The 2024 federal budget includes a $5 million contribution to Yellowknife’s Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning.
Kelsey Wrightson, the school’s executive director, said she and her team were thrilled to learn about the new funding when it was announced on Tuesday, April 16.
“We’re feeling really excited,” she said. “I was sitting at my desk on Tuesday waiting for the budget announcement, and then when we got the news, I felt not only a huge amount of relief, but also the responsibility of being able to make sure that we’re continuing to deliver the programming that we know communities need, and that we know students are asking for.”
Dechinta is an Indigenous, land-based initiative that provides accredited post-secondary education and research experiences in the North.
The school previously received federal funding through the Department of Northern Affairs’ Arctic and Northern Policy Framework, but the five-year term of that agreement expired on March 31, which made the newly-announced financial support extremely important.
“We were really waiting to hear if that funding commitment was going to be renewed or extended,” said Wrightson. “We had been working really hard over the last few years to advocate and demonstrate the importance of Indigenous-led, land-based education. We knew that we had support from Minister Dan Vandal, we knew that we had support from MP Michael McLeod, and we were just hoping that that would be recognized within the budget.
“I was really, really excited to see that our work had paid off.”
Wrightson hopes the money will help develop more university-accredited courses, accommodate more of the ever-increasing number of applicants the school receives and expand its programming into additional communities.
“We’re really excited to be able to fulfill some of those commitments,” she said.
The funding will also allow Wrightson and her team to plan further into the future.
“We’ve got a busy next six months ahead,” she said. “This funding commitment means that we actually can take a breath and start planning for what the next two years is going to look like.”
When asked where she hopes Dechinta will be in two years, Wrightson said she’s “really hopeful that two years from now we will be planning for the next 10 years.”
That will not only require funding, she explained, but “trust.”
“It takes time to build strong relationships with community members,” she said. “The impact that we’re seeing from Dechinta programming is not just on the students who are participating, it’s on whole communities where we’re seeing Elders learning again about the joys of teaching, and we’re seeing families change and transform their relationship to education and what it means to go to school.
“It’s going to take many, many years to really transform people’s educational experiences, and we have demonstrated that the best way to do that is to let communities lead, let Elders and the land lead, and really showcase the brilliance of Northern Indigenous communities and Northern knowledge.”
Enrollment for Dechinta’s summer 2024 programming has gone “really well,” according to Wrightson, with 29 students set to participate in accredited courses. She said the school has “once again” received far more applicants for its hide camps than it could possibly accommodate.
The executive director and her staff will head into their busy summer with renewed confidence in their work, thanks in part to the federal government’s support.
“It’s an indication that the government has heard us and is telling us that the work we’re doing is valued, and valuable and important,” she said. “The more that we all hear that, the more confident we feel and the better we are able to do this work.”