Province mulls way forward on TRC recommendations
Jo-Ann Episkenew was crying in the audience during a presentation at a Regina high school this week.
The First Nations University of Canada professor was watching as students at Thom Collegiate educated a crowd full of people about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which finished its work last year.
The TRC came out with 94 calls to action on how to best improve relations with First Nations peoples in Canada.
Episkenew, an aboriginal professor at FNU, is hoping to find out exactly what commitment the provincial government is making to those recommendations which dealt with a number of provincial issues such as education and health.
“What’s their plan? I guess that’s the fairest place to start from. If they don’t have one, are they making one?
And if they’re making one, when can we hear back from them?” she said.
Jim Reiter, minister responsible for First Nations, Metis and Northern Affairs, said work has started on addressing the TRC. A multi-ministry committee set up when the first volumes of the report were released in June has found that 34 of the 94 recommendations directly relate to the province.
“Of those 34, we’re somewhat in alignment with 22 of them already,” he said.
He pointed to two sections of the recommendations from the TRC where the province has already made commitments: Education and the economy.
According to Reiter, the province is a leader in First Nations education, having already passed legislation mandating treaty education in Saskatchewan schools.
On the economic front, Reiter said there has been an 80-percent improvement in funding to the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies since the current government took office in 2007.
Still, Reiter admits there is a lot of work to be done.
“We’re going to certainly work through (all 34 recommendations). We’ll see whether we can accommodate them all,” he said.
Making specific recommendations — such as training civil servants on the history of aboriginal peoples, including the history and legacy of residential schools — is something Reiter expects will happen “relatively soon.”
“If there are things that make sense and we can do them relatively quickly, that’s what we should do,” he said.
Bucky Belanger, First Nations critic for the NDP, is hoping the government will move forward on the calls to action and bring some dynamic changes to the province.
“We’re really not all that enthusiastic about some of the feeble effort by the Wall government in terms of responding to the TRC,” he said. “When the minister comes along and talks about a multi-ministry committee responding to (34) of the (94) recommendations, we don’t see the action that’s really resulting in the change that’s necessary.”