Yukon to establish First Nations school board after historic vote

Yukon will soon have a First Nations school board, which supporters say will give Indigenous residents a greater say over education matters with the territorial government.

For the last two weeks, voters and parents in eight school areas have cast ballots in a referendum that asked if their schools should be part of the new school board.

On Thursday night, the results were released, with voters in seven of the eight areas responding in favour of the proposal.

The new board will be overseen by the Yukon First Nations Education Directorate, an independent body established in 2020 to push for more Indigenous control over education. The First Nations school board was a key part of its focus. 

My first reaction is just sheer pride ... and pure joy," Melanie Bennett, the directorate's executive director, told CBC Thursday night. "We're changing history." 

The directorate says the creation of the proposed school board represents "true reconciliation" because it lets Yukon First Nations finally share authority over education with the Yukon government, which currently oversees all the territory's schools except for two francophone schools in Whitehorse. 

"There's been so many attempts to bring the change to bring First Nations to the table to say ... if you teach them in our way, they will see success," Bennett said. 

"There's been lots of initiatives ... that have come along the way, but they have never ever brought any significant change for our children." 

The goal is for the new board to start running the schools for the 2022/23 school year.

In an interview earlier this week, Bennett told CBC that Yukon's First Nations chiefs who are involved with the directorate saw a new school board as a way for them to "grab the wheel and start to make change" in the territory's education system.

"This was one way we could move through this and start to work with government side by side to say, 'this is what it should look like,'" Bennett said.

"The chiefs … wanted that collaborative process and to move forward."

A review of the Yukon's education system in 2019 by Canada's auditor general found that it was not meeting the needs of Indigenous students — despite commitments from the territory's education department to do so.

Part of the problem, the report said, was the department did not partner with First Nations to develop effective programming.