MRU Set to Enhance Indigenous Education for All Students

Future Mount Royal students may be taking three-credit Indigenous Studies courses as a requirement to graduate. The university’s Indigenous Strategic Plan involves “indigenizing MRU,” with goals to “establish completion of aboriginal themed coursework or credits as graduation requirement.”

Director of the Iniskim Centre at MRU, John Fischer says multiple courses might fit the requirement, and the current plan is for faculty to review or create courses that could work in the required slot.

Fischer says that the plan and its goals for indigenous course work answer, in part, a call from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and their recommendations for post-secondaries to address (indigenous) content and knowledge.

Fischer hopes that required courses will help to “address the lack of understanding by Canadians […] around residential schools and around issues such as the Indian Act and other forms of assimilation.”

“The amount of indigenous content and understanding about indigenous history in Canada… there’s a real void,” says Fischer. “Most Canadians are unaware and have not been taught that by a curriculum.”

MRU’s Indigenous Strategic Plan explains that we must have an “environment that prevails over the legacy of colonization.” It’s exciting to see Mount Royal make history as one of few schools implementing education plans to help all students understand realities in the history and culture of their country.