ABSTRACT
A reality of Canadian universities is the rapidly growing population of Indigenous people – First Nation, Metis, and Inuit. However, Indigenous peoples have suffered from centuries of social inequities that negatively affect the learning environment for their children. Community trauma from historical colonization has resulted in the loss of their languages and cultures. Not only are Indigenous students hindered by enormous economic disadvantages associated with poverty, but they also experience higher school dropout rates than children and youth in more affluent areas. This disparity results in the potential loss of economic and social contributions from the fastest growing segment of the Canadian population.
The purposes of this chapter are to address the following: 1) review Canada’s challenging relationship with Indigenous peoples for the purpose of placing current educational policy frameworks in a historical, political, and economic context; 2) examine recent trends in policies intended to draw Indigenous students to universities; 3) provide a list of meaningful university policies that have extended beyond service-learning to actively partnering with neighboring communities to address the learning needs of Indigenous peoples; and 4) explore recent macro-level educational policies that preserve, protect, and revitalize Indigenous languages and cultures across the country.
