Indigenous-run Southeast Collegiate aims to infuse culture, traditions into curriculum

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This article was published 05/09/2018 (2757 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For what may be the first time in the country’s history, Indigenous people are celebrating a residential school.

But it is nothing like the federally funded, church-run institutions that devastated generations of children and tried to erase Canada’s Indigenous cultures.

Southeast Collegiate officially opens a new, $24-million facility for First Nations high school students Thursday on its existing south Winnipeg campus.

The private school boasts it is the only one of its kind in Canada, able to educate students from grades 10 through 12, and house the entire student body of 156 on site. It’s also Indigenous-run — serving 13 Manitoba First Nations, primarily from the east side of Lake Winnipeg.

“It’s the only school I know of where the students reside on campus for the entirety of the 10 months of the school year,” Southeast Collegiate director and principal Sheryl McCorrister said Wednesday.

Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott is expected to be among the dignitaries to attend the opening in Winnipeg, including the various chiefs who represent the school’s founding parent organization, the Southeast Tribal Council.

Construction of the new school was made possible with $10 million in federal funding, and ongoing funding of $5.6 million to cover instructional and accommodation costs.

Southeast opened in 1995, with 30 students; by 2007, it reached an enrollment of 110. Grad rates — at 92 per cent — are twice those of First Nations with high schools in Manitoba, and triple First Nations rates across the country.

To call it a residential school is “such a bad word,” McCorrister said.

The differences extend to the physical structure: there are no cots lined up in rows, in army-style barracks; there are dormitories, with two students to a room, like a college or university.

“The residential school system, as we know it, was non-Indigenous and it was intent on forcibly assimilating Indigenous people, using all means necessary. It’s not an overstatement to say residential schools have acted primarily as agents of cultural genocide,” said Ry Moran, director of the Winnipeg-based National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

“What Southeast is trying to do is undo that cultural legacy and build a brighter future, so students can succeed as Indigenous people within a western society.”

Southeast offers both academic and vocational curriculum streams, competitive sports, and land-based and cultural traditions infused in its programs. A high school math class, for instance, could involve making and erecting a teepee.

“It all takes math to do that kind of stuff,” the principal noted.

Retention rates are 85 per cent for students enrolled in the vocational programs, and 84 per cent for academic students.

“That’s the kids coming back every year. The kids end up staying through Grade 10, 11 and 12, and that’s what we want,” McCorrister said. “It’s different because we care, we care about the students who are enrolled and we go out of our way to go above and beyond while our students attend Southeast Collegiate.”

Former Brokenhead Ojibway Nation chief Jim Bear (who will be emcee the opening Thursday) recalled the founding of the Southeast council 40 years ago, and the purchase of the property for the school nearly 25 years ago.

A survivor of the residential school system, Bear said this project is living up to its vision as a First Nations school for First Nations, run by First Nations.

“It’s the way residential schools should have been designed and implemented. The Indigenous staff are probably almost 90 per cent and the majority of students are from the Southeast (tribal) area… We’re trying to get it to be the (First Nations high) school of choice,” he said Wednesday.

“Everything is culturally relevant.”

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca