals being able to do long-term planning in terms of what they want to do with their schools and systems. I would make that point, too, because I keep hearing about that and I've run into it myself in one or two settings.
Senator Dyck: Thank you for your presentation this morning. It was very clear. I will follow up on the first question that our chair asked with regard to wordsmithing. What suggestion would you make?
Mr. Steeves: Madam senator, There are people in this room who would be more effective than me at this and it would be presumptuous of me to suggest words. I suspect you could provide better words than I.
Senator Dyck: It's always good to have witnesses provide it rather than people on the committee because we have our individual biases. You're here as a witness that is not part of the committee.
Mr. Steeves: I thought about this and deliberately didn't do that because I thought it was presumptuous of me as a witness. I think the wording should consider indigenous languages in some way more equal to French and English. I would probably stop there.
Senator Dyck: To follow up on that, I'm from Saskatchewan, so I know that in Saskatchewan there have been a lot of comparisons made between the funding available for teaching French in the school system compared to the amount of funding that goes towards teaching indigenous languages, which in the past was just if you applied for special funds.
In the funding method contemplated within the bill, it does not look to me as though there is money that's actually dedicated, separate money that's topping up the resources in a capacity that will be needed in order to teach First Nations languages.
Do you think there has to be specific consideration with regard to funding to allow that to happen? You may have said something about having to build capacity and there would be a huge commitment in order for this to occur with respect to culture and language.
Mr. Steeves: There is always a great debate, certainly in Saskatchewan, about conditional versus block funding. Trustees always like block funding and special interest groups always want conditional funding to carry their issue. As culture and language is an important issue, I would probably lean toward more block funding. My sense of First Nations education is they were hampered by too much conditional funding. I would hope that there would be a way of sending the signal within a block funding model.
Based on my experience in Saskatchewan — and I'm appropriately deferential in terms of who I am here — my sense in the south is that it's increasingly difficult to find language speakers. I hear from colleagues at SUNTEP and even FNU. So there is capacity building there.
In the north things are a lot different. For example, one of my colleagues on another project said they need to understand that in northern Saskatchewan, the teacher and the students are likely going to be talking Cree in some communities. Whether it's English or French, it will be Cree because that's what everyone speaks. The context is different there.
The research is increasingly clear regarding the importance of culture and language in terms of building healthy young people who are resilient and more likely to complete school and post-secondary programming. I refer to one of my graduate students who made a comment. It is part of this issue. She said, "I learned very early on that I had to park myself at the door when I went in the school because it's a Western building." And I heard that from people in New Zealand, as well. We need to understand that schools, as currently structured, are Western constructs. That's a problem.
We're opening up a whole issue that we don't want to get into here today. Regardless, I think the issue is critical and there are real challenges in doing it.
One of the things I was taken with in Navajo Nation country is, for example in their case, at the high school level, if you want to qualify for the Chief Manuelito Scholarship — he was the chief who made the deal with the devil, so to speak, in terms of getting his folks back to Navajo country from the Long Walk. They have recognized students. There are a lot of these, because they have financial capacity there. To qualify for the scholarship, you have to take one or two Navajo language classes in high school, a class on the history and structures of the Navajo Nation and another one on the culture. By definition, they have very creatively installed into their Navajo kids and their schools a process by which they are incentivized to take those courses.
By the way, 60 per cent of their students attend state school systems. The chief administrative centre for the Navajo Nation, Window Rock — the Window Rock Unified School District is a state school district. The entire board is Navajo. The superintendent is Navajo and the principal I met was Navajo. She had an intern who is training up the way they certify principals in part of their program; he was Navajo, as well. So within that structure, they have a locally controlled and administered school system that is really run by Navajo people. That was interesting for me.
We have BIE schools, grant schools, Charter schools, a couple of private schools, but I am told 60 per cent of the people attend state schools. One of my colleagues, a former Navajo superintendent there and who is now teaching university in northern Arizona, says that pretty much most of the school districts there have Navajo trustees.
Senator Dyck: My third and last question: You talked a lot about the inspector described under clause 37 of the bill, saying that it doesn't work, and there are a number of reasons it doesn't work. Do you have a suggestion as to what should be done with regard to that provision for an inspector?
From what you said, it sounds like you were suggesting it is the principal who prepares the report. That report then goes to the director to then set into place the school success plans, so the inspector doesn't seem to have a role in that process.
Mr. Steeves: I'll be as tactful as I can here, senator. Typically in a school system — and I saw it in Arizona and Saskatchewan and other jurisdictions — the school success plan is a vehicle by which you record progress: where you want to go, how you're going to get there and what your key outcome measures are. That is stuff I learned working as a provincial bureaucrat in terms of our strategic plans. It is the same kind of thing. There is nothing particularly unusual here.
That is prepared. First, the ministry in Saskatchewan — and this is typical for the federal government, too — develops a strategic plan with the key measures they want to see school systems engage with. School systems take that and cascade that down to schools and say, "Here are the key directions the provincial government wants to see us take." Within the school division, and in our unique situation, we are adding some on, and you can also add some on.
Those are your key managerial objectives: What do you want to do, and how do you propose to get there? Assessment data is increasingly and appropriately part of that, including graduation rates and a host of other indicators.
So the principal working with staff and community in an ideal world — not always ideal — prepares that. That is then reviewed by the community, and it goes to the board, which means it's reviewed by the superintendents and director of education for the system. They review that, provide feedback to the school and they also roll that into a larger report they provide to the ministry. It used to be every two years in terms of how that process worked.
There is nothing particularly unique about that. That's what I did as an associate deputy minister and deputy minister of the provincial government. That's what I saw Arizona educators doing within their construct.
Here, I see the principal responsible for developing and implementing the school success plan, but I can't see — and maybe I'm just missing it — one of the duties of the director being responsible for receiving that and reporting that out to your council. Instead, you have a school inspector come in and prepare a report. That should be your key measure, by the way. That's where you really tell the world what you are going to do and how you're going to get there. It's like "Oh, yes, we need you to throw in a school success plan, too, among everything else."
Frankly, that's old-think, organizationally. I had that kind of model beaten out me by a certain Deputy Minister of Government Relations and Aboriginal Affairs about 10 or 12 years ago. He helped me understand how this worked. He was a very bright guy — a former dean of a college of law — and I learned a lot from him.
In any event, we're not giving the school success plan the primacy it should have in an organizational reporting relationship. This one happens to be education.
The school inspector, I think, muddies the waters. It should be school to community to principal to director to educational authority to ministry or department. Instead, we have director not responsible for that — maybe not even an educator, which is problematic and out of step with most thinking in terms of how these people get appointed. Instead, you have a school inspector coming in who provides a report that goes to the educational authority and from there to the ministry.
Who would these people be? Typically, they would be people like me who are retired directors of education. We have in many cases a White guy coming in to oversee this First Nations jurisdiction. That's how it usually works with the way things work right now. It may not be a director; it may be a consultant. But that has been my experience in Saskatchewan at least. It just muddies the waters, organizationally. Everything I know about how structures operate, and what I teach my students in my org theory class, tells me you need to have clean reporting relationships, and this muddies the water. It's a bad idea.
The Chair: Senator Raine, did you have a supplementary on the language issue?
Senator Raine: Yes, I did. In subclause 21(2), it's seems to me there is something missing here, and that's the ability for a school to be an immersion school in the First Nation language. Perhaps that could be dealt with by a subclause (4), which would allow or encourage and enable immersion elementary school programs in the First Nation language.
For instance, we saw the Onion Lake school in our committee, and that school would not fit in this act. So thank you for pointing that out to us, and we need to take note of that.
You probably have experience with the Onion Lake school.
Mr. Steeves: I know of it. I think you can make it fit within this, but Onion Lake came up in discussions I had with one of my colleagues who is a First Nations individual working within the provincial system. He mentioned Onion Lake as an example.
Now, I think you could make it work, but it should flow, and that wording doesn't do that. There are a lot of good things about this issue in here, but the first thing you see is something that frankly is pretty colonial. That's unfortunate. It doesn't serve the interest. If I were a First Nations educator or politician, I would personally find that a little offensive, but I'm a White guy. I would say that again. I'm not going to speak for First Nations people. I would ask First Nations people what they think.
Senator Wallace: Mr. Steeves, you're probably aware that you're the first witness we have had before the committee.
Mr. Steeves: No, I wasn't.
Senator Wallace: So there is a lot riding on your shoulders. Thank you for the specific recommendations and thoughts you've shared with us.
For myself, at least, not having been a member of this committee four years ago when you last appeared, I would be interested to hear your thoughts or how you would describe the current state of First Nations education from a student's perspective and in terms of the quality of teacher instruction.
Bill C-33 is obviously trying to address the issues that exist today and improve upon them, and we'll go through that in detail through this process. But just as a beginning point for me, at least, how would you describe the current state of First Nations education? I realize that's a broad question. What would be the key problematic areas that you think should be addressed? Then we can give consideration to Bill C-33 in that regard.
Mr. Steeves: Senator, firstly, I apologize for a broad answer initially, because I think you've asked a question that needs context, and I'm still learning.
We have an indigenous population in place, living in harmony with their environment. I don't want to be too Pollyannaish about it, but you know what I mean.
We show up. First, due to our European diseases, we take out about 90 per cent of the population, which was convenient from the point of view of settlement, frankly. So we've got 10 per cent of the population left. I've seen this in the Navajo culture and also, I think, in the Cree culture. There was very much a sense, in terms of their overall cultural ethos, of a connectedness and balance that frankly increasingly makes sense for a lot of us.
We showed up and proceeded to say, "You know, we really need to help you folks become more Western." For example, one of the signatories to Treaty 4, said — and he meant this not in the way it comes out — that we need the cunning of the White man with the wisdom of the elders. What he meant by "cunning," I think, is the technical expertise that White society brings.
It doesn't matter where you go — New Zealand, Alaska, the U.S., Canada — there was very much a sense that the world was changing and that they needed to change with it. That meant that they needed to become more aware of Western society and help their students get that knowledge, as well as maintaining their own knowledge. You have heard this before, but I want to reinforce that because I think it's critical.
There was a sense of a partnership that was made here. The word "treaty" means a lot more to First Nations people than to us. I could give the history on that in terms of the Riel Rebellion and what happened with Prime Minister Macdonald after that, I suspect, but instead we had a copycat Indian Act, much like what happened in the States. Instead, we got assimilation education. If you look at the research I'm currently doing, that really "disrupted," is the word I'll use. Some of my First Nations colleagues find that word not nearly strong enough, but I'll say we disrupted the cultural stasis that was there and instead proceeded to try to help First Nations people become more like us. Some of that was a good thing, but not all of it.
Having done that, we then proceeded to underfund and destruct. "Residential schools" is a catchword to describe a lot of practices, which I won't bore you with, but I think those things were quite destructive. Having done that, we then dumped out education in the early 1970s, effectively with no policy or government structures to support that devolution of authority. So we had a lot of bad things happening. Gee, what a surprise.
One of the places I worked in the provincial government was in municipal affairs. If you take any small community and give them responsibilities, they don't have the capacity to handle those things, particularly if you don't give them a policy, organizational structure, and so on, to work within. We didn't do that in the 1970s. Then, in the 1990s, we cut the funding back to 2 per cent. We underfunded consistently, and then we wonder why we have a problem.
What do we need to begin to address some of these issues? I go back to the classroom. For me, in the end, what will or will not be successful has everything to do with the stability and supports that happen in those classrooms. What is it that students and teachers need? I think students need a stronger cultural underpinning.
Some of my colleagues working with the New Zealanders say that has been overstated a bit and that if the teachers are open to the students, the culture will come out. That's true, but I think we need to focus more on culture and language. Culture and language won't get you there on its own, though. You have to focus on effective classroom instruction.
I would take you back to page 2, the second slide, applying the research of Te Kotahitanga. Key features include effective teaching practice, culturally responsible pedagogy, family and community connections, and evidence-based decision making. That means they use a lot of data. They use a lot of information, both qualitative and quantitative, to assess how they are doing. People have to reconcile the fact that that means we're going to use a lot of outcome measures — good First Nations and indigenous schools are already doing that — and lots of supports to teachers.
If you're going to expect a lot from teachers, you have to pay them fairly, you have to give them stability and you have to have high expectations. You need to separate them from day-to-day politics. I learned that as a principal. I learned that from a very experienced principal in Alberta. You need to shield teachers from the day-to-day stuff that goes on. They need to worry about the classroom and their kids, and they need to be told to worry about the classroom and their kids. If they are worrying about whether they have a job and about the politics, et cetera, they're busy worrying about those things and not worrying about what they need to take care of: their kids. You have to support them and create a bit of a cocoon, one that has lots of high expectations, by the way, but is focused on that issue.
How do you do that? I think this act is trying to get at some of those things. That's a laudable thing, but I think that unless you do that and reduce the amount of turnover and provide the stability that you can build capacity in those schools, you will ultimately be unsuccessful.
That's why, when I was here four years ago, I said that I'm not here talking about governance and funding, because other people will do that. I want to talk to you about that issue. That's more important than funding. Lots of people will be very unhappy to hear me say that, but that's more important than funding. Now, you can't get there without the funding nearly as successfully, so you have to have the funding to go with it, but you also have to have organizational supports that place that as the first issue and then work to make sure those things happen.
Senator Meredith: Thank you, professor. Just to go back to what my colleague Senator Dyck raised with respect to culture and language, and my colleague Senator Raine also raised this issue with respect to a further clause being put in to ensure there is this importance placed on identity.
You mentioned the word "tribal identity." Can you give us a sense, from your research, as to what percentage of students have failed as a result of not being able to identify with this sort of westernized school system that is being imposed upon them or has been imposed upon them? We know others have come before us and stated that the culture and language has to be maintained within First Nations. There is a sense that we've abdicated the responsibility to ensure there is integrity of culture and language within First Nations. Can you give us a sense of the percentage of students, through your research?
Mr. Steeves: I don't think I can give you the kind of qualitative research that I think you're looking for. Many of the researchers who work in this area are indigenous themselves or are close to indigenous communities. That kind of research would be more Western, frankly, so they maybe wouldn't even frame it in that way. The research I've seen tends to be more qualitative in nature.
A good example is Donna Deyhle's research. She worked with Navajo students in southeastern Utah over about three generations, so she has a good deal of research that follows these students longitudinally. She's on the third generation of students now. She does not report out quantitative numbers. I think partly because there's an issue of how you frame the problem.
I'm trying to pull the numbers up, but within the research that she did, she identified four different types of students. She had some statistics, which I can't give to you here, suggesting that the students who did the best were the ones that had the strongest sense of what she termed "tribal identity."
I'm trying to hide right now to do the writing around this, because that's where I was supposed to be, but this was important. There is research which tends to be qualitative in nature which supports that.
I'm trying to mentally click through the research I have seen; it tends to be more qualitative in nature. It won't give you the kind of numbers you are looking for.
As I have read the research, hers would be an example. When you are talking about longitudinal and going over, well, she's my age — she started this in her late twenties — you have got pretty powerful measures. The research is now being paralleled by other people, and not just in the U.S. or Canada, but in New Zealand, et cetera. It is broad-based research that is welling up.
Senator Meredith: What would you indicate to this committee with respect to what potential recommendations have been made to strengthen the cultural aspect of First Nations education and their language?
Mr. Steeves: I would say that culture and maybe even language is very important, because if you don't know who you are, you are not likely going to get to where you need to be because you won't be a healthy individual.
The research from the New Zealanders that I have referenced here would say that won't do it. Even if you have a strong sense of language and culture, that doesn't mean you are going to be successful in the classroom. Again, I go back to that panel. With that has to come a strong sense of focus on the classroom and effective instruction that takes into account issues like culture and language and students' background.
I would say that the issue of culture and language needs to be reinforced, but in terms of improving student outcomes, it is insufficient. You have to do more than that.
Senator Meredith: Insufficient?
Mr. Steeves: Yes. As I understand this research, to be successful, kids are going to hugely benefit from a stronger sense of self. The only way they will do that is with a good sense of who they are, that they are proud of being indigenous and that they know the stories and culture and a bit of the language. For me, that's almost a precondition.
If they go to a school that doesn't focus on effective instruction, all the things that I, as a director of education, used to look for in classrooms, or my friend Dr. Joe Martin, who is now the special adviser to the president of the Northern Arizona University and was a former Navajo superintendent, his comment was that in Indian education, to use the American terminology, we have to do everything you do in the regular systems only we have to do it better because we have got more challenges.
If you are going to do as well or better, you really have to focus on hanging on to good teachers, supporting them, having high expectations for them, really working with evidence-based models and working on effective instructional models. You can't do that unless those teachers are strong teachers to begin with and don't leave after one or two years but are there for five, ten years and build a strong sense of practise with their kids and engage with those kids. They can't engage with them unless they know something about the language and culture as well.
How much is arguable. My New Zealand friends who are Maori would say while it is important, you also need to focus on the classroom and effective instruction.
Senator Raine: I'm not sure if you had a chance to read Bill C-33, but it talks about a joint council of education professionals. Being an educational professional, could you comment on how you see the role of that council functioning and the way it is set up?
Mr. Steeves: I was intrigued by that concept. I could speculate as to why it is there, but I'm not sure that would be appropriate, senator.
It is helpful to have a group of educational professionals that gives advice to the minister. Frankly, my sense is that the current ministry responsible for this area doesn't have as much of an educational professional bent as they could have. That's problematic.
What I have seen sometimes are people who don't have educational backgrounds making decisions that are not always helpful since they don't really know sometimes I think what they are really making decisions on. In any event, maybe I'm biased because I'm educated there.
The other thing that is interesting is the use of the word "professional." For me that's a key word here. This bill should ideally be about the professionalization of the system of education. One of the things that has been hugely problematic is there hasn't been enough focus on that. The teacher needs to be viewed as a professional. Now, you can define "professional" in many different ways, but it is a popular word, and I will just leave it there.
Secondly, I think the principal; thirdly, the director. I strongly believe the director needs to be a professional. To do the kind of job that position needs, they need to be an educator.
I have seen tribal councils in Saskatchewan that are making huge progress in this regard. They need to be supported in their work. I have seen things in the Navajo Nation, for example, that frankly blew me away in terms of what I would call professionalism at work.
Window Rock High School could be a good high school anywhere in this country and in Saskatchewan, my home province. The principal of that school was just damn good, like scary good. A little too "rammy" sometimes, but she was getting results. That's because she was one consummate professional. She understood and knew where she needed to go.
I would make the comment about that council and why it is there. I think it is good for the minister to get independent advice in some ways. I would really critically reinforce, in terms of your thinking, how do we go about professionalizing the system with respect to First Nations education?
I hope that word gets used a lot in a meaningful way in your deliberations.
Senator Moore: Thank you, Professor Steeves, for being here. I'm interested in your comments about the key thing here is the teacher-student engagement in the classroom, and you talked about that in the Yorkton Tribal focus group feedback. You want the teacher to make the content interesting.
In the creation of the content, are the elders of the First Nations consulted so that they will ensure that the cultural aspect of that First Nation is included as a course? Whether it is in your New Zealand research or in your work in Arizona or in Canada, do the First Nations have key input in the design of the content of a course?
Mr. Steeves: I think what you are describing, senator, is laudable and an excellent suggestion. I suspect it happens sometimes; I suspect many times it doesn't. In my experience, and I again pause at the fact that it is limited relatively speaking, what I have mostly seen in the First Nations schools — Onion Lake might be different from this — is that they have a school that more or less is a lot like a provincial school, but it is on a First Nations jurisdiction. The courses and instructional models offered are pretty much the same. Because of the lack of stability that goes on in many of those schools — and I could provide specific examples, but I won't here — they're sometimes trying to keep the doors open and worrying about whether they have a job next year. In that situation, you really don't have time to think about, "Okay, so how am I going to revamp this material?"
The other thing is the lack of capacity for the things to happen that I saw happening on the Navajo Nation where they were building high school courses specific to the Navajo Nation culture, institutional structures and language. Their educational authority is about the size of a small urban school division. There were probably 100 to 150 people working in that structure when I visited them. They were working on developing cultural competencies, history, language and those kinds of things. Character in the Navaho culture is a huge issue. They were bringing teachers together in this case. I don't think I heard elders, by the way, which is interesting. They could learn from you on this matter, but where would we develop the concept of culture? It was one of five competencies that they identified. It's that important within the Navaho cultural context. Where would they introduce this concept, Grade 4 or Grade 6, that kind of thing?
I think the model was really good. That process should be informed by elders, I agree. In the research we're doing right now we work with a couple of elders, and I thought we will see how this goes because my colleagues are mostly First Nations or Metis. I walked out of the meeting we had with the elders and said, okay, I learned some things here.
The critical impact of thoughtful elders is important. That process should be there. The problem right now is we don't typically have those structures in place to build those kinds of courses. We certainly don't have elder content, typically. You may have an isolated incident because people don't have the organizational stability to think about that. There are examples of where it happened. In language programming in the Lac La Ronge band, they did a lot of work around the Gift of Language program, but those tend to be isolated in my experience because there isn't the capacity or the financial funding available to do that kind of work.
Mostly I suspect it doesn't get done, or not in any coherent long sustained fashion. On occasion, there may be elder consultation, but I don't think I have seen a model that really talks about that. In fact, I would hope from this kind of legislation you might see some of those discussions starting to occur in a more coherent, sustained way.
Senator Moore: As you talked about the importance of self and identity, I think that is so important. In your research in Arizona, I just think we would be a richer society in total if this took place, if the elders had input into design, because the White guys don't know.
In Arizona, were there any opportunities for so-called White people, or people off reserve, to take courses there and to learn about Navajo culture and the contribution to the nation?
Mr. Steeves: I think there are courses like that in Canada. First Nations University, for example, offers courses that would be available.
I think you raise an interesting issue. I can tell you personally that the last five or ten years for me have been a personal growth process as I have understood the kind of things that my First Nations and Metis friends talk about. As I understand it more and more fully, it is a world view that Westerners could really benefit from in terms of understanding the world in ways that would be beneficial to all of us.
There are courses like that, I suspect, in many of the First Nations educational institutions. We would need to avail ourselves of them.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Professor Steeves.
That will conclude our formal proceedings this morning. We will take a short break and go in camera to discuss some committee business going forward.
(The committee continued in camera.)