As the New Relationship Trust announced a round of scholarships and bursaries for Indigenous students, barriers remain for Indigenous students approaching academia in BC.
The trust, in partnership with the New Relationship Trust (NRT) Foundation, announced in October its second call for scholarships and bursaries for the 2020/21 school year.
The foundation offers $2,000 bursaries for students in shorter-term programs, like certificate programs, diploma programs, associates degree programs and trade programs. The organization also offers scholarships at the undergraduate, master’s and doctorate levels from $5,000 to $20,000.
“We’re managed by First Nations and we’re for First Nations,” said spokesperson Matt Cook-Contois.
“We have a pool of funds that we use every year and we pour those out to First Nations communities to increase their abilities to manage themselves better. Because we’re managed by First Nations, we have a unique rapport with them.”
A growing number of Indigenous people are receiving a post-secondary education. According to Statistics Canada in 2016, the percentage of First Nations people with a college diploma increased from 17 to 21 per cent.
However, barriers remain. Dr. Michael Marker, an associate professor in the department of educational studies, said he’s faced microaggressions as an Indigenous faculty member.
“Now I’m an Indigenous faculty member, and I receive all these things,” he said. “Imagine what a student who has much less power to resist or speak back receives.”
Indigenous people are underrepresented in higher education — the AMS said that two per cent of respondents to its 2020 Academic Experience Survey identified as Indigenous, a figure that has remained steady since 2015.
The United Nations points to factors outside of school that lead to educational barriers, such as race and gender discrimination among other structural factors.
“Well of course what happens at home and in the community has a huge effect on the Indigenous student,” said Marker.
Cook-Contois said the foundation’s scholarships go straight to Indigenous students for them to use as they see fit.
“There’s no caveats that this has to go to tuition or books. It can go towards whatever the student needs, because every student has different needs,” he said. “Some students need to pay for daycare, some students need a parking pass and some students need to erase their debts so they can sleep at night.”
Marker added that it falls to universities to echo support from external organizations.
“I want people to engage with the cultural differences between Indigenous understandings and Indigenous being and the ways that so many middle-class white people … arrive at universities with enormous privilege and entitlement, with the way that they live their life and the assumptions that they have,” he said.
“Let’s shatter those assumptions for just a little while.”