 My name is Arthur Anthony. I'm a program facilitator. It's called Ujuzan Aknuk Muadal, Wind Talkers. Our program is sponsored by the Queens Learning Network and what we try to do with our program is we're helping adults to read better and encouraging them to read to their children. And through the program we introduce our books and our learning material to so that the parents learn or the aunts, uncles, grandmothers, whoever comes, friends can take it home and teach the same thing that we teach to them to the children. The program begins in the evening with an opening prayer. We then have a light meal which we share together as fellowship and to lighten the mood and to get all used to each other and that kind of thing. And then we go on through a 20-week program. We learn some basic Mi'kmaq language beginning with the phonetics or the orthography of the language and then we go on to use the orthography to put it together with words that people would use every day or could use every day or that they would be familiar with. And we build on from there and teach like conversation like Gwee, hello, Medaille, how are you and those kind of things. This is the third year we have people that have come back for two years. I'm not sure if we have any third year people or not. And last year the program was approved for two years so we'll be going into our fourth year next year with it. We are a shy people and getting to know someone that you don't know and we do over the 20-week period get to know each other and we do spend the 40 hours together but we've also spent we spend time outside of the classroom together and become friends so I would say that that's how people have changed and we have the opportunity to greet each other in our own language on the street and to to learn about our culture too. I think people get a lot of enjoyment out of the program. We try to make it that way so that it's not all like a hard learning lesson that it's that people can have fun and learn some language. We teach we touch on a lot of about our culture and try to emphasize things such as the four sacred medicines, the eagle feather, what these mean to our culture, our drum, our rattles and some of the tools that we use and we talk about how we lived years ago, 500 years ago. We use books and materials that at the end of the program everyone gets all these books and we have a lot of hand out material that we give as well that they are able to take home and continue to look at and to continue to practice with and to be able to share with their families which is the focus of of the program. Without language a culture is not a culture. It must have its language. I listened to a program on the radio the other day where there are at least 60 to 70 Indigenous languages being spoken in Canada now and each day as people pass on these languages are lost because there's no one to speak them anymore. So it's very important that we at least try to have people learn parts of the language through us. It's a it's a very complex language, Mi'kmaq, and for me at my age to try to learn it would be very difficult but I just hoped that by us passing this on to our children that a lot of our children or some of our children or even one of our children were to take interest in and continue on to learn the language and be able to speak it would be an awesome achievement. We have one little girl I suspect she's eight or nine years old that attends our class. We also have a young boy attends our class as well and I know that the little girl takes the material to school and she presents it to her class and she presents it to other classes little bits at a time what she understands and what she knows. She's a drummer, she drums and she sings and she takes that to her class. She understands the impacts of being teased about this because it has happened to her and through some of our teachings and through her own mother she has grown stronger and understands you know as hard as it might hurt sometimes but she continues on. I know that we have an older couple that come and they take it home to their grandchildren and they tell them stories about it about what we teach and each little bit of knowledge that is passed on may create a spark or may create interest to have that young child want to learn more take these books and read them and the more they read the more they they can find out and they can learn that they can talk to elders about things and I think that it's a very strong growth tool for these children. Activities when time allows we do make medicine bags we do make we do an eagle feather for each person to take home and we had been making these as well these are the this is the pouch that gipu found in the forest right down to the gold thread the bag is tied together with there is a message inside the bag that says that there are seven sacred teachings it's a little hard for me to get this opened up now because the the birch bark is hardened but what it tells is that there are seven sacred teachings in this bag and that if you follow these teachings you will live live in peace harmony and balance throughout your life but beware of envy and greed and then it goes on he goes on through the forest eagle does and each lesson he takes to the forest and teaches to one he teaches the lesson to one of the animals in the forest and then that animal becomes a knowledge keeper for that particular teaching and he goes through and finally lesson number seven is the truth which he carries himself and what happens when you don't follow this and how the wolf came in and created envy and greed amongst the animals in the forest how everything fell apart and harmony was broken the peace was broken the balance was broken and how hard gipu had to work to get that back and when you see gipu and scott you know that gipu is watching over us and watching over to make sure this peace harmony and balance is maintained i love doing this i love to be able to learn myself and i feel that any little bits and pieces that i can pass on to people i know that my grandchildren when they come to the house there's always so much neat stuff at papa's house because papa has rattles that he's made from deer hooves that our people were used and used on by and how we made different rattles from rawhide and the contents what what it means to fill a rattle this one is filled with the three sisters beans corn and squash and we tell the story about how important it is that you grow beans corn and squash together because each one helps the other the squash shades the ground so the weeds don't grow the beans grow up the corn stalks and then it all enriches the soil so that's what that is filled with we teach that story i have also a beaver tooth knife which would have been used years ago to make spoons or bowls before there was any metal around or anything else they would use beaver teeth or they would use porcupine teeth or any hard teeth like that that were able to be mounted and sharp sharpened these would be sharpened on a rock and that's what they would use and then when the colonials arrived crocodiles were made with steel blades and it's known that anyone any man woman or child could make a canoe using only that as a tool so those are the things that we pass along as well and we'd like to see passed through the queen's learning network we get our funding from them they pay for the whole thing they pay for all the books they pay for the facilitators they pay for any craft work that we may do we have tonight we have a speaker coming in that wrote this book and he's coming in to present to the class so it helps pay for the expenses for that speaker to come in pays for our meals that we have if someone needs a babysitter so that they're not hindered coming here it will cover the cost of a babysitter for the time while they're here so it's this partnership is very strong also we have of course the cooperation of the native council Nova Scotia provides facility for us to to work at here just to go back to the program the program pays for all the paper pays for all the printing ink everything that we need for for the program is covered and we use the equipment here is used and so that partnership is very strong providing the place for us to be able to put this on I was fortunate enough to be able to I took some night school programs to learn the basic phonetics of the language and so I'm able to pass that on my knowledge of the language is very small compared to the vastness and the complexity of the language but we learn about we do learn the phonetics we do learn about what to call our mom and our dad and our grandmother a great grandmother a sister brother we don't have to say all those words in me we learn the colors we learn to count to a million we learn to we learn the ancient food foods all the old foods we learn animals birds fish the words for them we learn the words for for the new foods that we eat and we also learn how the language is kind of tiered there's old words that have been around for years and years and years thousands of years there are words that were created when the colonial's arrived to accommodate what they brought for instance the word for moose diem so when a cattle arrived it was when june diem because when jews the word for a french person was the word given to the french people so when june diem was a french moose so that's how they adapted the language in that particular case to be able to say that's different that's something that was never here when jusoon which is a cranberry or is an apple i'm sorry cranberry is soon and when jusoon would be an apple and you have to probably think that back in the five six hundred years ago when apple trees arrived here the apples were probably very small red hired sour very similar to a cranberry cranberries probably were more common than and so that's how they associated that and we're able to put a name to to that apple so it and it's those new words and then there's also words such as las yet which is for the french word for plate which they use for the word plate we have we have 20 weeks and over the last three years we have now so much material accumulated and we've added things to it that we have to decide whether we're going to present all the material because we're bringing in new things like tonight we have a speaker coming which we didn't have before so there's one night material that maybe we won't touch on as much of it as we had before we've gone through the word learning and the phonetics and the language and that kind of thing now we're getting into the storytelling and that and that will pretty much be for the rest of the program we've added to it and made improvement what we feel our improvements to it the first year was we learned as much as as everybody else did but we still had a full program we were able to present it all and we kind of as we went along we hit maybe the first 13 14 15 weeks pretty much booked in but then well what are we going to do after that so then we were able with the class members find out what they wanted to learn about what they wanted to take home with them and we were able to add to that so now we have we could probably go 25 weeks very easily now 50 hours instead of the 40 hours but that gets to be a bigger bigger challenge so anywhere 8 12 15 and that depends some people don't come every night for one reason or another but every year we've had good attendance and everyone seems to like to come and hear the material that's being presented once a week once a week on this tonight this is the night I feel that we play a very small part in the indigenous education here I think that indigenous education should be more there should be more of it in the school systems and in universities for people to be able to to learn what our language and our culture is all about the storytelling the knowledge one of my one of my pet peeves that I like to teach are the lost teachings wisdom respect humility love honesty courage and truth because without those people lose a lot of their their grounding so we have taken this is one of our important readings that we have we make sure that everyone we spend a lot of time on this one this is what part of the the learning material this has some messages in it from kipu from the eagle that he's carried on to the animals in the forest absolutely the lost teachings is the most important one that grounds you that sets your your benchmark for the rest of your life and when you follow these teachings and understand what these sacred teachings are and live by them each day then you will be better grounded better prepared to carry on life better understand the world around you in 10 years I would like to see children be able to speak our language to be kept alive through the language they would understand their culture they would understand how the kula came to be called the ghost cat and the story behind that they would understand how ruin awakes every spring and comes to the earth and returns spirit returns to the sky each year and about the sharing circles and about medicine wheels and the eagle feather and the medicines for this to be part of their life so that they understand how very important it is and I think that with that that these children would have a better life our world I'm sorry to say we're sad to say seems to be stepping backward all the time with less acceptance of how would I say anyone that's different and it's important that we all learn to live together and that we all learn what each of our cultures is about and how each one of us can help there is a strong movement nowadays for indigenous knowledge to be added to a lot of environmental questions and issues and the science that was learned over the years by our elders is very important a lot of people don't understand that it's not just cutting a tree down but it's removing an entire ecosystem when you do that and people need to understand how how these things work we we present our material everyone writes in that they have scribblers and books that they can they write in they take the material home with them we provide the material in a printed format type format we provide the books afterwards we go through the stories we read the stories we discuss the stories and answer questions as best we can about any other and discuss them it's and people understand how this means what this means to to our people and then at the end of the end of it all we we see that they get this they take it home and be able to share it with their families and their children or or whoever they want to share it with