In the autumn of 1976, administrators at the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) began to notice a statistical anomaly that would soon force a fundamental reckoning within the Canadian academic establishment. In 1969, there had been barely 800 Indian students enrolled in university-level courses across the entire country. Eight years later, that number had surged to nearly 4,300. Departmental projections suggested that by the 1981-82 academic year, the figure would crash through the 10,000 mark.
The financial implications were immediate and staggering. Student support budgets had ballooned from a manageable $436,000 in 1969 to over $5 million in 1976, with an anticipated requirement of nearly $11 million by the turn of the decade. But behind the ledger sheets lay a far more complex human and institutional drama. As Indian students began to occupy spaces in lecture halls from British Columbia to Newfoundland, the department realized it was flying blind. They commissioned Dr. E. R. Daniels, Chief of Education and Cultural Development, to travel across the country and answer three critical questions: How were universities viewing this new constituency? What were their plans? And perhaps most urgently, were they ready? .
The resulting internal document, University-Level Education for Indian People, captures a pivotal moment in Canadian history where demographic inevitability collided with institutional inertia. It portrays a university system paralyzed by funding freezes, confused by constitutional jurisdiction, and deeply ambivalent about how (or if)it should adapt to serve Indigenous communities.
The Constituency Gap: Who is Responsible?
Dr. Daniels’ tour covered the major academic hubs, from the University of British Columbia to Memorial University in Newfoundland . What he found was a fragmented landscape of responsibility. When he asked university administrators if they viewed Indian people as an integral part of their “constituency,” the answers varied wildly based on geography and philosophy.
In many corridors of power, the “Indian problem” was viewed as a federal matter, rooted in the British North America Act rather than in the university’s obligation to the residents of its province. Administrators argued that they had rural, isolated non-Indian communities they hadn’t yet reached, and that the constitutional status of Indian people often made their needs “more obvious” than those of other neglected groups. This bureaucratic deflection allowed institutions to claim that even the meager services they provided were “more than was being made available” to comparable populations.
However, there were stark exceptions that highlighted the possibilities of integration. Daniels pointed to the University of Lethbridge in Southern Alberta as a model of inclusivity. Located near the Blood Indian Reserve, the university had taken the stance that its mandate was to serve all Southern Albertans, regardless of treaty status . Lethbridge had established a Department of North American Indian Studies headed by a Blood Indian scholar, included Indians in its Senate, and offered credit courses directly on the Blood and Peigan Reserves .
At Lethbridge, the atmosphere was distinct. There was no sense of “two groups,” but rather a single body utilizing a single institution . This contrasted sharply with other campuses where Indian students and faculty were viewed as a separate entity with separate demands, creating an environment of friction rather than collaboration.
The Economics of “Standing Pat”
The study identified a critical economic barrier preventing widespread adoption of the Lethbridge model: the funding crisis. By 1976, the era of rapid university expansion was over. Provincial governments, reacting to calls for fiscal restraint and a “return to basics,” had frozen the generous grants that once encouraged innovation .
Universities were no longer operating in an atmosphere of adventure; they were “standing pat” and making do. In Ontario, for example, the “Basic Instruction Unit” (BIU) funding model meant that budgets were locked into the previous year’s enrollment figures. If a university wanted to launch a specialized program to support Indian students (which inevitably required higher costs for counseling and curriculum development)it had to cannibalize its own internal resources or seek external cash.
This created a catch-22. Administrators were willing to admit Indian students to regular programs, but they were financially disincentivized from creating the special programs necessary for those students to succeed . The report noted that provisions like modified admission requirements, cultural curriculum adjustments, and intense tutorial services were viewed as “additional costs”. University Senates, concerned with protecting the “quality” of their degrees and the funding ratios of their faculties, were unlikely to prioritize Indian needs without a guarantee of external money.
The report posed a haunting question about the sustainability of this model: “How long does ‘special’ remain special?”. Unless these programs could transition from “special projects” into the university’s core operating budget, they were doomed to vanish the moment federal grants dried up.
The “Hard Science” Void and the Role Model Crisis
One of the most alarming findings of the 1977 study was the skewed distribution of Indian students across academic disciplines. The vast majority were clustered in Education and North American Indian Studies, with a significant number in Social Work, Law, and Sociology .
The absence of Indian students in the hard sciences was total. The report listed the grim statistics: zero students in engineering, zero in architecture, zero in agriculture or forestry, zero in veterinary medicine, and zero in geology. There were only two students in pre-medicine programs and one in dentistry across the entire surveyed landscape.
Daniels probed the reasons for this imbalance. The immediate cause was a lack of “hard science” background (mathematics, physics, chemistry)stemming from the Grade 7 and 8 levels in secondary schools. But the report dug deeper, suggesting a psychological and sociological barrier. Indian students flocked to Education because the role model of the teacher was visible, attainable, and possessed status within their communities.
Conversely, professions like engineering, geology, and medicine were often viewed through a lens of antagonism. To many Indian communities, these figures appeared only as “representatives of external authorities regulating, altering and threatening the cultural milieu and natural environment”. A geologist or engineer was not seen as a community builder, but as an agent of intrusion. Consequently, these career paths were rejected not just for academic reasons, but because they were “societally unacceptable”.
The report argued that career counseling was failing Indian students. Too often, they were processed into “general pattern” streams in high school or dismissed as merely being “good at Art,” effectively closing the door on scientific careers before they even reached university age .
The Battle for the Off-Campus Degree
Perhaps the most contentious issue identified in the study was the refusal of universities to offer full four-year degrees in off-campus, on-reserve settings. While many universities (including Brandon, Saskatoon, and Calgary)had successfully implemented two-year off-campus programs, they drew a hard line at the third and fourth years.
The academic justification was that upper-year students needed “residence” on campus to access libraries, laboratories, and the “broadening horizons” of university life . However, the report gave voice to the students’ counter-argument, which was rooted in the harsh realities of displacement.
For the typical Indian student (often in their 30s, with dependents and limited finances)moving to an urban campus meant facing a “crowded, impersonal, somewhat hostile” environment. The support systems of the reserve were lost, and the financial burden of city living was often insurmountable. Students argued that the so-called “interaction” on campus was a myth; many felt isolated and believed that the sharing they could achieve within their own communities was far more beneficial.
The report suggested that the university’s resistance was less about pedagogy and more about perception. There was a lingering belief that an off-campus degree represented a “lowering of standards” and that staff who worked in such programs were of a “lesser breed”. Daniels noted the hypocrisy of this stance: universities had already discarded the comprehensive exam and the on-campus residency requirement for many graduate degrees, yet they clung to these barriers for Indigenous undergraduates.
The Separatist Hypothesis
Hovering over the entire study was a “scenario” that Daniels presented to university administrators: the threat of educational separatism. He hypothesized that if Indian people continued to perceive universities as indifferent, ineffective, and psychologically damaging, they would inevitably seek to establish their own independent institutions .
This was not merely a thought experiment. The report noted the existence of nascent institutions like the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural College and the Federated Indian College at the University of Regina as symptoms of this desire. In this scenario, Indian organizations would bypass the provinces entirely, seeking direct federal funding to build a parallel university system.
The reaction from provincial and university officials was telling. While acknowledging the legitimacy of the frustration, they expressed hope that such a split “would not need to arise”. However, the report noted that if such a separation did occur, it would stand as a monument to the “real failure of universities to do what must be done”.
The End of “Gentle Steps”
The 1977 study concluded with a warning that the era of gradualism was over. While some observers comforted themselves with the idea of “generation increment”, that the children of farmers become teachers, and their children become doctors, this slow climb was rejected by Indian students and communities .
The argument from the communities was clear: “too many generations have already been missed”. The “one gentle step at a time” approach was no longer acceptable in an era of social unrest and rising consumer demand.
Dr. Daniels ended his report with a series of aggressive recommendations. He called for funds to be “locked in” specifically for Indian student assistance , for the Department to force the issue of full off-campus degrees , and for a complete overhaul of career counseling starting at Grade 7. The trajectory was set: the 800 students of 1969 were becoming the 10,000 of 1982, and the Canadian university system could no longer afford to stand pat.
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Source Documents
Daniels, E. R. (1977, March). University-Level Education for Indian People: A Study Paper. Department of Indian and Northern Affairs.
Using ‘Indian’ rather than Indigenous or First Nation mars this contribution.