 CIA Solutions is a digital advertising and film company so what we do is that we have a large indoor network of screens around the peace region in northern Alberta that companies come and see us and they blast um their advertising through so it can be in form of uh graphics that say you know store sale now or it can be a video with closed captioning that's how we started and then we bloomed off into from there being able to offer customers into outdoor billboards those are the 10 by 20 double-sided led so now a customer can come get their advertising and all the indoor network and then the outdoor and then from there because you need content on digital anything digital in this new world uh facebook linkedin all those things video is king so by default we managed to be uh one of the lead actually the leading filming uh companies in northern Alberta and we film a lot of productions from uh basically documentaries to doing uh film camps to commercials branding uh profile videos you name it in the digital world we film it for our company we are definitely um unique of what we what we do there is other filmers but because of our angle with the outdoor screens and everything else we're that we're unique yeah well i think how how it all started is that i started doing business in town of selling advertising and filming but then um as i discovered my own heritage uh my daughter went to uh my youngest daughter summer she ended up going to the friendship center they had a program called headstart and that's where they work with uh young indigenous children pre-kindergarten and teach them fundamentals and it's supposed to actually inject culture back in the family which it did next thing you know i was right involved with the movement and um then i saw the need is that you know the one thing i learned growing up is that i wasn't i was aware of all the horrible issues but i was never aware of the the programs that are trying to solve these problems right and so i found myself in the position to be able to market and advertise and use my own creative vision to bring that message out to the public and so i did all the friendship centers in northern albertas videos and then i went to horse lake and uh did a nice profile video on their community and the things they're doing for the future generations and exploded and actually made people very happy and horse lake actually rally behind it and it's got a lot of views and i was really very much a lot of pride saying that i got to highlight a good thing and on a reservation the theme that i guess i i naturally i guess the theme sort of sort of came out of um a need for communication between there is the indigenous there's indigenous and non-indigenous and the bridge gap is when people are aware they make better informed decisions so the theme that's been coming out in the video is just those profile videos is the positive courses and things that they're doing in their communities in our community and then it makes it relatable so like horse lake has the mms society and you know they talk about the i think i said it right mms society and they work with a lot of youth for their um uh career affairs and so forth so there's a lot of programs that they're doing to help assist and push the future generations for information then you have things like a traditional past society now uh just starting to work with that but it's still it's that information to get out into the public so people can see what these organizations are doing and then the friendship center movement too the more people are the more people are educated on what's going on then the the stereotypes dissolve so now when people watch these videos they see horse lakes mms society doing things on uh for their youth as like their career fair and stuff so that dissolves the stereotypes that they're doing they're being proactive towards and it also solidifies it in in um their own communities too of like this is what we're doing to move ahead and you know just um bring opportunity to our youth and it's the same thing in in the urban side of the fence with friendship center these are the programs that we're doing that are are able to help the community and help urban indigenous living in our community still find their culture and that's what they're doing and then even with this medium like as i said like there is the traditional past society that does the same thing a lot of cultural teachings and everything and enhances to bring that message to the public because when they understand that people come out to help i think actually for the business end of the world because i am by default just by learning business myself um i ended up joining rotary and that's the business community and stuff and just those videos it actually puts a face to the name so it's like so they literally physically see online what is going on and they see the friends they see the they see the the everybody in our communities right and the walters and whatever and then they all put it together and be like hey how can we go help out that because it brings that human connection i find by using the this new digital outlets like social media and stuff and and filming and stuff like that i find the measures success is just the awareness and engagement that i see from city officials other business owners of sort of like hey i want to help out for this cause you know the reconciliation is huge because the more you educate people on the cultures and stuff around them the better informed decisions they make humanize it when you hear yeah when you hear initiatives like when you hear um in northern albert you hear a horse lake uh sturgeon lake friendship center um you a lot of people who don't know about these things they just sort of have the okay that's an indigenous thing right and there's some problems there you know what i mean and then it just sort of stops there but then by opening up these avenues so people can physically visit that world and see them and see how the people are interacting and the effects it has by good storytelling which i guess this is a natural this is a new form of storytelling these um it's been oral tradition has been passed down through our culture for years and now this is the new way of oral storytelling and it and it reaches the other this medium reaches the other side of the fence so you want true reconciliation well show the positives and high you can the news right now highlights all the negatives and then you have a society that's all negative everybody's all worried about what they look like they're worried that they're not you know not using the right shampoo wearing the right jackets but when you highlight positive movements and nothing but the positives and you can drill the negative out completely and just have this whole generation thinking that we are less than because look at all the problems but i think the time now with this mediums to use it powerful in the positive sense of like look at all these positive initiatives things and i want to get behind that and push it keep pushing it forward the cia designer program right and we called it uh fright camp so but it was the second we call our first camp we had was called identity and that is where we wanted to take kids and film teach them film teach them how to use this medium and hands-on experience so we will pick a project and we're like okay we're going to film this last one we did was uh a scary movie right called uh what was it called simple seance okay and it was going to be release halloween so we wrote this script we designed the program where the students came in and rotated through cinematography makeup and at the end of the program they had a short film that was shown all across the internet it took us about two months to organize so the cool thing is that we had this concept of the project but then this wonderful program and a wonderful company called tell us story hive and they do great things for um they're really working with filmmakers and the youth and especially they're they're trying to promote they really want to promote indigenous uh filmmakers and camps and stuff so that was what you did here in our yep so they funded us so we had the concept they came in they funded us we told them how we want to do it hands on uh instead of just the the first time we did it we had a week of courses in our class in our in our office and then the second week they were filming a documentary this time we're like nope let's just go straight on hands on for we have the project and they learn how to film it and at the end they get a full filmed uh short film that they can watch for the rest of their lives they some of the kids were like it changed like from the buzz I I got now that we had letters and stuff and heard from parents that it changed some of their kids's perspective of what they wanted to do in their life like more towards the creative more towards like hey I can actually point out social issues because the whole time we're drilling to them is like you are learning this skill but the power of the media can influence the thought of you can influence people's thoughts by what you put out in film so they learn that skill we showed up with the script but the hands-on yeah with the hands-on and set design we did like yeah but then when it actually came to filming they showed up we made it uh we worked the same program uh we did with the public school system PWA and so their film camp their film course that we do once a year which is similar to the identity was sort of blended into one and we made that whole course there is a behind-the-scenes documentary out right now that one of the students made about the whole process of our first film camp we did well the cool thing was yeah it was indigenous and non-indigenous students learning this so at the end they had that short film we had uh one of the actresses for the short film is indigenous and uh Larissa did a wonderful job and then you had all these other kids indigenous and non-indigenous working together for a common goal and it changed their perspective because instead of just a lot of times when their kids when you teach somebody they sort of get the kid treatment they get the okay well here's a camera but not a really good one and here's this but for us we were like no let's film something with some quality and drive it to the kids that hey it is possible and they did it all I guess to sum it up is knowledge is power and we have to teach our youth on both sides of the fence we have to acknowledge Canadian history and learn to work together to change history so the more we teach our youth about where they come from on the indigenous side the more power they have and we teach them culture and teachings and hands on for all the youth on both sides of the fence so they just know the basic of where everybody's coming from then we can move on to society and handle bigger things this is just a bump in the road right so this will all change in time but for right now we just have to focus on education and getting more awareness of this is always in your community but now you will acknowledge it will become just a regular thing which is good I see indigenous education as in informing the general public of issues history okay let's talk school systems right I find indigenous education is huge because then it brings an understanding at a younger age of why things are happening so definitely the involvement because the indigenous aspect of our of our wonderful country is that we were first and we're never going away so we should honor that learn about learn about our cultures and the different things a little bit of hands on there's always got to be a mix of a little bit of hands on and a little bit of like bookwork of like before everybody showed up there was flourishing trade there was flourishing laws there was governance there was bigger dynasty you go into that morning the South America end of the world there was like bigger dynasties that's built the Aztec pyramids and it spilled off in north and then there's lots of trade on the coast and everything when you grow up and you start learning education in school you sort of figure out you're like oh look we're learning the indigenous about Haida and stuff like that but you sort of get this impression that before anybody showed up everybody's just running around with sticks trying to make their longhouses and stuff and doing whatever but then uh you learn later on when you start getting educated especially this day and age with the internet that that wasn't the case it was its own flourishing society and governance and just because of just the way the the ideology of the time of like colonialism showing up taking land to get resources that is what ended up happening and then you had uh you know the whole society was degraded to but survived still i would say definitely uh the book work end of it like in the social studies end but i would say some practical too uh some practical teachings the more i thought about it it's like yeah to having some of that okay well we're learning about this and we're gonna learn about why drums are whatever but this is how you do it and this is the meaning behind it so i would say a little bit of a balance of hands on and textbook and it's also it's a self-empowerment too because when you learn from myself who is half kree half german you know all canadian but um yeah just that whole understanding of myself made such a huge difference in my life when i grew up the more i understood both sides of my heritage the more i felt centered and the more i felt included but when i first learned and it's also spoon feeding the history too because when you don't get taught anything in school and then you learn everything that's happened you're horrified you're just sort of like i can't believe oh my like it is overwhelming and then you understand and it makes you mad because you're like why didn't anybody just tell me this in from the beginning and this is what i'm learning now and this is all the issues it seems bleak but if you educate the young now and you educate on for both sides of the fence then that puts everybody in it does promote healing and it also promotes change for future generations because nothing happens tomorrow it's down the line i don't know i think if you're just taught the awareness of the situation from a young age you just understand you know the part the part that's overwhelming is the non-understanding and the like well where is everything at now right like that's the part that's overwhelming right so it's more of like you just started a young age and it's sort of like hey this is how it was but you're fixing it by learning this and we're fixing it together and that's the healing part right there in a nutshell it's like boom boom but look at us all work together it's totally empowerment knowledge is power in the next 10 years i'd like to see it for my like i have daughters right and i would like to see it more as a common curriculum thing to learn about indigenous awareness just history so far i like that to be more common on the digital end of the world i would like i would like more of um i would like more awareness i'd like organizations indigenous organizations to get out and use these tools that are free more like when we did that profile video for horse lake first nations i was so proud of it and i saw the pride on every one of those people who contributed to that and then when the message got out there all the people responding yeah you always get some negative but there was a lot of people like wow they're really doing things and it like empowered the community and it's like that's got to keep going on like we all these mediums for communication are free facebook linkedin instagram it's all free so it's not like the old days where you had to yeah i'm a film crew you got to pay me to make do something good but you can launch this without the other trillions of dollars and put it on your website and put it on those to communicate with the public you don't need a huge a huge massive corporation to do this like i'm going to go to cbs and put one commercial you can just keep this updated all the time and just get the public curious and the more people are you're out there they're curious they want to come and check it out and then they engage and the more they engage you get true reconciliation because they're not seeing it as an organization they're seeing it as like and us we're together relationship really yeah we're together i would say just more education of how to use it you know definitely like you know and and also you have to pass down that okay i'm talking all digital but there are certain things that have to be passed down like through elders and stuff like that right but on the new communication end of the world like it has to be taught like even it's so new that people are still learning and then it changes again right so i think it's just uh as the as our young ones grew up from this generation on i don't think this conversation is going to be relevant in 10 years because it'll be like well that's just how things roll my childhood was in the 80s right so i didn't grow up with the computer and that but then i remember the first computer i was like wow that takes a long time to fire up i'm gonna leave now and i'm gonna go play go hang out with my friends and i'm gonna do things but then that slowly changed and now this generation doesn't even know what life was like pre internet so it's generation that's right in there yeah we're at the cuss it's almost like we have to do the catching up now our youth already know how to use it yeah we're not using it effectively to teach them right so we just got to learn fast and teach them because they're already using it that is a huge thing because right now they're getting blasted with the Kardashians they're getting blasted with all this this i guess sort of shallow way of using it they're getting blasted with so much information but it's sort of like but as soon as you teach them the skills of how to film how to do recordings like this how to utilize the net and use it for positive you're totally right we could focus on another Kardashian in the future and talk about their shoes but we could educate our youth that they want to make change they can do it through the digital medium and communicate with thousands without the trillions of dollars it used to take to communicate