Improvements

"The Indian contributes to the revenue just as well as the white man. He buys taxed goods, he wears taxed clothes, he drinks taxed tea, or perhaps excised whiskey, just as well as the white man; and according to the liberal principle (the Liberal party in 1885 opposed Macdonald's plan to expand the suffrage to some Indians), we are to have taxation without representation in the case of the poor Indian. . . I can remember how the benevolent abolitionists brought the uneducated slaves from the Southern States by the underground railway into Western Canada, where they got homes. And those men, although unaccustomed to freedom, although just emerging from serfdom, when they came to Canada and had lived here for three years . . . became voters. . . And here are Indians, aboriginal Indians, formerly the lords of the soil, formerly owning the whole of the country. Here they are in their own land, preventing from either sitting in this House, or voting for men to come here and represent their interests. There are a hundred and twenty thousand of these people, who are virtually and actually disenfranchised, who complain, and justly complain, that they have no representation."
Sir John A. Macdonald, Commons Debates, 30 April  and 4 May 1885, pp. 1488, 1575.

[In 1885 Sir John A. Macdonald's Franchise Act gave all adult Indians living in eastern Canada the right to vote without, as in the past, having to give up in exchange any of their special rights as Aboriginals. The Act lasted until 1898 when the franchise was taken away by the Laurier government. Few First Nations people used the ballot.]

The Acts commonly known as the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869 were almost uniformly aimed at removing any special distinction or rights afforded First Nations peoples and at assimilating them into the larger settler population. This was initially meant to be accomplished by the Gradual Civilization Act through voluntary enfranchisement (i.e., a First Nations person would relinquish their status in exchange for land and the right to vote), but only one person voluntarily enfranchised.
                                                                                  The Canadian Encyclopedia

[Frank Calder was born in the Nass River Valley in northern British Columbia in1915. At the age of 9 he attended a Methodist mission school at Coqualeetza for four years, a government funded residential school for four years and the Chilliwack high school for four years. He returned to the Nass Valley every summer to fish. Frank Calder was the first aboriginal to graduate from high school, to graduate from UBC, to be elected to any legislature or parliament and to be appointed a cabinet minister. He successful fought for title to Nisga's lands.]

Hereditary Chief Alfred Scow of Gilford Island became the first Aboriginal person in BC to graduate from law school in 1961.

"Teachers from all over the world, from England, Denmark, Germany, the Philipines, from the United States and Africa. They stay for one year. . . The teacher will walk up to the school, open the door and, very often find that the basement has flooded.  There is no oil. There is no electric light. There is no sign of school books or supplies. . . As the days passed, the teacher started to realize that there were  more important things in the village than education and the school . . . The whole village was balanced so precariously between survival and disaster that learning was a form of leisure, having very little connection with the future. . . If the teacher survived the first year, he would develop an empathy with the people of the village. If he survived the second year, he would see the separate identities of each individual, the class structures, the feuds, the family solidarities and jealousies. He would feel the strength of the community, the steel blade of a culture normally hidden by the mists of prejudice and prejudgment. If he survived the third year, he would begin to hate his own selfish society."
John Gibson,  employed by the Department of Social Welfare on the BC coast, A Small and Charming World, 1972

Jordan's Principle
Jordan’s Principle is a child-first principle [passed by the Government of Canada in December 2007] that ensures First Nations children can access the same public services as other children in Canada. Jordan’s Principle is named for Jordan River Anderson, a young Cree boy who died at the age of five after waiting for home-based care that was approved when he was two but never arrived because of a financial dispute between the federal and provincial governments. Jordan’s Principle was put in place to ensure a tragedy like this never happens again.
Jordan’s Principle is an initiative to ensure that First Nations children who require support to meet a health, education or social need — as recommended by a professional — can access those services in the same ways as other children in Canada.
                                                                                Jennifer Brant, Michelle Filice

Stained Glass Window in Parliament Commemorating the Legacy of Indian Residential Schools, Government of Canada, 2008, https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/DAM/DAM-INTER-HQ-AI/STAGING/texte-text/sgw_sgwdc_web_1354719933066_eng.pdf