 My name is Mary Jane Jo. I am from the Intlakaab Makh Nation. My first nation's name is Niketko and my language is Intlakaab Makh Chin, Interior Salish, and I'm here in Coast Salish territory. I have been teaching for 19 years and my vision for Indigenous education is that we reconnect the teachings and knowledge that we have lost in this era of colonization and assimilation. I'd like to see our children, our youth, our students be reconnected with the stories and teachings of grandparents, ancestors, and our lands. The knowledge I think is important is our language. Our language holds many, many connections to our identities, to our nations, to our language, communications, our stories. One of the words that I totally love that I'm going to teach to my grandchildren is Zoot and that means that we are becoming healthy and resilient. In other words, we're preparing to meet the future by being healthy in our mind, body, soul, and spirit and to be prepared, equipped, and ready to be successful. And education is part of that as well as a combination of our teachings, our knowledge, our history, and our culture. I've retired from teaching but I still lecture and I still teach in the public schools as a guest lecturer and the things that I pass on are our history because I believe that our history contains the the greater picture of where we have come from regarding colonization, assimilation, policies that affected our lives, and the greater public and greater society of Canada needs to know the truth. Our people, our students need to know the truth and it is in that truth that they can become empowered and to learn from that and to grow from it. Not to be further oppressed but to rise above that. In my culture, I brought out Cedar Bow. I'm a residential school survivor and one of the teachings from my grandmother was brushing down with the Cedar Bow and this was really important to brush away the past, the hurts, the pain, and to do it at the water. Let it go and that to me was a very important liberating feature of our culture rising above the oppression. I will not go back into the water and grab those things but I will grow and and I will become more resilient, more healthy, more liberated, more free from the past that has been very oppressive. I would like my great-grandchildren to know about my grandmother. She did not speak English. She had no education and yet she was wise. She was kind and she loved the land. She loved our culture. She loved the teachings and she was fulfilled and happy after she had experienced discrimination and racism in the town of Merritt where I come from and she rose above that and she became a happy person. She was very kind in teaching me many many things. When I work on a Cedar Bark basket, I'm connected to my grandmother yet. When I brush down at the river, I'm connected to her teachings and these are the things I want to pass on to my grandchildren and children that they had a resilient grandma whose wisdom was timeless. She would have succeeded in today's society. Generous, free with her knowledge and whatever she had, she shared it and that's what our elders, the true sense of respectful sharing generated that and that's what our children and grandchildren need to know. The children in the classroom need to know these things that we're not always seeking famous fame. We're not always seeking wealth. We're not always seeking independent isolation in our journeys but we like to connect with family and we value family and that's what I'd like to pass on. I'd like the youth of today to look at the successful Indigenous elders, teachers, educators and look at the difficulties they overcame to be successful and the youth of today can learn from that. They're not alone. Their struggle is not alone. We're all together in this and we learn from each other. We lean on each other and so it's a connectedness. When we're born, we're born with a gift and we need to nurture that gift and we learn that with communication and relationships with each other. We learn that with our relationship with the land and with our teachings, our traditions, our language keeps us wholesome, healthy and the authenticity that our elders lived and shared, that's what I want to pass on.