The Manitoba School Boards Association (MSBA) and nine of Manitoba’s universities and colleges have signed a new Indigenous education blueprint in an effort to comprehensively implement recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The signatories to the “Manitoba Collaborative Indigenous Education Blueprint for Universities, Colleges and Public School Boards: Making Excellence in Indigenous Education a Priority” commit to:

Engaging with Indigenous peoples in respectful and reciprocal relationships to realize the right to self-determination, and to advance reconciliation, language and culture through education, research and skill development;

• Bringing Indigenous knowledge, languages and intellectual traditions, models and approaches into curriculum and pedagogy; Promoting research and learning that reflects the history and contemporary context of the lives of lndigenous peoples;
• Increasing access to services, programs, and supports to Indigenous students, to ensure a learning environment is established that fosters learner success;
• Collaborating to increase student mobility to better serve the needs of Indigenous students;
• Building school and campus communities that value diversity, foster cultural safety and are free of racism;
• Increasing and measuring Indigenous school and post-secondary participation and success rates;
• Showcasing successes of lndigenous students and educators;
• Reflecting the diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis cultures in Manitoba through institutional governance and staffing policies and practices; and
• Engaging governments and the private and public sectors to increase labour market opportunities for Indigenous graduates.

These commitments will be set out in a 5-Year Manitoba Indigenous Education Collaborative Blueprint Implementation Plan, to be entered into in 2016.