Communities in the Northwest Territories are feeling the impact of the 2017 suspension of the territory’s only teacher training program, according to a recent article by CBC. Joni Tsatchia—one of the last graduates of the program at Aurora College—told CBC that the program allowed her to train and work in her own community. “I wasn’t too far to travel back [home] during the holidays. And the majority of my instructors were Indigenous,” she said. South Slave Divisional Education Council Superintendent Souhail Soujah explained that a recent survey of Indigenous staff found that Indigenous representation among the teaching staff was “severely lacking,” and that the return of a teacher education program based in the North would be “extremely helpful.”
