Yukon First Nations school board officially established on 49th anniversary of 'Together Today'

The Yukon officially has a First Nations school board.

Territorial education minister Jeanie McLean signed two documents at a press conference Monday solidifying the long-awaited initiative a ministerial order formally establishing the board, and a letter of agreement for an interim governance committee.

Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm, who serves as the chair of the Yukon Chiefs Committee on Education, co-signed the letter.

"There really are no words to describe the feeling today," McLean said. "It's a profound moment in our history."

The signings took place on the 49th anniversary of Elijah Smith and other Yukon First Nations leaders bringing the seminal Together Today For Our Children Tomorrow document to Ottawa, paving the way for Yukon First Nations self-government.

McLean said she had held off on signing the ministerial order until the anniversary.

"This is an undertaking of great magnitude," she said of establishing the school board, acknowledging the work of Smith and other leaders who had come before.

" I, for one, am so proud to be on the right side of history, to be standing here today even in the face of a lot of folks that may have thought that this would fail by this point, but it didn't. We're standing here today and we have a lot to celebrate."

'How can we usher in new forms of knowledge?'

While the idea of a Yukon First Nations school board has been years in the making, it came much closer to realityin January when voters representing eight out of the nine eligible schools in the territory opted to join the board.

Those schools which include Nelnah Bessie John School in Beaver Creek, St. Elias Community School in Haines Junction, Grey Mountain Primary School in Whitehorse and Ross River School will see their local school councils dissolved at the end of the 2021/22 school year. They will then fall under the purview of the five-member interim governance committee until November 2022, at which point an election will be held for board trustees.

Melanie Bennett, the executive director of the Yukon First Nations Education Directorate, said it will take time to transition schools over to the board, to hear each school community's priorities and to create a sustainable system.

"It's not a flick of a switch," she said.

While the schools will continue to use the British Columbia curriculum, students can expect new programming initiatives under the Yukon First Nations school board, including an emphasis on on-the-land learning.

Tizya-Tramm said those new programs will be crucial.

"Children in the Yukon today can read textbooks, from B.C. albeit, but can they read the land?" he asked. "Because the land is our original teacher how can we usher in new forms of knowledge, of ways of being, of ways of knowing?"

Like McLean, he acknowledged the significance of the signing of the ministerial order and letter of agreement taking place on the 49th anniversary of Together Today being brought to Ottawa, and noted that Yukon First Nations had been fighting to regain control of the education of their children for more than a century.

"This giving back of authority stands in direct contrast to the prevalent First Nations experience of having things taken away land, language, culture, children, taken away, but not today. This is a grand reversal," he said.

" Non-First Nations and First Nations have together ushered in this change and demanded for reconciliation, now."

'We have moved mountains'

Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Chief Steve Smith, the son of Elijah Smith, also nodded to the decades of work that had led up to Monday, adding that he hoped his father was encouraged by the path Yukon First Nations were walking today.

His father, he said, had always emphasized the importance of education for his people, including when he came home from his first day of school 47 years ago and said he wanted to quit.

"He encouraged me directly as a parent education, education, education. 'You can't speak for our people if you don't know what you're talking about, and you certainly can't speak for our people if you don't know the language of the government,'" Steve Smith recalled.

"It's been a long haul," he continued, "but we have moved mountains and we are now looking, we are on the top of that mountain and we're looking to the future where are our people going?

" And hopefully our young people will take that responsibility on when it's presented to them this responsibility to one another, and I think if we carry on being who we are, Yukon will be better off."