School board to vote on next step in creating Indigenous trustee role

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board will vote Tuesday on whether to ask the Ontario government to help it create a trustee position exclusively for an Indigenous representative.

“There is no better voice at the table to have than their own voice,” said trustee Wendy Hough. “We have to think about how all these Indigenous children (are) represented.”

Hough said members of the board's Indigenous Advisory Committee “have come forward and requested a voice at the board table.”

About three per cent of the public board's 72,000 students are Indigenous.

Ideally, said Hough, the Indigenous representative would have full voting rights. The board also includes two student trustees who do not vote.

But how the representative would be chosen is a complicated question.

Under the Education Act, unless a school board has a standing agreement with a band or a service agreement to provide education for the children from that band, the band itself cannot name one person to represent it on a school board. The OCDSB doesn't have a standing agreement with surrounding Indigenous communities because the Algonquin Anishinabeg territory doesn't have one specific band or council to make such an agreement with.

The board, if it votes to go ahead, will look to Ontario's minister of education to help set up a process to select the individual.

The University of Ottawa's Claudette Commanda, an Algonquin elder from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation in Quebec, said: “It's essential to have an Indigenous trustee on the board because the Indigenous perspective is needed at the board and among educators.”

But choosing the person correctly will be vital.

“Will this person represent the views of First Nations and Inuit students? There are more layers to this than just naming a person or just creating a position,” Commanda said.

“I see that this trustee could be working with the Algonquin nation to ensure that the curriculum has an Algonquin perspective. I see an Indigenous trustee as someone working to rewrite our history and tell our history and make that a part of the curriculum.”

Board chair Lynn Scott said the position “has been needed for a while.” She said the school board has made curriculum changes such as implementing Indigenous literature in a mandatory Grade 11 course, but there's still “more work to do.”

“By raising this question to the province I hope that it would create a dialogue that would result in putting together a mechanism that allows the families of Indigenous students to have a voice at the table,” Scott said.

Algonquin elder Claudette Commanda says having an Indigenous trustee on the school board is “essential,” but choosing the right person will be just as important.