 My name is Srandi Khattalik. I'm from Iglulik, Nunavut. And tell me about your participation in the NCCIE project. Why did you participate? Why was it important for you to be in this project? With NCCIE, I'm a researcher. So I go around Nunavut communities and interview different educators and elders in Indigenous education. And it's important for me because I'm in the teacher education program in Nunavut and studying to become a teacher. I'm going into my fourth year this coming fall. So I want to bring as much innate culture into our education system as I can and be an advocate for Indigenous education anywhere I want to teach in Nunavut. Why is it so important for you? Because back around 100 to 50 years ago, we were forced to, in a cultural transmission, more specifically a diffusion with modern Western cultures. So we lost the context of our education. We didn't lose our upbringing because in our home, when we go back home, we still speak our language and we are still raised to go out and hunt. But in the education, that's not our choice. We are taught by Caucasian people, mostly, or Southerners or not anyway. So I want to see more anyway in our education system. When I was younger in elementary school, I could hear my classmates saying, why should I listen to you? This isn't the only way of learning. This is not our way of living. Why should I listen to you? So we need more Indigenous education in our school systems. And we can do that. We just need to begin it. With social studies, we can learn about Inui morals, family roles, Inui traditional names of geography, biology and Inuktitut. Also, it's like gym, physical education. It's mostly encompassed around biology, health, physical, which is fine motor movement, along with gross motor movement. And in the Inui culture, the women often saw using their fine motor skills and the men go out hunting using their legs and spearing animals. And that's physical education right there. And they're out in nature too. So they're always walking. They're always, their heart rate is up. And with English too, I can see more emphasis in our language and Inuktitut being taught. Like for instance, the way we pronounce certain letters like ka, it's more towards the back of our glottal area in our throat. Inui students can learn things like that. And that would help them learn our language even better. As a future educator, what have you learned from the elders that you will transmit to your future students? If I was a student in Randy's class in five years, what am I going to, what are you going to teach me that you've learned doing this work? What I've learned throughout my whole life is the Inui character. I'm a quiet person. I'm an honest person. When I speak, I try to speak with importance and significance. Like... Being proud of being Inuit? No. I try not to be proud because I know it's that we need to be pride, pride-proudful in our culture. But at the same time, one of our principles is Inuktitutut, which is being, living in harmony with each other, with everyone. So at the same time, I need to respect different ethnicities, not only Inui's ethnical cultural values. For instance, when I was packing, I was going to bring my sealskin vest to the conference, but I forgot to bring it. So I felt bad for a second, but when I got here, I realized it's not just us Inuit. It's also First Nations, Métis, Cree, Caucasians, Afis. And there are many different trees, many different cultures, and each tree bears different fruits, apples, oranges, pears. Those fruits are like students, and the trees are the culture, the teachers. And I saw a fire being lit to the tree, which is colonization, the destruction of our culture, our education, our upbringing. And I saw it being destroyed in pieces, burnt down. And afterward, the pieces of wood rose in ashes. So the ashes are spread out all across Canada for indigenous people in broken pieces, burnt down, exhausted. But at the same time, with us, our initiative with NCCIE, coming together, telling our stories, by doing that, we're collecting those pieces and bringing them together back to a tree so that we can once again practice our culture. But at the same time, ashes can dissolve into the air and become a substance that gives life, fresh air, energy. But that air is an accumulation of not just Inuit culture and wood that is dissolved. It's also Cree, Métis, Caucasian, African-American, Asian, that we all live in harmony together. Of all the people that you've met, you've met many people that I'm sure that taught you a lot. What's the interview or the one that kind of comes to mind? If I say NCCIE, what comes to mind? The one that kind of, oh yeah, remember that interview, it just blew me away. When I interviewed this one elder, she said, I wish there were more Inuit programs in our communities and she was not aware of our initiative and what we were doing. What we were doing is we were gathering stories of indigenous programs across Nunavut. And there are already programs in our culture that teach Inuit education but it's not spread out across Nunavut. It might be happening in one community for preschool students but in another community it's towards adults, in another community it's towards teenagers. What we need to do with the stories we gather is communicate to the public saying this is happening in our communities. It's different from 50 years ago, there's more cultural programs but you're not aware of it, you're wishing that there's more Inuit programs but there are, we just need to communicate with each other and expand those programs across each community and work together. Okay, is there anything else you want to add? Do you think it's important that people know? I'm grateful that NCCI took me along with this initiative because I'm passionate for our people and I want to be a fine representation of an Inuit youth who live the Inuit way and teach younger generations how we live as Inuit.