 Please describe your program. My program is based on Indigenous knowledge. I do circles. Basically, my intention when I do circles or have anything having to do with teaching any kind of... or sharing anything having to do with Native spirituality, my intention... Oh, in the audience, the groups I've mainly worked with women, children, 12 to 18, and men in conflict with the law, incarcerated in open custody, closed custody, max, secure. And the intention is to hopefully teach them or show them a little bit about the belief system of the Indigenous people, the spiritual belief system, so that they can get in touch with themselves, help them lead to their identity, and the ultimate goal would be healing so that they wouldn't need to do what they need to do to get themselves in conflict with the law. Most people are in conflict with the law and conflict with themselves, and it's usually basic lack of teaching, learning opportunities for learning about themselves as an individual, themselves as an Indigenous person, or themselves as a human being with purpose and worth. So, how we do that is, what I worked in closed custody with the young offenders or young people in conflict with the law was that I would just facilitate circles with them once a week and have a topic like seven grandfather teachings, any kind of stuff like that. I like that meaning, Jesus, Indigenous spirituality. It's really hard to talk about because when you do it, it's really easy, but when you try to describe it, it's, I don't know, also just basic teachings like how to smudge, how to hold a feather, what the feather is for, the eagle feather. They used to specifically ask me how to pray, so try to teach them how to pray. And try and teach them that you talk to the spirit like you would your friend, stuff like that. When they didn't have school and I had them every day for five days, I developed a program. One was called Honoring Your Fire for the young men to talk about them as their responsibilities as a fire. It wasn't like real, real men teachings because it's up to men to give those. It was more or less a goal setting. What would you like to do with yourself and your life? Because I found that the young people didn't have any goals like they never thought of the future at all. So I used the poem, The Road Not Taken, got them to draw out maps of their life of where they think they're going to be in ten years. Anything having to do with self-exploration and self-personal development. So with the men and the women incarcerated, I did the same kind of project with the girls but talked to them about their role as a female and the responsibilities that would go with that and how women are the water. Also I was involved with helping develop a program for the women in conflict with the law for the adult ministry, adult Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services and we named that program Understanding the Journey and what the intention there was to help the women understand their life as a journey, again with basic teachings of the feather, the medicine wheel, the seven grandfathers. Anything to create some kind of self-awareness and maybe a guide for living and the purpose of that was for personal development, hopefully leading a personal fulfillment and not necessarily having to deal in conflict with the law all the time. That's the intention. A lot of the times I found that they were really interested in learning and some of them are able to find to see their life as a journey rather than living in reaction all the time. Some of them were ready to hear that stuff, some of them weren't, they were just coming to listen or at least coming to smudge. Yeah, that was a 10-week, 10-part lesson. It's supposed to be one lesson every week for 10 lessons. Understanding the journey. So I'm also trained in the Eastern Door Program again for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services and it's to teach basic teachings about native spirituality and native spiritual beliefs. So what I also do is run sweat lodges. That is really powerful because the people that come into the lodge, where it's dark, it's only them and themselves and the spirit. And when people are incarcerated, their whole life is about protecting themselves. And it's really hard for them to allow themselves to just start to focus on themselves and be vulnerable. But after a while when the spirit takes over, they forget about the other people and they focus on what they need to do. The negative energy that's holding them back, that needs to leave some unresolved issues with grief or past mistakes. They get to release that energy in the sweat lodge and that leaves them open to have a bit of peace of mind for a while, personal peace. And it also, I believe, helps them to clear the way for the lessons that were learned from their life experiences because they're not working so hard to survive what they're feeling. They have a little bit of a break to take a breath and create some thoughts. So again, it's personal development leading to empowerment. And that's what I wish for all Indigenous people, especially Indigenous, well for every human being, but especially for Indigenous people who have been manipulated into giving their power and believing that the government has to and needs to look after them. My belief is that us as Anishinaabe people, we are capable, more than capable of looking after ourselves and own our power and not give it to any outside entities. But to get that across to people is really hard, especially when victim-dependent thinking has been promoted, nurtured. And one thing I found with survivors of abuse is that once the abuse stops, human beings have a tendency to take over and being abused themselves or looking for something or someone to abuse them because that's the energy that they're used to carrying and used to having. And as Anishinaabe people, we were gifted with the way to get rid of that energy so we can empower ourselves. But it would be nice that all Anishinaabe believe that. Or do that or we're aware of it rather than living in reaction but living from a place of defensiveness, of never feeling or never being good enough to a place of, yes, I can do this and it's okay to do this. Something successful. What other program? Ask the question again. Did I answer it? No, for sure. Yeah, you talked about, is there a way to measure success? I've been asked that before. I'm going well with the people that we work with. The measure of success is number one, they're still alive because they live a really, really self-destructive lifestyle with drugs and violence and being hookers. Prostitution, that's what I was looking for. A really, really unsafe on the edge lifestyle homelessness. So the measure of success is the basic measure is that they're alive. As we go up the scale, anyone who's clean and sober is a measure of success. Anyone who has stopped being in conflict with the law or at least had less charges and the ultimate measure is if someone is clean, sober, working, has their family and is what society would deem functional or successful. So it's a large scale with the programs that I'm involved in of what success is. Nice. Oh, sorry. No, that's fine. It is definitely, sometimes it is difficult to measure success. Like in another place where I've got to work in the past, you're paying for membership to say the why, for instance. It's kind of hard to track someone's success. Say they're taking swimming lessons. You don't know over the long term how successful they were. Well, they're still alive. They didn't drown. Right? And that's like a lot of material kind of measure. It's kind of hard to track these things. So I definitely know where some of that comes from that you were talking about for sure. Okay. So all these things lead into the next kind of area of questioning. And that is, from your perspective, what is indigenous education? My perspective or the perspective? Yeah, from your perspective. Something that kind of popped into my mind as you were sharing earlier was you seem to flow between kind of indigenous and Anishinaabek. Kind of words to capture, I guess, where you're coming from. So how does that feed into indigenous education too, I guess? Like is it, are you purposely using indigenous? Yeah. And cover every one that you get to deal with? Or do you primarily deal with Anishinaabek people, I guess is a question. I primarily deal with Anishinaabek people. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. Those are just, ooh. I have a hard time with that because of the labels that the government keeps changing. So I'm trying to train my mind because I keep getting corrected at work. You have to say, did you do this now? I'm like, that's so dumb. Sorry. Well that's the kind of treats we're looking for, for sure. So I don't think you should feel sorry. Well, to me, the government is those are foreign words to us. And I'm not a fluent speaker and I wish I was, but I didn't take the time to actually learn or pay attention. But to me, those are all just labels. So when people ask me, do you prefer to be called native or indigenous or aboriginal? I'm like, I really don't care because those are all foreign words. They're just labels. They're not even real. Like they could change again. So that's when I use Anishinaabek. To me, that's a very Anishinaabe. My tribe is a group of people where I come from is Tamiagama Anishinaabe. That's who we are. And our land is Daki Menon. That's around Lake Tomagami. That's who we are. So, yeah, that's why I fly back and forth. Right. Yeah. Okay. So maybe what we need to talk about is what is Anishinaabek education? Okay. To you then. To me? Yeah. Anishinaabek education, to me, is what we learn from the time we were a child. This is just to me. And I'm feeling guilty saying that because there are so many people who didn't grow up in their, on their land. They didn't grow up in their regular, their original home where their ancestors are from. So I guess I should acknowledge the fact that I was extremely fortunate to grow up on Daki Menon with parents who used the land to, worked with the land to keep us fed and alive. My dad was a tropper and my mom helped him with the animals and everything that needed to be done to create a good life. To make sure that there was food, clothes, traveling. And to me, what I learned from the Bush is true Indigenous education because everything was there on the land that we needed for life. And that is where we learned our survival skills. That's where we learned who we are and what we could do in our connection. And I believe that we're very fortunate for that as well because we know that anywhere on this world, wherever we are, we have a home. And it doesn't, I don't mean a structure with a roof over it. I mean like a home. When I think of home, I don't think of the house. I think of the water and the land. To me, that's what Indigenous education gives us to help us feel grounded, to know who we are, to be connected, not just to the spirit, to the creator, to the earth, but to each other, to our family, to our community. And the animals and everything, that's where part of that. And it's really important for a young person to feel part of something, to know they belong somewhere. So I think of that a lot about the things I know today are my survival skills navigating in town or working with the government to deliver native spiritual practices to help people learn that. I know I learned that a lot growing up on the reserve and being taken into the bush. So Indigenous Aboriginal Anishinaabe education to me is experiential learning. We know where we experience something and we learn. We experience it and then our lessons come from what we're experiencing. So as a native person who went to school, and I guess that's why it worked, I got a diploma in office assistant administration and the only reason I took that program was because I didn't know how to run a computer. And I knew I needed to run a computer if I was going to try and work. So I went to the Academy of Learning and they don't have that anymore but you listen to, you read the book, then you listen to a tape and then you do the lesson with the tape guiding you and then you do the lesson on your own and at the end of so many lessons you grade an exam. And that was experiential learning but they're also infiltrating all your senses like the listening and the reading so it goes implanted into your brain and using your own volition to type everything out that they just showed you. And that's what worked for me. It worked really well was experiential learning and applying that knowledge. My ears perked up. My ears were like, oh, that's really interesting that she would say that you had said we are a part of that. And I think you were talking about our connection to the land. You were saying how important things were and you had just said we are a part of that. A part of the land. Are there other things that are a part of whatever that is to you besides the land? The land, the water, the sky, the earth, the animals. Everything. The spirits that lived there. Spirits inside of all of those things that I just, and the Creator. And there's lots of layers there for sure. Something like there's like a part two this is like question number two really and part B kind of speaks to the information we want to make sure gets passed on to the future. You know what I mean? Something that's been talked about before was it seems like there's always common stories that are shared in different circles where we go. Say there's an activity at such and such a health center or that kind of stuff. They kind of talk around the same kind of stories. But are there stories that you've heard of from your family or friends or that sort of thing that aren't really getting out there anymore? But you feel they're so important that we should make sure that they're captured somehow? Or that we include that in what we're sharing these days? I can't think of anything. The legends are on the lake. It's the non-natives that are writing them down. And the ones that they are really... And that's the lake where you're from? Is that what you're talking about? They wrote them there. And there's information there that I didn't even know about. I'll go into detail. Example, Devil's Mountain behind Camp Kuwaitin. Anytime we drove up the lake I could feel that mountain and energy coming from it. And I'd be like... I'd ask my dad, can you feel that? And he's like, yeah. And I ask him about it. And he says, well, there is a big fight here between the Devil and another spirit. And he says, but I don't know the whole details anymore. And I'm like, oh! And then later on, about a week or so later he messaged me and says... so and so wrote it on this website. And it talks about the legend. He wrote it down. And I don't even know if that's the true legend because when things are repeated they're changed. Like instead of saying in they'll say out. They'll change the essence of the story. But the basic story is that's where I learned it. After I read that there were still more questions I had. Why am I feeling so much from that mountain? And is it good or is it bad? Negative or positive? So as I'm sitting here talking maybe I should better go sit on the mountain and then ask it. The stories I found that were most helpful to me and I try and pass it to my children. And in a good way sometimes it's not all as good but which family a person comes from and where was their domicile? Which part of Dakimunan did they live on? Because everybody had their own family territory. Then people grow up they get married, they move away and then suddenly somebody pops up you don't know who they are and oh that's someone's grandchild. That's the common theme there. My mom was really good at that. My dad's okay at it but I noticed my aunt was just no interest. She doesn't even see the importance of saying who these people are because she known them all her life and just took it for granted that she just knows who they are. But to me it was, I think it's important to know those things. And the reason for that is I remember this young man we went, Mourney and I went to a conference a residential school conference put on by James Bay Mental Health there was a young man there going oh I'm looking for my relatives because he researches his history and then he says my great aunt was Beatrice Chung and I'm like whoa and then she married a pot and I'm like yeah that's my family we're cousins so I have a Greek cousin that I so it's just stuff like that and it's exciting to know like our and the survival of us when we're not supposed to be here like that's exciting and for me the young people don't see the importance of that when they were young just like I didn't see the importance of really paying attention to my mom and her siblings and my grandma when they were speaking Ojibwe with each other it was just something they did and not knowing as I got older how neat that was I thought it was neat when I was young but when I got older I'm like holy Moses so I bore my children a tear sometimes with who's related to who but I'm hoping when they get older they can connect to that and see why I thought that was important yeah just to piggyback on the idea of why that was important when I initially talked to you about being a part of this project as an interviewee I had shared with you about education and the importance of it and I don't know if you remember or not but you had gone into this the sharing where you had talked about how important education was from your grandma your grandmother's perspective I think and you had said that she did a very good job on instilling something in you as a person about that if you remember this this would be a good place to kind of bring that up again because when you were sharing this I was like oh I wish we were interviewing right now because it's a good kind of it kind of captures a lot of what's happening with this project oh grandma pox's influence was huge because she really was a strong woman who worked all the time there was no room for laziness and you got to go to school so that you get an education so you can work and survive in society she never said it like that but achieving something was really important to her and she basically led by example like where she was young she had her family when she got older she realized she needs support herself so she went back to school in her late 40s and became what they call an RPN so she worked at the hospital as a nurse's assistant for years and that example she gave really made the trail for her children who are all really hard workers and educators that were our teachers and principals and education directors ones retired now and there was just no sitting around in the pot's family you were always using your gifts and your brain for something and that led the example for me and all my cousins because we're all we've all gone to school and we worked and we teach that to our children the importance of finishing a course doing a course getting some skills and when I sit down and think of my own experience with education and the different places I've been in school I love going to school I love learning I love talking with people researching and I find that it really helped with personal development of people now a lot of them can barely read and write like prisoners and there's so much that they're not aware of in the universe in the world even concepts of thinking patterns when you study English or find out the history of things I guess what grandma taught us was that meet the challenge embrace the challenge and get through it there's no reason not to so part of this question talks about what stories and or teachings would you like your grandchildren and great grandchildren to be able to hear you talk about it sounds like finding out the history of things is important to you are there stories or teachings that capture that specifically that you would want to make sure get passed on to the next generations or just generally are there stories and teachings that come to mind that you would want to make sure get passed on I think the stories and teachings of their parents grandparents great great great great the ancestors journey on how they lived and what they did in their life because there's a lot of life lessons in those things that I know because like my grandma's story is really powerful even my grandma my grandma Madias on my mom's side my maternal grandmother her story with all her kids and the life she experienced just being on the reserve was on Lake Tumagami not the reserve but was there's a lot of life lessons in there and a lot of relationship lessons say among the families and where they got their values from volition and the differences and I don't know if it's because I'm a female that I'm looking more at relationship stories life experience stories of individuals those are important like even listening to Lorne and the stories he has of his grandfather to me was like the epitome of an empowered person where he wasn't intimidated by government where he was he could make things by himself always working and looking after himself building his own house things like that I think the theme that we grew up with that we learned from my grandmother is independence you need to be independent my own mother taught me that as well well my whole family like an example is if we couldn't these are the stories I'd like to pass on that if we couldn't get the skidoo started we couldn't go for a ride and if it broke we needed to at least have an idea how to fix it like if the spark plugs were gone or just little things like that because we all know how to do that kind of stuff stories of how people learn to survive like my dad when he talks about his when he first tried to live on his own and him and his brother were really hungry because that's how they realized oh yeah I have to work to get some money and oh yeah I actually have to cook all the things your parents do for you it's funny like but it's true like it's really traumatizing for a young person and stuff like that it's just stories of regular life I guess and big stories I really I really don't know like I don't have any like one true story just a bunch of life stories right okay what's a good Paula Potts story that you'd be willing to share with us you said you have Paula Potts story so is there a favorite favorite moment in your life that you would like to make sure well I had a nap today and I was dreaming about my old school I went to my high school and I tell that story a lot not well my experience there so when I was 16 I was starting to get lost starting to get into the teenage party scene and my marks dropped and my dad looked at my marks and said you're going to boarding school girls private school because back then they weren't that expensive because take all that money they got from Indian affairs for the tuition and the board and all of that human board they lumped it all together and gave it to the private school and then the parents paid the rest of the tuition so we were all we were in the time generation my generation kids born around 1970 where our parents were number one in a position to pay to top up because they all worked and number two there was enough money in the government funding for education where we got to go to these private schools so like I said I told the story about they didn't offer general courses it was all advanced university courses and we lived at the school and this was a really good development experience for me because I met girls from all over the world China, Mexico Dominican Republic one girl was from Japan and then other girls whose parents worked for the Canadian government and were stationed in different countries like Saudi Arabia India I met girls from India too and I met a family two girls all of a sudden showed up there from Liberia they had to run away from the revolution just like that so it was really interesting the first year I was there there was only one other native girl and she wouldn't tell anybody she was native because again we're mixed blood we don't look like full natives everybody thought I was half Japanese in that school and she wouldn't admit she was native that was my first time running into that like I've never run into that in my life we were also raised to be very proud of who we are I was also raised to see everybody the same like to not differentiate between the races so I guess being at that school was really easy for me because I saw an individual I didn't see oh there's a Chinese person or there's a Japanese person stuff like that or there's a black person I wasn't raised like that but she would admit she was native and she got mad at me when I told her roommate she was native and I'm like jeez what's wrong with you and I had no shame I did not connect to the shame that native people had again because I probably didn't run into the same kind of racism and insanity that other people did and if we did run into it again the kids my age I don't know how we were socialized but we were we'd laugh at the person if they ran us down because they were native we were native and they were like what's wrong with you like we're great but we didn't even see ourselves as native we just saw ourselves as children as people human beings and we're just here like to have a good time like just that's how kids think you know it's gonna be fun so at the school the second year so I went through grade 12 got all my credits it was really really hard because southern Ontario was in Whitby right inside Toronto is so different than northern Ontario and I was the worst time I had in my life being away from home being away from anything or anybody familiar the traffic the people were rude nobody talks to you nobody looks at you like in northern Ontario it's like hey how you doing so different so the second thing that really I wasn't gonna go back in grade 12 at Christmas time my parents said oh if you're having that hard of a time cause they used to cry every day in the bathroom cause I was so lonely and I wasn't gonna let any of these other girls see me cry so I had a lot of pride too so but I remember we went to visit my great-aunt my grandpa grandpa pots his sister up in Notre Dame-Denors and that's on the reserve there and my mom was good friends with her so we go visit with her and I'm standing in their kitchen wondering I don't know what to do do I go back to school do I come back home I really don't know what to do cause I'm really like having a hard time down there not academically but socially and then my aunt sitting there and she's puttering around at the kitchen table and this is how she said it she goes you got enough pots back bone you stay there okay decision was made so I'm like okay so I went back to school and then things got better I finished the year and I only needed two credits to graduate high school but I thought I'm really not ready to do anything else and it was kind of like easy like coast and I didn't have to take math again so I I went back for grade 13 back to the same girls private school and all the mean girls were gone they had graduated so I remember walking in that day the first day when you first go back to school and I said I want to make this a really good year so that's when I clued in that we decide what kind of life or day or experience we're going to have and by this time because I was raised by a politician as well I knew the importance of influence of people I didn't know it at the time but later on the teachers told me that I was the only one who would go into like the one from Canada who would go into the Chinese girls because I was fascinated with their country and the things their culture and things they were willing to share with me I just thought everybody did that the Mexican girls I like them because they were done high school and they came up here they were the wealthy ones they came up here to learn English so a better way to learn English than being immersed in it so they like to party and those are the ones I really like got along with because they were lots of fun so I decided that I wanted to be senior class president because all my friends had positions they were in the school where they were prefects but they were there longer than me so I said okay I'd eat a position so I decided I was going to be senior class president so when it came time for voting I just asked my Mexican friends to tell all their friends to vote for me so you could hear them in Spanish and then my Chinese buddies I'm like hey tell them to vote for me so again you could hear them in Chinese and then turn off landslide because there are so many of them that's how I got to be a senior class president and then from the senior class president at senior dinner at the end of the year we had to give me and the other senior class president she was from the Bahamas we had to give the final speech and the education that I had on the reserve was that we had really proactive teachers who saw that because we lived in an isolated community that we needed to be socialized and the big world also we call it so they put us in public speaking contests they put us in drama festivals and they took us on school trips for like two weeks at a time like down south at all these places so we had really awesome proactive teachers like that who kind of knew that we needed to do this and they had really high expectations of us academically as well I remember if a kid, if they saw because it was so small like if a kid went swimming and left his books at the boat house and the dock I remember the teacher just really talking to that kid about responsibility and how valuable those textbooks are things like that we were always taught on a school on the reserve so at this school when I was graduating high school because I did a good job with my senior class speech the teachers need to nominate you for valedictorian so I got nominated to be valedictorian and again I'm telling the Chinese girls and the Mexican girls and I ask everybody to vote for me again it was a landslide, I was a valedictorian of my graduating class and the funny thing is it was when you think about the native part number one they thought I was joking that my dad was an Indian chief because they have no clue about native culture at all before internet and they didn't know anything about natives so I remember one time because I was senior class president I had to go to all the seniors rooms and there was a home room because it was an old school it was an old castle so I called it Trafalgar castle there was one room that was kind of haunted or something in there and the three Chinese girls were in that room when I was in grade 13 and grade 12 one of my friends was in that room and she was kind of an empath and she'd tell me about all these weird noises from the closet and she'd have to wear earplugs to sleep so it was really funny because I went to that one girls classroom those three girls my friend had moved on and there was three Chinese girls in that and they opened the door and I could feel something coming from that closet and I'm like oh it's still here right and I didn't realize I said it out loud and I swear to God those Chinese girls grabbed me literally grabbed me and hauled me into their room and said you know something and they're going on and on about what was going on in this closet like there was an entity in there and they're just like yeah this has been going on all year but we didn't want to tell any of the real Canadians but we knew you would know so they didn't really know what a native person was but they had an idea that I wasn't like the other Canadians they picked up on that that I must have grew up in a different culture and because I didn't even realize I was in a different culture to university but no to like my till I was almost 30 years old that we had a different world view and that we had our own culture not just like a physical or reserve life but that we have a different world view and I had no clue about that because well I didn't even care I'm grade 13 I was 19 I was like I was finishing high school and planning to go to university I was still having a good time so I always tell that story about how those Chinese girls from Hong Kong were didn't consider me a real Canadian and I took that as such a compliment that wasn't great yeah that's awesome so my experience at high school and going to the girls private school there's a lot of things I learned it was like because it was like a micro community it operated like a community there was good things negative things always someone in trouble always someone complaining like all the things you see in a community and everything was crappy and you know and then you realize after it's like it was really good and just a different my exposure to the different ways people thought and I really appreciated that just simple things like my I had a roommate from Trinidad and she was very very spoiled and she had a really physical mindset where you're defined by your money and your property and your position so one time she comes she was so dramatic she come lying in the room crying she's like nobody's talking to me I looked at her and of course I'm like really like I'm 19 I haven't lived at home for high school since I was 14 and I'm just like you know you're there for school and just look after your business and so I was really I wasn't really nice to her I wasn't mean either but I was just really honest and I told her I turned and I told her I'm watching her cry so I used to just sit there and watch her cry for a while and I tell her you know you made a big mistake and she goes what I said you talked about your money and your family's position in Trinidad said the girls don't go for that here because they don't care I said everybody here has some kind of high profile parent and most of the girls here have lots of money so that they don't care and you make yourself look stupid she's like the other time I always tell stories about my roommate too she was I must have learned a lot from her another time when the report cards came out again this was a really big thing to her the door come flying open like this is a really old building so the doors were big and wooden and wide so the door fly open and she literally like took two steps and flew across the room and landed on her crying with her head down just wailing and I'm going what's wrong I'm all calm sitting on my desk or whatever most likely she woke me up and I'm like she's like I'm like what's wrong and she goes oh my report card and I have such low marks and she's freaking out about it I wish I was Chinese that's it I had no idea what to say that I said in the pressure on those girls for academic achievement we can't even fathom that and they're naturally smart like they've grown up that's all they did was their work there was nothing else I think to expect to have the same marks as the Chinese was really far reaching in that school because again it's a different country right with different values so I graduated high school from there that was a big deal because it didn't even look like I was going to graduate I remember when I was 16 I was like I'm going to run away I was just like the classic little teenager full of herself and yeah I can work a minimum wage job and make it like I was so out of touch with reality because you're spoiled and you're 16 and whatever like you take everything for granted you have no clue how much it work everything takes so anyway I didn't run away and I knew if I did my dad would find me because he knew all these people all over Canada from working for assembly first nations and chiefs of Ontario stuff like that so but that that was my story of my high school and that was really good for me and my personal development and that I did it and I stayed there lots of fun lots of hard times lots of fun and I I still have some of those girls on my facebook page which is cool you know some of the girls I stayed friends with and just keep up with and now just recently like I know I told my roommate about money and nobody cares about it but there's one picture I have of my friend from Liberia and she has pictures of her son's birthday and he's got like an Audi SUV for his birthday and he's 17 I'm like oh my god Lapu must be loaded and I didn't know I just like hanging out with her because she was just such a sweet awesome person only clue into that now she yeah her family must have been loaded that's great some great sharing happening thank you very much you're welcome we had a talk about indigenous education things you wanted to make sure the grand children kind of learned about don't give up that's my family thing there we go never give up don't give up that's repeated over and over family motto yep what is your vision for indigenous or anishinaabek education over the next 10 years my education or education for native people yes all of that there's no wrong answer here well I would like to go to university and finish it but that's later on when all the bills are paid and the kids are looking after themselves the way they're supposed to and the only reason I want that is to say that I finished something that I started because I only went one year and then I think that would really be really good for my self-esteem personal development because the jobs I get now I beat up the university applicants hahahaha so it's not about getting a job or anything it's me, my personal volition belief it would be for me as for anishinaabek people it would be nice if everybody went to school got some kind of skills even if it doesn't have it could be anything but something that will add to their personal development to increase the self-esteem and to know their power there's a lot of personal development that comes from doing anything experiencing anything and there's a lot of people who have self-esteem issues I wouldn't say that anishinaabek are necessarily lazy it's self-esteem like the belief that they can do it and that they'd want to do it just to feel good hmm about their life in themselves okay I'll step back into I want to hear from Paula Potts the understanding your journey educator are there parts of that that need further enhancement in the next 10 years are there different ways to go in there to reach some kind of goal that you might have that you're striving for currently or are you pretty happy where that is right now in terms of the education of participants I'm thinking of young people now educating young people to educate young people when you put it in perspective understanding the journey it would be really neat if they could when they're young 10, 11, 12 years old if they're open for it, 9 maybe even younger but they open mindedness of parents to allow their children to attend the ceremony to find out their spirit identity and to to go into these ceremonies so that they'll be grounded and it's not necessarily to because the way native spirituality is now there's a lot of dogma there's rules that are infiltrated have infiltrated our teachings and it kind of like dehumanizes and de-spiritualizes the people my idea of of this is to connect people to their own spirit and to the creator the great spirit and that they can be grounded and know who they are and know that there's something to rely on that they necessarily can't see but I think that's what being part of the land too but it gives you a knowing and a feeling that you're not alone you have support even though you can't necessarily see it and it's not something a human being can give you but if you've connected yourself to that essence I guess that makes you feel stronger and supported less vulnerable and that would be a nice vision for these children to get anybody actually and it makes you feel strong on the inside are those the same kind of goals or objectives that would be transferable to the eastern door or to honoring your fire or would there be different kind of nope that is the goal same thing across the board just for something for them to grab onto because only dealing with the physical is really difficult and there's so much conditions on being a human being if you look at life just physically you got to be this, you got to be that you got to look over certain way, act certain way, be a certain way and if a person can connect to themselves and to the spirit then they start to understand themselves as a human being and that there's no conditions on that you just exist and it's okay preferably to love yourself so you don't want to go on a path of self-destruction because that's how they end up where they're at they've been raised and born to people who don't like themselves and are self-destructive and they didn't take the time to teach their kids