The Vancouver Sun, Thursday, September 29,1988 tk

NATIVE PROTESTERS: demonstrators hold rally on the a

tudents protest funding cuts

More than 100 native Indian stu-
dents and supporters attended a
rally at Robson Square Wednesday
to protest changes by the federal
government in the allocation of
funds for post-secondary education.

Speakers complained that a
recent policy announcment by the
department of Indian and northern

s

affairs will unfairly limit funding for
qualified native students,
Student Sharon Shorty of White-
horse, a spokesman for the Inter
Campus Native Student’ Ad Hoc
Committee on Native Education
Concerns, said the government's
new policy of “capping” native post-

secondary education funds would hit

ee

rt gallery steps. Wednesday

returning students and post-gradu-
ate students the hardest.

As a result, she said, fewer adult
and mature students would be able
to attend post-secondary institu-
tions.

Shorty said the number of native
students entrolled in federal-funded
post-secondary education programs
had risen from 3,500 in 1977 to about
12,000 in 1987.

These students, she said, “have

broken many barriers in their

upward struggle for education.”
Even so, she continued, “native peo-
ple are still under-represented in
post-secondary institutions.”

A decade ago, she said, only one
per cent of native secondary school

graduates successfully completed
. post-secondary courses and today

the figure is still less than two per

- cent