 Were you able to see like difference in the participants at the end of the programs or like down the road even if you trained them again? Again when it with some participants we'll see them later on down the road a couple of weeks months even and they'll come up to me and they'll say oh my god thank you for that program you know it really helped me and they tell me about like where they're at right now and what they've been up to and yeah so there's stuff like that that's not really recorded anywhere because it just kind of they just stop in or they they see you somewhere and say well thank you for that you know it really helped me you know see things and really helped me change my life around and yeah there was a few times that I had people do that to me right yeah yeah what's what's sort of kind of going back to that initial acknowledgement that you were given a program and you needed to kind of revamp it to be more culturally appropriate when you were doing things like that where you did you experience challenges when you were trying to do this I don't know not really not too much challenges because it was it wasn't very hard to you know incorporate simple things such as doing the smudging before program and you know talking about what they're thankful for and you know in incorporating those seven grandfather teachings into the program because there's so much out there that you can utilize right when it comes to that and when it came to certain topics you know it's just from even from my own experience from my own things I've learned and gathered and know like I was able to incorporate it easily like especially when it came down to for instance there was one topic on alcohol so we had to teach these teens about you know drinking alcohol you know the the risks and and behaviors and what could happen and all this and sure we had to stick to some of that content that was that we had been provided in the binder but then I would also bring in a guest speaker who can speak about the traditional aspects about you know that how that alcohol affects our spirit and how alcohol was never part of our culture before yeah and how our spirit becomes something else when when that's that when you consume that that alcohol so it was stuff like that to incorporate you know to make it more yeah like have that cultural content for them to really grab on to I think yeah it just I guess the more stuff that you you learn and gather you know throughout your work experience and your travels and you pick up a lot of stuff right and then you can really incorporate that into programming sure yeah yeah other conversations that you you and I have had before we talked about kind of like jumping through hoops or hurdles to get things done yeah where these kind of experiences that you've had at the health center at the native Friendship Center where there are things like that to to overcome or whether they was that a pretty easy to work with environment yeah yeah it was a pretty easy environment because already being I guess you like saying an Aboriginal or native organization to do stuff such as smudging and and things like that was easy yeah we didn't have to go through any protocols or anything like that to get yeah yeah the only challenges that we would find when it came to certain programming is we when we wanted to do land-based stuff if we didn't have the land to do it what like if we wanted to incorporate like sweats we didn't have our own lodge to do them and stuff like that yeah yeah yeah so as a challenge and like how did you kind of navigate that if challenge I guess we just had to look for resource people in the community that were able to conduct those or had their own lodges and you know it's just getting getting in touch with them and sitting with them and seeing if they can be of assistance to the program as part of your evaluation then like is it pretty easy to recognize that you've met objectives that you intended to meet at the start of the year or that you met goals yeah because usually when we at the beginning of the year when we do work plans and stuff like that right we have to evaluate on we have to look at our our objectives and where they met then why weren't they met and kind of making little like write down an explanation of why a certain thing wasn't done or what maybe why it didn't work out so great and I was just thinking about where else like another place where I worked it was an alternative school and there I had I as a support not only to the students but to the teachers I incorporated some programming into the school and because it was a school for mental health and addictions students I had to really think about okay what's gonna help these students who are having mental health issues and addictions and reading up on stuff and listening to you know certain things in the news about mental health and how we can help students with mental health so what I did was incorporate a lot of like start physical activities try and do something once a day with the students so what we did was actually we started off with a walking program and then it eventually got to doing going out to the gym every day at noon we also had counselors that that had started in the health center that as part of being in this alternative school and to help yours like themselves with mental health they had to see a counselor while participating in this being a part of this school you have to take care of your holistic health so we're taking care of your emotional and mental so they had to see a counselor on a regular basis who was located in the same building and then we also had an elder who is available to for them if they wanted to see and sit with an elder and then of course incorporating culture into the school with providing language classes weekly having an elder come in to teach language and then there was also a sharing circle weekly which it was kind of a tough start because a lot of young people don't like to share in sharing circles so it was kind of just like the staff that would kind of talk yeah but eventually the students started to share a little bit more ever because we kept it constant like every week at this time and this day it was circle so that kept going and they eventually got comfortable and started sharing and smudging so that was I helped with that that alternative school get some programming going it was at during your time at the health center yeah yeah were any of these any easier or harder to measure the success on again we're just looking at attendance wise like the participants and how much they would share or how much they would show up for certain things like it was tough when like some of the students had counseling appointments for instance and they didn't want to go in the appointment so they just wouldn't come to school yeah yeah or they'd say they have to go because you know they had to be home early or something sure yeah but it but you know we just measured through attendance for programs like that certain programs there was more in-depth and longer evaluations that had to be done and this was with that program the choices program because they wanted documentation on how much success there was from beginning to end because it was a 10-week program so evaluations had to come from the participants themselves like the youth and the parents and as well the volunteers had to evaluate how the program went for 10 weeks so there was so much paperwork and evaluations that had to be done and I know again from experience some of the youth don't like to fill those because there was also another form that had to be filled out every week that they finished program and it was it was getting too much it was right yeah it was like this is too much evaluation but we tried to get it filled out as much as we could like even for the parents who at the because the pages there it was 10-week program so they had to try and evaluate their child for that one night that certain topic of anything changed in their child right yeah and sometimes they would just write one word answer so it wasn't even worth all the photocopying yeah yeah so some were good but some weren't yeah yeah yeah yeah do you think I know you haven't been there in a couple of do you think they're still doing that program it had stopped for a year almost and they're just starting it back up again yeah so I don't know if they actually started the program but I know they were trying to recruit more youth that partake in that yeah yeah yeah it was a good program because I had people from the island wanting to come to this program in Sudbury and they would drive their kids every day right yeah well not every day every week to the program what is indigenous education for me like I'm thinking so you have the Western education where you're going to an indigenous program in a post-secondary institute learning from professors indigenous professors through textbook yeah and then you have another side of indigenous education but it I don't know if you really want to call it in education where you're learning from elders and traditional knowledge keepers and it's not education where you sit in a classroom all day you know you're you're with them on the land or in ceremony or in lodges and so there's that kind of indigenous education you talked about wanting to make sure that the culture the programs you had included culture mm-hmm and you had talked about this idea of seeking balance like it is that same idea of seeking balance part of indigenous education also well because when we're I guess in our our teachings and our culture we're always driving for balance right holistic you know your emotional spiritual physical and what am I missing emotional physical spiritual oh and mental yeah so we always want that balance right so when when we when we we're not getting enough of one of them we're off balance like if you're not feeding that physical aspect there's your there's something physically going to be wrong you're health wise there's something that's going to be wrong or even with your spiritual if you're not feeding that spiritual aspect whether it's cultural ways or you know if people believe in more Catholic ways or whatever their spirituality is if you don't have that there's an imbalance there and so when I do programming I try to make sure that we have all of that incorporated into the program so people can feed their spirit and having all all of that incorporated now you also talked about languages in programs from your perspective how like how how does language fit into indigenous education we're always told that our language is so important right we have we should know or try to speak our language because there's not like there's only I guess a certain population that can speak it and if we're not going to learn it now it's eventually gonna you know kind of disappear so a lot of people now are really learning their language