VICTORIA MARTINEZ
News Editor

The University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union is putting a primary emphasis on aboriginal inclusion this year.

Over the course of the last year and this summer, the USSU launched numerous initiatives to come into action this year.

Earlier this month, the USSU signed a Strategic Alliance Agreement with the Office of the Treaty commissioner. Essentially all parties agreed to adopt the “We are all treaty people” slogan in an effort to educate the campus about treaty rights and responsibilities. They’ve also declared Oct. 4 to 8 “We are all treaty people week.”

“If we didn’t keep the promises we made in the past we wouldn’t have the Geneva Convention,” said vice president Leon Thompson.

The importance of maintaining promises remains unchanged, and the agreement promotes the education mandatory to do so. Similarly, the slogan is meant to remind all members of the campus community that the treaties benefit all people and to discard them would be to the detriment of all parties.

Last year, the USSU along with the Aboriginal Students Centre formed the Indigenous Students’ Council. The Indigenous Graduate Students’ Council was also formed, with 17 available positions.

The new ISC role “ensures that indigenous students have a greater voice at council and
will hopefully get more people involved,” Thompson explained. The role is now filled by Jared Brown.

USSU president Chris Stoicheff feels the job is vital in terms of providing Aboriginal students with a strong voice in decision-making on campus.

“To be honest, it’s important that their voice come not just from someone like myself, a non-Aboriginal student, but from an Aboriginal student as well.

“We also started up the Aboriginal Inclusion and Engagement Committee and basically it brought the numerous societies and groups on campus specifically focused to Aboriginal students together. This allows them to organize events together, for instance, when they are organizing Louis Riel Day.”

The U of S, too, is making Aboriginal students a priority. As a priority of the second integrated plan, Aboriginal relations must be a part of everything the university does.

According to StatsCan, Saskatchewan has the second largest proportion of Aboriginal people of the provinces and territories, and similarly, the U of S has the largest First Nations population of Canadian universities, by both raw numbers and percentage. At least 10 per cent of the campus population is Aboriginal. Most Aboriginals in Saskatchewan are under 25 years old, and they’ll be coming to post-secondary age in the near future.

“As we go the next few academic years we’ll see more Aboriginal students. It’s primarily a generational shift,” noted Thompson.

By 2017, the 20-something age bracket in the province could grow to 30 from 18 per cent of the total Aboriginal population. For the U of S, that means the Aboriginal student community will be a full 16 per cent of the student population.

“We want to set the institutions in place to prepare for that,” stressed Stoicheff.

The university, for its part, is working towards building a new Aboriginal Student Centre — a full building upgrade to the current centre tucked away in Marquis Hall. The Gordon Oakes-Red Bear Student Centre, named for a Nekaneet First Nation spiritual and political leader, is projected to cost nearly $15 million.

Part of a donation-in-kind from professor emeritus Kay Nasser will be put towards the project, which still needs funding.