 I'm Liz Benoit. I am a family outreach worker and the program that I work for is the Aboriginal Family Outreach Program slash Center. So I'm kind of like a family center on wheels and I work for the Native Council of Nova Scotia. So my program is I work from anybody from prenatal to the elders and everybody in between. So it's kind of complex because I am just the one person. So I can do anything from working one-on-ones with mom and dads that's going to court with them, dealing with CPS, trying to get their status cards, educating them on the culture because for off-reserve Aboriginals for whom is my targeted population. A lot of them still don't know the culture, right? So I get to educate families. Gosh, I go into the schools to educate and bring awareness about the culture but I do it in a way that it's just not geared for Aboriginal kids because once again I work with off-reserve. So we bring all the cultures together and we celebrate all the cultures with the main being the Aboriginal culture. So I do after school programs. I do lunch and learn. I do focus groups with youth and what I do with them is either I'll bring in an elder or I'll have a guest speaker from the Native Council come in like it fits with the youth. I'll bring in the Abtac, the employment and education part on that end. We do traditional crafts. We make traditional foods. So that's then I do family programs, baby groups. So it's a big wide range of what I do. And my district is far like it's from Digby to Windsor which is a huge district. Feedback for sure. Partnerships. Everybody wanting to to partner with the program and the Native Council. Feedbacks from the kids themselves that they look forward to when I'm coming because they're going to learn something new. Whether it's a traditional craft or we read from a book or the one thing that I'm really focusing on now working with kids is the seven sacred teachings to incorporate that so then they can own it and teach other kids in the school because I think we should all follow the seven sacred teachings, right? It's what's sliced all about and I find the kids are kind of missing that so I'm trying to incorporate that as much as I possibly can. So that alone, I'm in my fourth year so that's pretty good. It was a pilot project so and the demand for me, I'm only one person but I know if there was more people, at least three four people because of the district, we would be busy all the time and we could hit every school whereas I'm only hitting the Digby area because that's where I'm centered at it and the need is there and the want is there. So truthfully, the challenges that I'm having is not so much even challenging because being an off reserve aboriginal myself, I don't know the culture so I am learning as I'm going. So for me, I think the challenges it's just time if I had more time that I could spend with elders and which I am going to do because we're putting on a um knowledge keeper workshop here in next month so I'm very excited about that to honor our elders so um but that's a challenge it's just there's not enough aboriginal I want to say supports or family or front workers or whatever you want to say out there we're very few and far in between especially down in my area. I think I'm bringing awareness and education to a lot of people that haven't had it before um to know that they have now an aboriginal representative in their area that makes them feel a little bit more I don't know safe I guess and yeah so I think that would be one of the bigger things because there was never anything down our way before for aboriginals besides the reserves so that's always nice to see that it's branching out and getting out there just to have the support a lot of people don't have the support a lot of families feel like they're missing something and they're quite not sure what it is and when they start to learn about the culture then they realize that this is what they're missing and they embrace it and they want to learn more and more and more and more so that's another way that I know that what we're doing is the good thing because just from the families themselves with the feedback more acceptance which is good and I think too it's because when I say I bring all the kids together I want us the kids to realize that we're all the same but yet we're different so we can celebrate all of our differences and learn from each other and that has been a big impact my program is all over the place because I am the only person doing a family outreach center so it varies I try and get into the schools at least three four times a month if I can other than that I'm doing programming whether it's healthy relations cooking life skills employment yeah I'm a busy kind of gal so yeah more people out there spreading the word because I think a lot of people are naive because they just don't get it or they don't know about it the culture and then when they do find out about the culture it's just like they embrace it and they want they're like sponges they want more and more and more and they want to learn more and more so that's always good so if you needed to start a program like this you'd have to be associated with a not-for-profit like I am with the native council I do believe my funding is provincial it's not federal so write your proposal and away you go right I know that we were a pilot project what they didn't in the beginning was I think I'm the only one so far we partnered up with the Digby family center so that they would have somebody there and it's worked out really really well so that would be another avenue that they could look into is partnering up with the family center and I think it would make a big difference and I think aboriginal families would be more apt to go and get the the supports and resources that are out there I hear like with with our program and with the center there's no conflict mom's dad's come and they feel very comfortable very safe I've heard that down the other end of the province not so much so it's been kind of like building relationships up again but that would just give our people another avenue to tap into so I'm all for that I think I want to talk about the lunch and learn so the lunch and learn was with the adult students so I think they're in level four um part if taking the lunch and learn they got a credit towards their studies for the year for their indigenous part so that was a good kind of like let's see if this is going to work or not I do believe we had 17 students last year six was from NSCC and um how many did I say the rest were from the adult learning program um so when we were there we had a mikma instructor who knew mikma language so he had taught us a lot um in the end we made a drum but we also learned the welcome song and the honor song and during that time we ate traditional foods so it was it went very over very well so that was my second year this year we're doing the same thing but we're going up to the high or NSCC and on Friday I think I can talk about this um the instructor wants to partner with the native council in my program to do an experiential component to the curriculum so I'll be a part of that also which I'm looking very very forward to and like I was saying we're having a retreat for the knowledge keepers just to give back to for what they've given to us so I'm looking forward to that so this program has yeah it's really gone big and we've touched a lot of people so I'm excited I think we'll be on the same wave I think what we'll be doing will probably be tapping more into like NSCC to help build that curriculum um I can hopefully see me out in the schools doing focus groups and after school programs um we did do a program last year um with the whole elementary school and it was just to bring awareness and education so we broke it up in and um grades and so for the younger ones we had a storyteller come in and she did the honor song with them and whatnot and they got to put their handprints on a teepee and get to sit in the teepee because a lot of them just never experienced that and then the second the next levels we did um medicine poaches and we've talked about that and about the the smudging and the importance of that and for the last one we did the dream catchers and we dress feathers so that they could hang it in their gym and be proud of what it is so that worked very very well also so yeah you can see me still going in that just bringing awareness and education to different schools around the area as I said earlier I'm just learning myself as I'm going so to me it is anything that I can absorb whether it's language food traditions storytelling whichever whatever um and also just educating the public about the beauty of the culture and what it encompasses and the meanings behind it so that's where my train of education is going how should it be taught I think that varies I think it varies from community to community because I see that just in the different communities that I'm in I think it should be taught by an elder who knows and I'll say talk the talk and walk the walk right so they have all the teachings they have all the the traditions and I think elder should be a big part of the education because I'll just go by my grandmother who left the reserve and couldn't talk about or practice her culture we always thought it was the new fee way right until I started working in an indigenous field and it's just like no this is aboriginal so then I started putting the pieces together okay so this is this is going to be a pilot project um so I think the aim of it is to so we'll be going out we'll be studying the plants and the meanings behind that um we'll be going on a moose hunt but we'll be breaking it all down the moose all down and put it in the different criterias for science which what not what um we will be doing hands-on cooking food um because a lot of our people don't have the skills anymore for whatever reasons right it's not just our people it's everybody right um so it's it's bringing it back to where it should be where it's always should have been right so I do believe that's the route that she's going then we'll be the language component also so I think I don't like to get into status and non-status but I think status aboriginals or indigenous people hold the culture more to them because they've been exposed to it so I think those two should be incorporated into who should be educating people right I mean it's great for me who was just learning but do they get the same meaning behind it from somebody who has been in it all their life probably not right so I mean I'm not naive to think that so yeah those are your educators definitely the elders I like to see it in the schools more and more and more and more and I like to see it started at an early age because that's when there's sponges and that's when there is no bias and no stigma and that's where I try and focus really on is in the elementary school because if we break the cycles now right so but I would like to see it in all levels of education but definitely in the elementary school start now