New Brunswick civil servants course on Indigenous issues has no input from local First Nations
A Mi’kmaq organization says it supports new mandatory training for New Brunswick’s civil servants on Indigenous culture and history.
It just wonders why the Higgs Progressive Conservative government didn’t hire local First Nations to teach the program.
In recent weeks, the province’s 10,000 civil servants have been instructed to do a three-hour online, multimedia course offered by Reconciliation Education, also marketed as 4 Seasons of Reconciliation.
The Saskatchewan business developed the program in collaboration with the First Nations University of Canada in Toronto.
David Kelly, a spokesperson for the Department of Indigenous Affairs, said the province signed a contract with the business in 2023 to deliver the course over three years at a cost to taxpayers of $247,500 plus tax.
Dean Vicaire, the executive director of Mi’gmawe’l Tplu’taqnn Inc., or MTI, the organization that represents eight of nine Mi’kmaq First Nations in New Brunswick, has mixed feelings about the initiative.
DOES ONE SIZE FIT ALL?
The program is based on the call to action of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC, which spent six years travelling the country, hearing from more than 6,500 witnesses before delivering a thick report in 2015 on Indigenous issues. It called upon Canadians to begin the process of righting the wrongs committed against Indigenous Peoples across the nation.
“All public servants should understand the dark parts of Canadian history like residential schools and how government policies and laws can and do have devastating effects on First Nations people and their culture,” Vicaire told Brunswick News in an email. “If a course can get public servants to think about how to implement the TRC’S Calls to Action, that’s a good thing. However, as the developers of the course would likely tell you, there is not a universal First Nations history and the implementation of the Calls to Action can look different in New Brunswick compared to Saskatchewan.”
Initially the program was only offered to civil servants in Indigenous Affairs. The rest of the civil service must now take the course and complete it by April, Kelly said.
Afterward, it will be rolled out to about 18,000 school teachers and other personnel in the education system and finally to around 18,000 health-care workers.