Northern Nishnawbe Education Council (NNEC) Quotes in Seven Fallen Feathers
At the inquest, […] the lawyer for six of the seven families bluntly stated Robyn's death was no accident—he called it a homicide. […] Homicide, in a coroner's inquest, does not require proof of intention—it is simply the killing of a human being due to the act or omission of another. […] [The lawyer] stated categorically: "We hold NNEC responsible for what happened to Robyn. There is no question the NNEC is trying its best, and there's not a lot of money, but they did have services they held out to be capable and competent and they were neither.""
And yet still the inequities rage. Northern First Nations families are faced with the horrific choice of either sending their children to high school in a community that cannot guarantee their safety, or keeping them at home and hoping distance education will be enough. Families are still being told—more than twenty years after the last residential school was shut down—that they must surrender their children for them to gain an education. Handing over the reins to Indigenous education authorities such as the NNEC without giving them the proper funding tools is another form of colonial control and racism.