Who?
How do you define who belongs to or who comes from Indigenous education?  In schools families are always asked to self-identify as Indigenous to qualify for more money - why? Federal vs provincial funding.  As an Indigenous person, I always wonder when I check the box for my son - how does he benefit from the funds they get for him? Sometimes I don’t check the box because I can, and if the school is not providing any services for him - the school should not receive the money. Who is Indigenous education wether we check the box or not, is someone who comes from an Indigenous family that attends a school or program - The Indigenous person is from a local community or  from a community  from afar. 
 
What?
What is Indigenous education? Indigenous education, from my experience, is a term that was created for political reasons to show a sign of acknowledgement - but from our point of view it can also be a sign of difference.  If we are defining things like Indigenous education, it is because we do not fit into the mainstream education system. Indigenous education is not mainstream education and curriculum.  Indigenous education extends beyond classroom rows, pens, paper and books. Indigenous education is acknowledging the Indigenous students as belonging to the land, even the land which the school resides on. We are different and that is ok -acknowledge that we are different but we can co-exist. Don’t see Indigenous education as an extra because it is not. 

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When?
When did Indigenous education come into existence? I do not know any specific dates of when Indigenous education came into existence because I live it.  In our worlds, it begins when we were born and carries into a public school system as a separate defined category.  Our experience with Indigenous education in the school system is different than our lives but we sure remember how we were treated by educators and school systems.

Within our own communities in 1970s we had a movement happen called "Indian Control of Indian Education" and this movement was our own people acknowledging and fighting for our rights to have a school system to include and teach about our people.  In grade 4 I learned about the fur trade, the gold rush and all those events but never learned anything about how our people were gracious enough to help some of these new comers.  I remember learning abut newcomers and I did not know what that really meant but they were literally newcomers to our land! They were here to make a buck or settle on pieces of land for the rest of their lives and for future generations to come. 

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Why? 
Why is Indigenous education important? Because we have no choice in education, we are stuck in the routines of society to become law abiding citizens. But more-so, every school that is in our local territories exist because our people were kind enough to welcome newcomers into our homelands. Indigenous education is important because the colonial structure and acts against our people - harmed our way of life and harmed our way of being - so much that intergenerational trauma is real in our communities. Language loss is real. Culture loss is real. Without these parts of our lives, we can sometimes find ourselves trying to fit in all the boxes that are outlined by society. We are too often judged by others because of lack of understanding of why we may struggle in a mainstream school. There are many layers to our stories but there is no real space given to our people. Acknowledgment that you and. your ancestors  are visitors to this land we call home.  No we did not cross the bering straight land bridge. 

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Where?
Where should Indigenous education exist? Indigenous education should exist at all levels in education systems. Top all the way down to the students in the classrooms. Localizing education as much as you can is very important. Do you know who’s traditional land your school is on?  And no, it will not be MST. Localizing education might be difficult but it’s not that hard to go outside onto the local landscape and learn about what you see. With time, more resources will become avaliable, but we too are rebuilding many parts to who we are as Nations - we’ve never surrendered all parts of who we are - but now we are reconnecting with intergenerational transmission.  We are building up our language speakers, we are weaving, we are hunting, we are gathering resources, we are cedar harvesting, and we are fishing. Among many things, but we are thriving within the colonial construct over our homelands.