• Ensure the viability of our Anglophone Indigenous Teacher Education Program. 
• Create Indigenous Teacher Education Programming that can be offered urban First Nations, Inuit, and Métis students. 
• Review our Francophone and Anglophone programs and course descriptions with community members to ensure that they reflect and include First Nations, Inuit, and Métis perspectives, histories, contemporary issues, contributions, and rights. 
• In collaboration with community, begin process of creating undergraduate and graduate programming in collaboration with other Faculties and Departments at the University of Ottawa. 
• Create Indigenous Excellence, Truth, and then Reconciliation Education Programming.

• Establish and maintain good relations with the various communities of the host Algonquin Nation and other First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities living within and outside the traditional territories on which the campuses and premises of the University of Ottawa are located. 
• Establish recruitment and intake procedures, support and corridors. Support local high schools, CEGEPs and colleges for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis students. Create scholarships for students. 
• Establish relationships with various First Nations and Inuit education authorities (Cree School Board, Anishinabek Education, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, etc.). 
• Co-create research services tailored to the specific needs of community partners and First Nations, Inuit and Métis researchers by building capacity and frameworks. Develop promising practices for the management and infrastructure of such Partnership Grants for community-led research projects.
• Establish an Elders in Residence program. ture that recognize the increasing workload of Indigenous faculty. 
• Work with the Partnership and Engagement Committee to review financial services and procedures related to research grants and reimbursement for Elders, Knowledge Keepers and community partners. Establish timely and respectful protocols for the reimbursement of Elders, Knowledge Keepers and community partners.

• Establish welcoming spaces on the website and in our Learning Resource Centre, Foyer of Faculty, admissions offices, lab spaces, and classrooms. 
• Recognize labour and additional workload. Examine hiring policies. 
• Establish culturally specific mental health and well-being supports. 
• Create opportunities for trauma-informed pedagogies in relation to acknowledging strengths, resilience, and resurgence of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities.

• Increase capacity to establish and sustain First Nations, Inuit, and/or Métis research activities. 
• Create, support, and sustain Indigenous approaches to research and building community. 
• Support, create, and sustain Indigenous Research Excellence in the Faculty of Education. 
• Ensure we have accountability mechanisms for reporting back to Algonquin First Nations host community and other First Nations, Inuit, and Métis community partners. 
• Work with our First Nations, Inuit, and/or Métis partner communities and school boards to identify community/ school needs and opportunities that have not been identified in the past.

• Ensure First Nations, Métis and Inuit students feel and see the diversity of their lived experiences represented in the physical space, different programs, and their respective curriculum. Ensure that such representations do not reproduce a pan-Indigenous perspective. 
• Create, support, and sustain Indigenous excellence with community, using circles and on the land experiences. 
• Establish professional learning opportunities for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to learn with and from different First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities here in Ottawa and elsewhere. 
• Create several different scholarship and funding opportunities for First Nations, Inuit, Métis students.

The Faculty of Education leadership will initiate, support and sustain the conditions for the following additional steps during the 2021-2022 academic year. A key overarching goal is to complete a long-term action plan that will continue to guide us well into the future. This work will be guided by the following principles:

• Ethical engagement: A commitment to ethically engage with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis community members, students and staff, and community partners in crafting our long-term action plan;
• Reciprocity: A commitment to strive for reciprocal relationships with First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities and individuals with whom we collaborate;
• Respect: A commitment to be aware of the additional work that may inadvertently be borne by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis members within or outside of the Faculty of Education and to conduct the process with respect, reciprocity, and sensitivity.

The following specific actions are planned.

To engage our community:

• We will organise a series of opportunities focused on actions that different partners would like to see in different aspects of our activities (e.g., teacher education, graduate programs, research, services);
• We will create and facilitate activities focused on Indigenous rights for our Faculty Assemblies and on other occasions during the year;
• We will co-review our co-research and professional learning partnerships with local school boards and First Nations, Inuit and Métis partners to identify unaddressed needs and opportunities;
• We will engage with partners within the University (e.g., TLSS, other Faculties) to propose new joint initiatives focused on addressing Indigenous rights.
   

In the coming year:

• We will review and revise faculty and program policy documents, including professor and student guides, from an Indigenous rights perspective to update language and expectations, policies, protocols and compensation, etc.;
• We will review our programs and courses to ensure that they reflect and include First Nations, Inuit, and Métis perspectives, contributions and rights, as well as the responsibilities of all educators with respect to these rights;
• We will review the Faculty of Education’s internal and external communications to ensure they reflect our values;
• We will provide support for professors to respectfully and authentically incorporate First Nations, Inuit, and Métis perspectives and content in their teaching, in Indigenous, francophone and anglophone sectors;
• We will implement learning opportunities on Indigenous rights for professors and administrative personnel of the Faculty of Education;
• Will contribute to the development of Anishinabe-Algonquin and francophone educational materials and resources;
• We will add additional elective courses in our teacher education programs, professional development program, and micro-accreditations in our graduate programs;
• We will adopt the upcoming United Nations Decade of Indigenous languages and develop actions to contribute to its goals; and,
• We will complete an action plan for the future that seeks to ensure that the Faculty of Education enacts these responsibilities in the years ahead.
   

Together, we, the members of the Faculty of Education, recognize and undertake to enact our responsibilities to promote and maintain Indigenous rights through education within the Faculty of Education, with the Anishinabe Algonquin Nation, other First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people, as well as in our schools, communities, society, and beyond.

We recognize that this is a learning journey and will seek adjustments to this document where and when necessary. Further, we acknowledge when learning and adapting we may make inadvertent mistakes—we invite colleagues to enact a ‘calling-in’ process where we may deepen our relationships with each other as we engage in co-learning.

Notes:

In using the term “Indigenous” we recognize the multiple distinct peoples, cultures and languages of the peoples of what is now called Canada, including the First Nations, Métis and Inuit.

These rights are internationally recognized and affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (of which Canada is, belatedly, a signatory). UNDRIP includes several articles recognizing the importance of education in the rights of Indigenous peoples, including articles 14 and 15.