With the 2023/24 school year beginning, Six Nations Elected Council (SNEC) approved an operations budget of $38,000 for the Six Nations Anti Bullying Task Force on Aug. 23.
The task force was created in 2019 after claims were brought forward by community members of students being bullied within Six Nations’ five federally run schools which are operated by Indigenous Services Canada. Since then, the task force has operated without a budget.
The budget approved last month will provide the task force help in a policy review currently being conducted surrounding community bullying and lateral violence. The task force says they would like to outsource that work to a consulting firm given the task force’s lack of staffing.
Jennifer Mt. Pleasant, task force lead, detailed the review that a task force sub working group is currently working on.
“We collected 11 community policies, mostly workplace as well as educational policies around lateral violence and bullying. The goal of that sub working group is to analyze those policies and do a gap analysis and figure out if those policies are working, if not, what kind of recommendations can we make to make those policies more effective.”
She says the task force was left short staffed after one of the groups policy analysts’ left the sub working group and explained the decision to include the price of hiring a consulting team in the budget.
“We decided that it’s going to be too much for this working group to do,” she said.
“So we decided to put that into the needs budget to kind of outsource that work and hire a consulting firm that specializes in policy review.”
The operations budget that was approved also included funding for salaries and honorariums for task force members, advertising and community engagement events.
Six Nations Chief Mark Hill spoke on ways to help offset costs suggesting involving Six Nations Federal Schools could be an option.
“I’ll touch base with the Federal Schools because I know we were going back and forth on some funds anyways, so maybe this is an area where that could potentially be funded as well.”
Mt. Pleasant says the task force does have communication with both Six Nations Federal Schools and the Grand Erie District School Board (GEDSB).
She says the task force currently has plans to perform three total surveys within Six Nations: An Adult Community Survey that is almost completed; a Youth Survey that was approved by GEDSB to be available for all Six Nations high school students throughout the school board; and an upcoming Staff Survey that will be conducted this October.
SNEC approved the $38,000 operating budget for Six Nations Anti Bullying Task Force sourced by funds within the Ontario First Nations Limited Partnership funds.
