The New Buffalo: The Struggle for Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education in Canada.

James D. Cameron is an associate professor of history at St. Francis
Xavier University in Nova Scotia.

Stonechild is an Aboriginal professor of Indigenous Studies at First Nations University of Canada, Regina. His book, founded on his 2004 University of Regina Ph.D. thesis, draws from solid documentary evidence. Stonechild believes that education is the “new buffalo”—that is, the key to Aboriginal future survival. He aims to sensitize readers to Indian policy, to guide and encourage those “who believe in the power of Aboriginal-controlled higher education,” and to “decolonize Canada’s Indigenous history” (a tool of domination) by including the voices, values and interpretations of indigenous peoples themselves.

Chapter One reviews the racist federal Indian policy of assimilation to 1945. In the 1870s, prairie Aboriginal people extracted treaty promises from the government, which included the right to all levels of education. In Chapter Two, Stonechild charts postwar First Nations politicization, government policy shifts, and the mounting pressure to solve Aboriginal problems. Table 2 highlights the rising numbers of Aboriginal university students (1934–1976). Subsequent chapters reveal the shift toward Aboriginal control of education, rising federal government financial support, and diverse experiments in Aboriginal higher education. Stonechild gives special attention to the First Nations University of Canada, established in Regina (1976).

This work is an extended argument for Aboriginal administrative and financial control of their higher education. The obstacles to creating this “new buffalo” include the federal government’s disinclination to recognize Aboriginal access to higher education as a treaty right, jurisdictional squabbling between the provinces and Ottawa, and thus, inadequate levels of funding. Aboriginal interpretations of the treaties, recent court findings, the tradition of government higher educational assistance, and the enshrinement of Aboriginal rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should convince the public and Ottawa that Aboriginal access is a treaty right.

Stonechild’s presentation of higher education Indian policy is rather black and white: governments are always wrong, and Aboriginals are always right; more money will solve central problems. His political commitment affects his moral judgments and influences his selection of evidence. Nonetheless, this is a challenging, groundbreaking book, and thus an important contribution to the history of Canadian higher education and the evolution of government policy influencing Aboriginal access to it.