My questions are to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I did a Member’s statement, as other Members talked about, on the Anti-Bullying Campaign. I want to ask the Minister of Education, what percentage of Aboriginal cultural content is in our education system.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When we talk about the Education system in the Northwest Territories, it covers everyone in the Northwest Territories. The Aboriginal content the Member is referring to, I need to get the detailed stats on that. I don’t have it in front of me but I can provide it to Members.
Certainly, the Minister is right that it covers everybody; however, in our small Aboriginal communities, about 90, close to 100 percent of the education is geared to Aboriginal students. I want to ask the Minister, when he does his research, can he look at how many, what type of Aboriginal contexts are in there that would be related to the people in that specific area or school.
Part of the education renewal I talked about in particular in this House, there are six different pillars. One of the pillars is the small schools, how we can provide further enhancing the programing into the schools and the funding formula attached to that. Obviously, there will be numerous discussions pertaining to that Aboriginal content. The smallest communities, when we talk about capital and programming and so forth, it’s all based on enrolment. I have instructed my department to look thoroughly about how we can improve that programming. We will be focusing on the small community schools. That is one of our pillars as we move forward.
I, again, look forward to some of the information that the Minister is going to bring forward to us. I want to talk about the Aboriginal culture and building the bridge for the new type of academic western type of learning. I want to know how that bridge is being formed in our small communities, and that the Aboriginal culture is certainly at the foremost and at the base of our education in our schools.
I have given specific directive to the school boards on Aboriginal programming. The funding that we provide, we want specifically for on-the-land programs to deal with cultural and language preservation. Those are areas that we continue to monitor. We work closely with the school boards as well. Part of the residential school curriculum that we’ve developed has been very positive to date. It is very preliminary right now. We just wrote it out in October 2012. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback. That is reflecting on the northern perspective. There is also a social studies program that we’ve developed through engagement with the communities, the schools, and that also has a northern reflective, as well, in the new texts.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Aboriginal context or Aboriginal culture in our schools starts with our elders. I’ve been at this job for close to nine years and I want to ask the Minister, in the nine years that we’ve been working – and he actually worked on this side with me – when will we see the elders in our schools. It’s been promised before and I want to ask again, when can we see elders in our schools?
This particular area has been a key point of our discussion. It took a bit of time to get here. We want to have somewhat of a perfect system where elders are in the schools, and how we can get around where they’re being penalized if we pay them and they get the clawback from their federal pension, federal old age security and so forth. That’s what we’ve been trying to work out. I’m happy to say that we’ve finalized that area and we want to deliver elders in schools as part of our team within the schools starting this fall school year. That’s our target date. I want to see the elders. Obviously, we’re going to start small. Not every school will have elders but we have to start with possibly one per region, and eventually I would like to see elders in all schools as a long-term strategy.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
