 Could you guys tell me who you are and what organization you're representing? My name is Scott Willoughby. I'm the indigenous assistant coordinator. I work at Yellowknife education district number one My name is Sheila Stewart, and I am the Denikidae facilitator within the Yellowknife education district number one Your program is called Denikidae, Mary. The program we're concentrating on. That's the focus of the program, yes. Okay, and what age group or target audience that the organization is for? Well the curriculum is from kindergarten to grade nine, but we do have language programs in the high school and through northern studies they bring in people who deliver topics from Denikidae. I'll just say that Denikidae is a curriculum that was developed through the elders to reflect the Denikidae culture and our job is to integrate it into all the other curriculums in the board. And what is the aim of the program? I think the aim of the program is so that people understand the first peoples of the area to help them understand, have a better understanding of who they are, where they come from, some of the issues they have and teach them some of the skills that Denikidae people carry with them. It's also there to maintain the Denikidae skill amongst our own indigenous people. Not all of them get it at home, you know, materials are costly, so we teach in the school their skills. Like sewing, high tanning, collecting medicinal plants, traditional games, trapping. We take them out on the land to teach them those things. What in your opinion makes it an example of excellence in indigenous education? First of all, I'd say it's authentic because we work with elders and Denikidae people from here as much as possible. And the curriculum was developed through them. It's mainly land-based and we try to expose the kids directly to this place as much as possible. So it's not like one class that's just offered during the day. It's sort of an integration of the skills and the perspectives to all the classes. And it's also for the teachers too that aren't from here. So the teachers that come from somewhere else, they get an insight into the culture that's from here. So it's sort of like a holistic approach to the whole the whole district. It's not just a one-time class that's offered. Every grade has certain themes that they would be learning that's integrated into their regular social studies, their language arts curriculum. And then they do a on-the-land, have an on-the-land experience. But it doesn't mean that because they've done rabbits in grade one that they're not going to do rabbits in grade two, grade three, grade four, or even in grade 12. It's something they will do all the time because you don't do things once and then become an expert at it. It's a spiral of learning, I guess. It's a little bit of almost a philosophy to life because it does have spiritualism in it too. And it's a little bit of the medicine wheel in it too with people, yeah. The district has goals that we set out usually for two or three years. And Indigenous education is one of the big focuses. So we have certain goals and at the end of the year I have to report on each of those goals and we have little evaluation practices that we go through. So I have to do some surveys with teachers, some interviews with the students, talk to the elders over in Dada and the community and try to decide where our strengths are, where the challenges are, where we need to keep going. And then we do a big presentation to the trustees at the end of the year saying how it went and that's our evaluation. That's kind of the big picture. So you get a lot of feedback from like elders and... Oh, you're always getting feedback? I'm always getting feedback not only from elders but parents and the community, the students themselves. When they see me come into the school they're just like, oh, are you coming to my class today? They're very excited to learn about the first peoples of the area and their belief system and they want to be part of it. And so they really are enthusiastic. They want to learn. They just can't get enough of it. And the more hands-on stuff we do, the more they want to do. It's not enough just to do fish one day and the next time I come they want to do rabbits or they want to do birds or something. It's always hands-on though. From your perspective, what is indigenous education? For me, it's a way of life. It's how you present yourself. It's the way you live, the things you do. It's your connection to yourself, your spiritual world, the land to other people. That's how I see indigenous education. I kind of agree. For me it's a little different. I kind of see there's two sides to it. Half part of it would be sort of indigenous education for indigenous people. Learning who they are and where they're from and who their ancestors are and connection to the land. And then there's another part that's indigenous education for people that aren't from here. And that gets a little bit more into cultural respect or sensitivity or getting a sense of the place where this is for people that didn't know. So it's kind of two sides. It's also knowing who you are and where you come from and understanding how you fit in. If you're not from young, if how you would fit in here or how you could fit in better, you know, maybe understanding the first people a little more. So it's about understanding who you are, where you come from. Indigenous though is a funny word and we've talked about it. Yeah, I don't know. It still doesn't seem, it's not quite the right word for it, but that's the word they use. Yeah, because everybody must be indigenous from somewhere. Well, we talked about your children being indigenous to the Northwest Territories because it's where they were born. Yes, they're home. And so like we've had that discussion about what is indigenous so that his children become indigenous, but they're not not indigenous. They're not indigenous. They're not First Nations people or for Dene. So Dene almost might be the right word for it because that's kind of the people in the place. That's a big long conversation. I don't think you really get into too much. No, I don't. That's kind of more political or something. The program isn't really about that. It's more about the students. But when I go into schools, the kids always want to learn how to be more Dene. They don't talk about being more indigenous. They talk about being more Dene. Like even non-Dene kids want to be Dene, right? They want to learn the skills. And it's not about being indigenous or Dene or not. It's about pride, right? Who you are and where you come from. I think it's really important that you offer and help the indigenous people of the area. And also educate like teachers that are maybe not from here. That really helps to understanding. It helps the teachers become more comfortable teaching something they're not familiar with. Some teachers will like just say, I can't do it because it's not my culture. But if you teach them, how would you teach it? And they ask if it's okay. We might even take them. I might even bring an elder in and they could ask the elder, can I teach this without being in First Nations or Dene? And the elder will say, yeah, if you know how to do it, why not? Like teach it. How else are we going to pass on our skills if only Dene people do it? Yeah. So, yeah, the teachers, once they become comfortable with teaching things, they will teach to, I guess they're limited by some things, but we're all limited in some way. And I don't think the approach to this is to segregate at all. It's more about building a community. What is your vision for indigenous education over the next 10 years in your community and in Canada? I think here in Yellowknife would be nice to see more indigenous instructors, Dene, to teach the language. We need to keep the language alive without the language. We're not going to have the culture or the cultural understandings. So they need to keep that alive. So we need to see more, more Dene people in the school. We do have some, but it'd be nice to see more. The children need to see themselves more. We do have them up here, like they're getting to see themselves more in some of the posters that we publish or the books that we publish. But I don't think it's quite enough. So more of it. I want to see Dene Kade become a natural flow in the classroom. It's not like, okay, there comes Sheila. Now it's Dene Kade time. I wanted to see, I want to see it flow naturally. So when I come into a classroom, I'm only helping facilitate what the teachers already taught. Actually, I'll answer a little bit of that one too. That's a pretty good idea. I think one of the keys is probably having Dene teachers in the schools. That would be a huge growth, I think, from where it's been in the past, probably. And if Dene Kade is going to keep being successful, yeah, you're going to have to have Dene teachers. And I think the language is starting, the instruction, well, it's not starting. It's been going for a while, but I think sort of nationally now it's starting to get a little more momentum. And with that, I think there's going to have to be a lot of, like a whole bunch of resources and funding and courses developed. And I don't want to bring up the French immersion thing, but that's kind of the way the French immersion went. It started smaller and then it got really big. And I think probably indigenous languages, that'll be their goal too, where kids could take the whole course in an indigenous language from where they're from with an indigenous instructor. What informations, materials, and resources do you need to achieve that vision? We need all kinds of resources. Like I said, the children need to see themselves in the readers, in the books, and that's coming. But it's not all the way from kindergarten to grade 12. And it's awesome that it would be awesome if the children could take their courses in their own language all the way through school, but that would have to also go into university. I don't know, that language needs to be visible. You need to see it everywhere. Like we see English everywhere, stop signs. One of you, Fort Smith is an example. They have three or four languages on their stop signs. Well, they have the Cree and the Chippewan, oh, Cree, Chippewan, English, French, all on their stop signs. So maybe we should start doing that here more, having more language visible or resources for children. What we're lacking is our elders are disappearing. They're, you know, they're dying, they're going away. The communities need to train people to maintain the skills that the elders are taking with them now. So those elders have to be teaching. They have to teach or we're going to lose all those skills. And if we lose it at the community level, we're not going to be able to provide it in the schools. Because it's always nice to have the elders there as a role model, someone they look up to and the kids like and they're gentle and they talk to the kids. And if we don't have others learning, it's going to go away from us. Yeah, I agree completely. I think the young people sort of have to engage in the whole process of education because that's traditionally that the elders did it and passed it along. And I can point fingers at people, but they need some type of education program up here along this line like a real college or something like that. There are really well educated indigenous people, but they're not going into education a lot of them. They're going to whatever. So yeah, if you could get the elders and the young people passing the knowledge and they're bringing it to the schools, that might be the key one of the keys.