Education and health of young aboriginals must be addressed If we don't find ways to help them now, our society and economy will pay
Edmonton Journal
Tuesday, August 06, 2002
Section: News
Paula Simons
Pick any social indicator you like -- teen pregnancy, alcohol and drug addiction, fetal alcohol syndrome, youth crime -- and you'll find native children top the list.
Canada's aboriginal infant mortality rate is twice the national average.
The native teen suicide rate has been estimated to be as much as three times higher. A study released this spring by the Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons found that aboriginal children between the ages of 29 days and 14 years were 7.2 times more likely to die than other children.
A report on native education, released this spring by Alberta Learning, found that more than 30 per cent of aboriginals in Alberta suffer some kind of disability, and that aboriginal youth were almost twice as likely to be disabled.
If those statistics don't shock and outrage you on humanitarian grounds, they should at least inspire your enlightened self-interest. Since the native birth rate is 70 per cent higher than that of the rest of the population, aboriginal children are making up a larger and larger percentage of our country's youth. If we don't find ways to help them now, our society and economy will pay the price later. Our education system, our health-care system, our child welfare system, our social safety net -- if we don't do something, the native population explosion will tax the public services to the breaking point.
At the moment, Ottawa and the Assembly of First Nations are embroiled in a first-class political row over the proposed new First Nations Governance Act and the future of self-government. But in Alberta, where 50 per cent of aboriginal people live off-reserve anyway, the self-government question is far less urgent than the daily realities of living.
But we don't have to be passive, watching Ottawa and the Assembly of First Nations bicker over their social engineering dreams.
We can take concrete, common-sense steps locally, through our provincial government, our municipalities, our school boards, our regional health authorities, our social welfare agencies, our corporations and our First Nations.
The debate over self-government will be largely meaningless, if we can't address the education and public health needs of young aboriginal Albertans.
Let's start with education. The federal government allocates $1 billion a year for on-reserve primary and secondary schools. But half, if not more, of Alberta's aboriginal students live off-reserve, and get their schooling without any federal support, their education wholly funded by the province.
The high school completion rate for aboriginal students in Alberta is estimated to be a disturbing eight per cent, and the numbers are worse for band-run schools on reserves than for kids attending schools in the cities.
In standardized provincial tests, fewer than 15 per cent of Grade 9 students at federally funded, band-run schools meet the province's "acceptable" standard in math, science, language arts and social studies. Among aboriginal kids in urban schools, fewer than 50 per cent meet the acceptable Grade 9 standard.
If we want to give young aboriginal people a sense of hope and purpose, if we want them off the streets and preparing for jobs and family responsibilities, we need programs and initiatives to help kids stay in school, and learn there.
The Edmonton public and Catholic school boards have some promising experiments. But we need more. More, much more, intensive early literacy support, so native kids learn to read well at the outset, and don't fall behind.
More support for aboriginal parents, about 50 per cent of them single moms, who may not have the reading and math skills, or the emotional coping skills, they need to help their children through the school system. More aboriginal teachers, who can serve as role models, and bring a native cultural sensitivity to the school system. And a curriculum, one that recognizes the cultural and social needs of native children, without "dumbing-down" intellectual content and standards.
Right now, only about four per cent of aboriginal people in Alberta have university degrees. Even fewer, 3.5 per cent, have trade certificates. More has to be done to help native Albertans get beyond high school. The federal government gives money to First Nations to pay for the post-secondary education of band members. But since the money is administered by the bands, it tends to go first to reserve residents, not to band members who've moved to the city. And if you're not a treaty Indian or band member, you pay your own tuition.
Alberta has a shortage of skilled tradespeople, of nurses, of high-tech workers. We need more creative ways to give young aboriginals the training and experience to take those jobs. And if we want aboriginal teachers and social workers and lawyers and doctors, we need to encourage and assist the best and brightest.
What we need are not just more provincial and municipal dollars spent on aboriginal education -- though that would help. We need to convince the private sector to invest some of its profits in the next generation of skilled workers -- and customers. And we need the wealthier First Nations -- there are plenty of them -- to recognize the wisdom of investing more of their dollars in training and educating their people. A First World province with a Third World underclass. Is that what we want Alberta to be? If not, we'd better get up and doing. Together.