 The program has been functioning for several years and it's helping faculty and staff in the indigenization process at the University of Saskatchewan. What I've noticed is that, and I've worked on campus since 2000 in different positions like faculty or with staff, and it's always been about trying to make the university a more comfortable place for students that are coming onto campus, and I'm originally from Stalin Mission in northern Saskatchewan, so for me coming on campus was a huge culture shock. And what we're trying to do now is move beyond making the university a more comfortable place for students, but also for faculty and staff in terms of retention and incorporating or bringing in Indigenous worldviews and Indigenous ways of knowing and being into the programming, into the courses that are offered here on campus. So when students come onto campus, they won't have as much of a culture shock because they'll be in a more receptive space and they'll be able to learn according to their worldview and they'll be able to see their values reflected in the material that is being presented to them. And part of the work that we do here at Guen Amos is helping the faculty create a safe space for students whether they're Indigenous or not Indigenous because of the issues that we see here in Saskatchewan. So none of the students come into a place where they feel culturally unsafe and they just go back home because they don't feel that they have a sense of belonging here. What we're noticing is that the faculty, majority of the faculty are still firmly entrenched in the Western knowledge paradigm and in terms of the way they learn and the way they teach. So we're ending up having to kind of be at the starting point to make sure that all faculty are at the same baseline of information. So that goes all the way from for them to learn about the history of First Nations is Métien Inuit in Saskatchewan, also in Canada and Indigenous people around the world. So right from the baseline which they should have had when through high school or elementary school that most of them didn't have. And then right to the next level where when they're in a class and there's these difficult conversations going on, how to maneuver it, how to handle the classroom situation to provide them the skills to do that. And it's also about the non-Indigenous faculty to really learn what privilege is about white privilege and how they see the world and to make sure that they don't inflict further oppression on the students or the people they come across and to really do a lot of self-reflecting and see where their worldview comes from and how it clashes or, you know, try and find that same level of understanding and appreciation of Western-based knowledge as well as Indigenous knowledge so they're both on the same level. One of Moss provides teaching and learning services to all faculty. So any new faculty they can contact us and there's other educational development specialists that will help them with curriculum writing and how to write learning objectives and all those things that are needed in terms of pedagogy and how to teach. So we're housed in the same institution in that we provide the same types of services in terms of pedagogy but from a Western, from an Indigenous perspective instead of Western. And the other services that we provide is because there's been this push for Indigenousization from senior admin at the university, all faculties, all departments, all colleges have now been mandated to put forward an Indigenousization strategy. So what we do is we work with departments and colleges who come to us and say, okay, we're ready and we start where they're willing to start so they have some input into the program so there's this sense of ownership. Because one of the things that I had to really think about seriously before coming here was when I started hearing about mandated courses that students, that all students had to take as an instructor who has stood in front of classes of 100 and 150 students and I'm like, I wouldn't want to be that instructor standing in front of 200, 300 students that were told they had to take an Indigenous Studies course with the racism that is in Saskatchewan and that has been, you know, generations, it's like that's not a very safe space to put that instructor. So when I started this position, that was one of the concerns I talked to with Stryker about and he said, Maria, our cultural advisor, Maria Campbell, said that we are never going to go put ourselves in a place of harm. So that was one of the caveats that I was really appreciative of. It's like we're not going to put ourselves in a place of risk where there's, you know, everybody has their defense walls up and it's like, I'm not colonized, I'm not a colonizer and I don't have any settler guilt and all this stuff. So in that sense, that's how we only work with those people that are ready to do the individualization work and that are ready to do the personal work that's necessary. Indigenous Voice is in the program with the library staff. So that was an 18-month program and they also did a program with the Arts and Science Academic Advisors. Right now we're working with St. Thomas More College faculty. So it's tailor-made but it also brings in all the different levels of information that the faculty would need to know or the staff would need to know and, you know, trying to copy as much of the Indigenous ways of knowing as possible. So there's, they don't come and sit there and just listen for two hours or three hours. They actually have homework so they have experiential learning components to it. So we're trying to, you know, do it in a multi-pronged way. We're now just starting the conversations with the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology. So we're going to meet with them for a full day in April and the first half day they're going to receive Indigenous content and then in the afternoon the faculty is going to work together and come up with an Indigenousization plan and Stryker and I will be facilitating the process so then we can tell them what's possible, what's not possible, what you need to do, where it's a good starting point. We don't want faculty to receive half a day of training and then say okay I'm ready to Indigenousize my course because that's not doable, right, and that's not the good way of trying to incorporate the knowledge that we're working with. A lot of the teachings is provided by Maria Campbell. So she's got this series of teachings as she calls the Circle Teachings. So that is the Indigenous content and then with St. Thomas More in February next week we're having an allyship panel. So we've thought of people who are good allies to Indigenous people that they know the boundaries of when to walk with Indigenous people and when you know to step back and say you know I can't speak on their behalf. So that will give the the STM faculty an appreciation of what makes a good ally. So we have those types of programs and like I said there really isn't anything specific that we use because they're all tailor-made based on where the the faculty or the staff are. What I'm working with here for Guanamoss is we're going to be looking at some of the tools that we use when we're talking about instructional development. So one of the key pieces of information that all faculty have to use when they're designing courses is learning objectives. How do you write a good learning objective? So there's this guy named Bloom who came up with these list of verbs that you use for writing objectives. So what we're going to do is we're going to indigenize Bloom which means we're going to you know kind of brainstorm and say okay this is not a good verb right in Indigenous knowledge. This is not a good verb and why is it always linear right? Why is it always step one, step two? Is there a way that we can make it more circular? So it's trying to find ways like that in terms of indigenizing tools that we use every day and it's about being creative. It's about decolonization and you know right now the term reconciliation is being thrown around like your tennis ball and what I keep on hearing from several people is that before you can have reconciliation you have to know the truth and the truth has been hidden from the majority of the population and even the some of the students that I've had both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, when I tell them about the history of residential schools they they're shocked. It's like I thought Canada was this beautiful country that was peaceful and I never knew this history about us so a lot of it is rewriting history so that our worldview and our history is incorporated into the the everyday knowledge system but it's also about making sure that our knowledge is not appropriated just like everything else that has been taken by Western knowledge systems and I've worked with elders and my field is healthcare and I remember one elder telling me that our medicine is the only thing we have left. They've taken everything else from us so what those elders words are have been the backbone of the work that I do in making sure that there there's a gatekeeper in terms of the knowledge and I think that's part of our roles here at Gwena Moss is making sure that the knowledge isn't appropriated and used inappropriately in classroom settings or other situations. 30 years down online one of the reasons why I took this position is because of the the teachings of every decision you make you have to think about the next seven generations and I have a grandson and he's two and a half years old so this is one of the reasons why I took this position so that when he comes to this university he will see himself as a creed man reflected in the knowledge that he's getting access to and I hope that within 30 years everyone who comes to the university whether as faculty staff or students who is Indigenous will feel as welcome as a student that enters into First Nations University of Canada and sees their you know their culture reflected everywhere they go so that's the dream and the hope is that regardless of what course Indigenous students take there will be Indigenous knowledge in the course reflected back at them. What I would really like to stress is that anybody who's been in education knows that standing in front of a lecture is the least effective way of teaching and that's been proven time and again so the work that we're doing we try and incorporate as many ways of learning as possible including land-based learning so right on campus on the other side of the native law center the university has given us that space so we're working on making it into a traditional garden so we've transplanted Indigenous plants and it's going to become a teaching area and there's a circle there so we're going to erect a teepee in there so we can actually have classes in that space or people can just go to that space to learn more about traditional medicines and trying to get people outside of the institution and you know reconnect them to the land to try and make that learning about how important land-based learnings are to Indigenous people so hoping that they can get some of that understanding.