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TEACHING TRUTH
Lawyers, engineers and geoscientists get new education mandates as professional associations increase Indigenous training
GLEN KORSTROM
Training related to truth, reconciliation and understanding Indigenous issues has increased in the past year, and in some cases, the training has been made mandatory for members of professional associations in B.C.
Indigenous training organizations, such as Indigenous Corporate Training Inc., have been around for years, but there has been a surge in interest in education around Indigenous issues throughout 2021, particularly after the preliminary discovery in May of an estimated 215 unmarked graves on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops.
Diane Smylie, senior director of San’yas Indigenous Cultural Safety Learning Programs at the Provincial Health Services Authority, told BIV Magazine that her organization trains around 35,000 students per year, and that this volume is increasing.
Since her organization’s inception in 2010, it has trained around 160,000 students, she says, with some of them in professional associations, and others in private companies or the public sector.
San’yas includes 10 courses — all centred on anti-racism training. “The curriculum is based on what we call an anti-racist, decolonizing pedagogy,” she says. “The pedagogy is very similar in lots of ways across the courses, but what is different is we’ve partnered with Indigenous Peoples in different sectors or jurisdictions.”
Kerry Simmons, executive director of the Canadian Bar Association British Columbia Branch (CBABC) says her organization’s members are increasingly asking for Indigenous-related training courses. “We’re seeing more people attend each one of these courses,” she says. “In one that we did this fall with Indigenous Corporate Training, we had so many people interested that we had to offer it three times.”
CBABC is one of many organizations that offer lawyers a range of continuing education and professional development training.
The Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) is the regulator for B.C.’s legal profession, and it requires practising lawyers to take professional development courses annually. Lawyers are then free to choose which courses they take, and from which organization. One new development, however, is that the LSBC’s CPABC CEO Lori Mathison has been benchers in 2021 determined that trying to increase Indigenous training Indigenous interand recruitment at her association • cultural competency and understanding ROB KRUYT is so important that, starting in 2022, all lawyers in B.C. must take a six-hour, LSBC-designed course that outlines the history of Crown relations with Aboriginal Peoples. The course delves into the history and legacy of residential schools, and how legislation regarding Indigenous Peoples created the issues reconciliation seeks to address. Lawyers must complete this course within two years.
The rationale for the legal profession to heighten the importance of Indigenous education stems from the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report’s recommendations, Simmons explains. “The TRC observed that our legal systems and lawyers have
historically played, and continue to play, a role in the inequality of Indigenous people,” she says. “We need to correct that, and we can do that by learning about the history, learning about the changes in the laws, and thinking about how lawyers practise and interact differently.”
Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia (EGBC) is also mandating that members take a specific course on Indigenous truth and reconciliation. “We have one mandatory course that everyone has to take per year, which we develop, and next year, the mandatory course that everyone is going to have to take is going to be focused on truth and reconciliation,” says Ailene Lim, EGBC’s acting director of programs and professional development. “That’s something we’re working on developing now, and which will be available in 2022.”
Having a mandatory course for its members is new for EGBC, and its plan is to have a rotation of mandatory courses in future years.
That means that the mandatory course for EGBC members in 2023 will be something unrelated to Indigenous issues.
EGBC usually offers approximately 130 events and courses through a calendar year, although that count was down a bit in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those courses cover a range of topics, although between one dozen to two dozen offerings usually relate to equity, diversity and inclusion, Lim says.
Professional associations have also made it a goal to recruit more Indigenous people into their ranks.
Sometimes professional recruitment and engagement can be a challenge, because Indigenous youth in small communities don’t necessarily have access to role models who are members of a profession, such as accounting.
Like other professions, accounting requires that aspiring chartered professional accountants (CPAs) have university degrees before they are granted admission to start the CPA education program.
This can also be an obstacle for Indigenous youth, who are statistically less likely to have university degrees. “We certainly need and want more Indigenous students in the CPA program, and to become CPAs,” says Lori Mathison, president and CEO of the Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia (CPABC). “We’ve been really focused on this. We have a funded strategic plan, and we spent a lot of effort on it.”
Mathison says CPABC conducted a poll and discovered that while Indigenous Peoples represent almost 6% of B.C.’s population, less than 0.5% of CPABC’s membership, and slightly more than 1% of candidates and students, self-declared as Indigenous.
Some CPABC events have been held in conjunction with the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association British Columbia, Mathison says.
One CPABC event, on October 14, was billed as being an Indigenous gathering on pathways in business. “We held it in partnership with 10 other organizations, and we led the organization of the event,” Mathison says. “We’re really quite proud of it.”
The gathering included Indigenous organizations, post-secondary institutions and some CPA firms.
Its purpose was to provide a forum for sharing knowledge about careers in business, finance and accounting, Mathison says.
It was created for Indigenous students, but also for members of Indigenous communities, as an opportunity to collectively learn. “I’m proud that all of the presenters were Indigenous, and they were able to speak about their own experiences, and really have that close dialogue,” Mathison says. “Some parts of the events were only for Indigenous Peoples, so they could really closely connect. We were guided on that with a traditional council of elders and knowledge keepers. They gave us so much guidance in terms of how to make sure that this event was going to be meaningful for the Indigenous students, and to really make a positive impact.”
Kerry Simmons leads the Canadian Bar Association British Columbia Branch as executive director •
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Ailene Lim is the acting director of programs and professional development with Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia •
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