Aloha antics

Social media erupted in righteous indignation recently after the Journal de Montréal and other Sun Media tabloids harrumphed that officials from the Kativik and Cree school boards had attended the World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education in Hawaii last May.

The articles questioned whether this is a proper use of public money in an era of cutbacks, characterizing the trip as a sun-filled junket for bureaucrats that won’t benefit students. Predictably, the peanut gallery piled on. Coalition Avenir Québec MNA Jean-François Roberge said board members were “paying for luxury trips on the backs of taxpayers.”

First, a few facts. The World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education takes place every three years in a country with a strong Indigenous population and cultural history. The previous conference was held in Peru in 2011. The largest venue for Indigenous education in the world, it attracts top education experts from around the globe to help develop curriculum and teaching approaches that are effective and appropriate for Aboriginal students.

Neither the Inuit nor the Cree chose Hawaii as last year’s venue. Nor was it a secret. At last year’s Grand Council/CRA Annual General Assembly, CSB Director General Abraham Jolly presented a public report on the CSB’s participation in the conference that was broadcast live over the Cree Radio Network. The Cree people were aware of it many months before the not-so-subtly racist sneers published in the Journal de Montréal last month.

As Jolly told the paper, “We are just like Quebec: we want to develop our education system. We’ve seen Quebec develop as a nation. Don’t you think the Cree should have the same right?”

Indeed, some Canadian government ministries attended the Hawaii conference and hosted workshops. Perhaps their costs should be questioned rather than putting the onus on the CSB to defend its participation in a conference that could be beneficial for our future. Should we only send non-Native government representatives to a conference on Indigenous education?

To ask that question is to answer it. But that didn’t stop some of our own self-appointed critics to adopt the right-wing rants we hear on talk radio. One questioned why the Nation didn’t jump on the finger-pointing bandwagon to denounce this supposedly terrible waste of money. This person was outraged and even insulted that his “tax dollars” were being spent to have CSB employees attend the conference.

All of us can criticize the use of public monies at one time or another. Each bomb being dropped in Iraq right now by Canadian fighter jets costs more than what it did to send all these people to the conference in Honolulu. We hope our school board officials made good use of the conference, though it’s easy to see how some might think of this trip as a free vacation in paradise. But would we rather our educational leaders stayed home because of the optics of the location of this conference?

We don’t think so. The Cree have much to learn from the success of other First Nations around the world, and much to share, as well. We are part of a larger world, even parts that have sandy beaches and palm trees.