Supporting First Nations Secondary Students Studying Away From Home: A Case History of Policy Gone Awry

Abstract

In 2003, the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council (NNEC) invited proposals for a review of its support services for the secondary students that it sponsors. The author was the successful bidder on that contract and this is the story of the lessons that emerged from that work first in regard to educational policy in general and then in regard to First Nations education in particular. The single most important lesson for the larger world of educational policy, a literature replete with stories of implementation failure, is to “be careful what you wish for, because, against all odds, you just might get it!” Among the more important lessons for the Aboriginal and First Nations educational community are the dangers associated with preferential hiring policies that place unqualified people in professionally very demanding student-support and administrative roles, all the more so when the people in question, although ethnically and “racially” as well as legally “Indian,” lack any ties to the communities they serve.