OTTAWA UNRESPONSIVE TO JAMES BAY 1ST NATIONS 1968

A TRUE STORY ABOUT ATTAWAPISKAT AND KASHECHEWAN

In 1968, I made my first trip to Attawapiskat and Kashechewan. Indian Affairs staff in Moose Factory told me that those communities had no respect for education and that they never insisted that their children show up at school. They said the attendance stats were always deplorable.

I decided to do some research on the attendance while visiting these schools.

What I learned is that classrooms were almost empty in September and early October and the same was true for late May and June.

During those periods, entire families went out to the James Bay coast either to hunt geese or to fish - traditional food gathering, and part of traditional life and livelihood.

The only children attending school during those weeks were those who stayed with grandparents or other families that did not hunt or fish.

The interesting fact was that the attendance levels during the late October to mid May period were higher than the average in the city of Toronto, and just as high as any southern Ontario school I knew about.

Thus, most children in these communities  were getting about 7 months of schooling, three months less than most other children.

In meeting with the chiefs and councils of each community, I asked them what they would think of our changing the school year so that the school would remain open in July and August when everyone was at home. They were very excited about that idea, because of the extra two months of schooling. But they also pointed out that it would be good to have more supervision during the summer since that is the period when some children drown in the fast flowing rivers that flow right past their community.

I met with the teachers involved and they all agreed to the unusual school year configuration.

Let me remind you that there was another large group of children in these communities who were not receiving any schooling because there was no room for them in the school.

I proposed to my regional office that we build temporary classrooms right away and hire more teachers to accommodate the children up to 9 years of age who had never been enrolled in school. Also I urged that plans be put in place to build permanent schools to accommodate present and future needs.

I also proposed the adjusted school year to give children an extra two months of education.

The senior bureaucrats in Ottawa agreed to the temporary schools and to the planning for "permanent" schools......

BUT - only on condition that we retain the traditional September to June school year.

I was never able to get any of those bureaucrats to admit who made that very insensitive decision or the reasons for that decision. These schools were not subject to provincial regulations; they were federal schools which could have been adapted to meet local needs.

Brock Vodden