Indigenous Services Canada is reporting 1,655 on reserve cases of COVID-19 across the country with 182 of those occurring in BC.
To further prevention measures, the federal government is investing another 204-million dollars with a focus on child-care, infrastructure, and education.
Carrier Sekani Tribal Council General Manager John Lewis told MyPGNow.com protecting our most vulnerable is key.
“We have to be very careful with who comes in and there are very few speakers left so those that are impacted by this are the elderly and we want to make sure we keep them safe as they are the knowledge keepers.”
“There is a lot that is happening right now including the second wave and every little bit of funding helps first nations. We have been running a couple of programs here and helping out with gift cards and hamper baskets for first nations and those that are on the streets so every little bit helps.”
However, there is also a fear graduation rates among first nation students may falter due to a lack of remote or distance learning options.
The Indigenous graduation rate in BC is just over 70%.
In a September 24th interview with Vista Radio, Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller admitted Ottawa is continuing to make strides to shore up any deficiencies that exist when it comes to education.
“One of the challenges our government in the past few years has been to close that education gap, we have been able to do so on a financial basis but there is much more work to be done in ensuring the resources are there and in this cases, the resources needed to combat a virus that we don’t fully understand yet.”
“It is something that we know from our experience in self-governing education systems is that we know that Indigenous people graduate at the same or even a higher rate when giving control of their education and the painful history with the education system as it was administered by the churches and the Canadian government is still top of mind.”
Lewis noted we may see an across-the-board decline in graduation rates due to certain challenges school boards including School District 57 are facing when it comes to enrollment.
“You may see some sort of decline because even in the school district here, that our numbers are down, which will be impacting their budget so that’s going to have impacts all across the board.”
SD 57 projected a 2.3 million dollar budget shortfall due to enrollment decline, where 400 students and their families withdrew.
This led to eighteen teachers being redeployed to different positions.