In 2025, Colleges and Institutes Canada renewed its Indigenous Education Protocol, reaffirming the postsecondary sector’s shared commitment to advancing reconciliation through action.
Informed by more than a decade of learning, listening, and relationship‑building, the renewed Protocol reflects Indigenous leadership and aligns more closely with Indigenous‑led frameworks, contemporary priorities, and lived realities.
Responsibility and shared commitments
Through the renewed Indigenous Education Protocol, signatory institutions affirm their responsibility and obligation to Indigenous education and to advancing key national commitments.
These commitments include the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which affirms the right of Indigenous Peoples to control, protect, and develop their education systems and institutions. They also include the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action related to education, language revitalization, and professional development, as well as the Calls to Justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which call for transformative, Indigenous‑led education and cultural competency.
Colleges and institutes recognize that Indigenous Peoples include First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples, each with distinct cultures, languages, histories, and contemporary perspectives. Advancing reconciliation requires approaches that respect these distinctions and are grounded in meaningful, reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities.
From Commitment to Coordinated Action
The renewal reflects CICan’s broader direction to mobilize the collective strength of the college and institute system around shared priorities.
The Protocol provides a common foundation for institutions to move together from commitment to coordinated action, while responding to local contexts and community priorities. It serves both as a shared statement of responsibility and as a practical framework to guide action.
Grounded in relationship, respect, and shared accountability, the renewed Indigenous Education Protocol supports institutions at every stage of their reconciliation journey. It helps translate values into sustained action that supports learner success, self‑determination, and community priorities.
Seven Principles to Guide Reconcili‑ACTION
The renewed Indigenous Education Protocol is grounded in seven principles that reflect what Indigenous partners have consistently emphasized as essential to reconciliation in education.
Together, these principles translate shared commitments into practical, Indigenous‑led action. They are intended to guide decision‑making, shape institutional relationships, and support progress that is locally grounded and responsive to community priorities.
- Commit to making Indigenous education a priority.
- Ensure governance structures recognize and respect Indigenous peoples.
- Implement intellectual and cultural traditions of Indigenous peoples through curriculum and learning approaches relevant to learners and communities.
- Support students and employees to increase understanding and reciprocity among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
- Commit to increasing the number of Indigenous employees with ongoing appointments, throughout the institution, including Indigenous senior administrators.
- Establish Indigenous-centered, culturally relevant, healing-centered trauma-informed practices and learning environments for learner success.
- Build relationships and partnerships with Indigenous Institutes, Nations and communities to support capacity building and knowledge-sharing, protect Indigenous knowledge, and be accountable to Indigenous communities in support of self-determination through education, training, and applied research.
About the Principles
The seven principles are intended to guide action, not prescribe a single approach.
Institutions are expected to advance them in ways that reflect their local Indigenous partnerships, community priorities, and institutional contexts. Together, the principles support collective movement across the sector while respecting the diversity of Indigenous Nations, communities, and learners.
They also provide a foundation for shared learning, reflection, and accountability over time.
Becoming a Signatory
By signing or recommitting to the Indigenous Education Protocol, colleges and institutes affirm their commitment to reconciliation through action.
Signatories commit to aligning institutional policies, practices, and partnerships with the Protocol’s principles and to learning and moving forward alongside Indigenous communities.
Signing the Protocol signals shared leadership across the postsecondary system and a collective commitment to supporting Indigenous learners, communities, and self‑determination.