Mi'kmaq College Institute (CBU)

The Mi'kmaq College Institute (MCI) at Cape Breton University in Sydney has been welcoming students and promoting Mi’kmaw education and research for over 20 years. Since its inception in the late 1980s, MCI has helped develop B.Sc. curriculum that integrates traditional knowledge; offered credit courses in Mi’kmaw communities; developed certificate programs reflecting Aboriginal culture; and helped foster a significant increase in the number of Mi'kmaw students enrolled at CBU.
 
“MCI is in an exciting time,” says the Institute’s Associate Dean Lindsay Marshall. “In the 1970s and 80s, we had a very sparse number of Mi’kmaw students. In 2000, there were 67 students enrolled. In 2008, there were 272. In a few short years we’ve grown, and continue to grow. With current enrolment, that means in a couple of years there will be 500 alumni.”
 
Marshall says a higher number of university graduates means more Mi’kmaq are able to make an impact in their communities—both economically and as role models.
 
“The more people who get educated, the stronger our communities become,” he says. “MCI is a vehicle for people to get an education. We want to empower people and give them freedom.”
 
Marshall says a lot of Mi'kmaw graduates from Cape Breton University (CBU) have moved on to other post-secondary pursuits—in education, law, public administration—and are now in positions of authority. Many Mi’kmaw teachers, in particular, are CBU graduates, says Marshall.
 
Brittany Fitzgerald, now a junior high level teacher at Wagmatcookewey School in Cape Breton, is one of those graduates. Fitzgerald says she saw the value of Mi'kmaq College Institute on her very first visit to campus.
 
After starting at another university in the fall of 2004, Fitzgerald decided to switch to CBU to be closer to her home town. It was the last day of registration when she arrived. Not knowing the campus, and with only one day to sort out courses and paperwork, Fitzgerald stopped by Mi’kmaq College Institute for some advice.
 
“I am sure they dropped whatever they had to do,” she says, “and helped me pick classes, get registered and find my way around.” Fitzgerald says without their help, she would not have been able to register.
 
Four years later, Fitzgerald not only completed a BA, but went on to study education. In 2008 she became the first Mi'kmaw student to graduate in the newly-created CBU/Memorial University B.Ed. program.
 
Fitzgerald is from Wagmatcook, a Mi’kmaw community of about 700 people, 51 km west of Sydney. “Being from a community where everybody is close-knit and people support each other,” says Fitzgerald, “when you are away from that it can be easy for people to feel disconnected.”
 
To Fitzgerald, MCI provided a bridge between school and home. “If you need help or have questions about research or anything, everybody’s just there no matter what,” she says. “It’s also a space just to hang out as you are.”
 
Lindsay Marshall says the centre meets different needs for different students—a place for them to do their work, to ask questions, a place for support or advocacy, a place to relax. “We like to promote this area as a home away from home,” says Marshall. “I’d like to call it an extension of the community.”
 
Marshall says one key to MCI’s success is its commitment to community input and partnering with others.
 
“We are growing here inside the university, but we’re looking at development at the community level as well.” In response to requests by Band Councils, they have held on-site university courses at all five Cape Breton Mi'kmaw communities, plus Millbrook and Indian Brook in central Nova Scotia.
 
“We’ve developed a partnership with Nova Scotia Department of Education and Mi'kmaw Kina’matnewey [a Mi’kmaw education organization with ten member communities] to perhaps deliver language courses on-line,” says Marshall.
 
And partnership is not limited to within Nova Scotia, or even Eastern Canada. In 2008, MCI took part in an exchange with Universidad Andira del Cusco in Peru. “They were one of the groups looking at MCI as a model for their university to encourage indigenous people to attend university,” says Marshall.
 
“As indigenous people we are part of a larger global community. We have a lot in common.”
 
The creation of MCI in the late 1980s gave the Mi'kmaq a voice in the university context, says Marshall. “What’s important here for us here at MCI, and for me personally, is that we not only have a voice here, but we have faces that sit around the tables—involved in discussions and decisions. To make sure that as we grow our voices are heard.”