For the past few summers, a bus has rumbled onto the campus of the University of Victoria carrying a group of aboriginal high-school students from around Vancouver Island. Many of them have come from remote villages of a few hundred people. There might be one stoplight in their town. There might be none.
Once the kids get off the bus, they usually look around wearing quizzical expressions that say: Where the heck are we?
There are people everywhere - thousands of them. And big, beautiful buildings. It isn't long before a man with a video camera starts asking the Grade 8 to 11 students what they want to be when they grow up.
The question elicits mostly inaudible grumblings. No one is sure. Most of the kids have never dreamed big dreams. For many, life to this point has been all about survival.
This is how the first day of UVic's week-long mini-university summer camp for aboriginal students usually begins. Over the next week, the kids will stay in residence and be exposed for the first time to everything a great university offers.
They will discover a universe they didn't know existed.
At the end of the week, before they hop back on the bus that will take them home, the kids are interviewed again. The man with the video recorder asks them the same question he did when they first arrived.
"This is the best part," university president David Turpin says. "They look into the camera and they say: 'I want to build underwater robots. I want to be a biologist. I want to be a mechanical engineer. I want to go to law school. They are completely transformed and charged up by the experience. They suddenly have something to dream about."
I don't know why, but when Mr. Turpin told me that story recently over lunch, I was really moved. And when he told me about what the university is doing to attract more aboriginal students to its campus, I thought: This is one of the best good-news stories of the year.
The level of academic achievement in the aboriginal community remains one of the country's most pressing and perplexing problems.
In 2001, 48 per cent of the aboriginal population in this country had failed to complete high school. Only 2 per cent had obtained a university degree, which was down from census information obtained in 1996.
A couple of years ago, UVic started the LE,NONET project. LE,NONET is a coast Salish word that translates roughly into: "Achieving success after enduring many hardships." Its goal is to help create an environment on campus that is more relevant to aboriginal students.
Those participating in the project can take advantage of research apprenticeships where they are teamed up with faculty advisers who have similar research interests. There is a community internship program that allows students to take what they are learning and apply it in some form for a semester in a native community. There is peer mentoring where incoming students are paired with someone who has been at the school for a few years. There is a mandatory preparation course that helps first-year students get ready.
Why do aboriginal students need a program like this? The majority of the student population at a university tends to be young and fresh out of high school. Aboriginal students often arrive on campus in their mid-to-late-20s. Many are single mothers.
UVic now offers more than 100 courses on aboriginal issues and has nearly 20 faculty members of aboriginal descent. The school is building a First People's House in the middle of campus that will be finished in 2009. It will be a place where aboriginal students and faculty can gather. It will also be a huge statement by the university that aboriginal students are valued and welcome.
The school's efforts are paying off. In 2000, UVic had 76 students who identified themselves as aboriginal. Last year, the number was 620.
This is how we are going to get more aboriginal students to our universities, the way the University of Victoria is doing it. Because the aboriginal students in the summer program will go home and tell their brothers and sisters what a great experience they had. They will be changed and empowered and become role models in their communities.
And increasingly, they will be leaders in any field they care to dream of.
