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Concerns raised after Saskatchewan minister’s comments on Indigenous education

Concerns raised after minister’s comments on Indigenous education
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Concerns raised after minister’s comments on Indigenous education

Indigenous leaders and teachers are raising concerns after Saskatchewan’s education minister suggested there might be too much “infusion” of First Nations history in school curriculum.

Bronwyn Eyre said in a speech last week in the legislature that “there has come to be at once too much wholesale infusion into the curriculum, and at the same time, too many attempts to mandate material into it both from the inside and by outside groups.”

Eyre said her son, who is in Grade 8, brought home a history assignment that suggested all pioneers to Canada were ill-meaning.

“He’d copied from the board the following ... presented as fact: that European and European settlers were colonialists, pillagers of the land who knew only buying and selling and didn’t respect mother Earth,” she said.

When pressed by reporters Tuesday on what she meant in the speech, Eyre said it’s about a broader discussion of curriculum.

“One thing one might discuss, though, is should there be a specific course on ... Indigenous history, history of residential schools, and treaties ... as one specific course in a high-school-level course, for example, as opposed to maybe more infusion into social studies,” she said.

Reaction came swiftly.

The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations said treaty rights need to be taught.