 My name is Strom, standing spirit man. My clans are the Raven and the Bald Eagle. My name, my beautiful mother gave me this party. I work with Nichiwa Incorporated, a child and youth care organization providing services to children and youth in child and family services care. Well, of course, first and foremost, it's about care. It's about residential care, so having a safe place to sleep, eat and live. But that being said, there's so much more that goes into care. And one of the pieces of our care is to help young people come to understand themselves as a people so that they can better understand themselves as a person. Learning objectives are very, very broad, but of course, it's your general learn how to wash your clothes, learn how to cook your food, learn how to clean your house, and things like that. But more importantly, it's also to learn how to navigate life as a visible or not quite visible indigenous person, venturing into society and how to be successful despite being marginalized and despite coming up, coming upon various forms of racism and other things that don't contribute to making life easy. And so that's our primary goal, is to be able to help them do that in a way that empowers them, but also affords them the opportunity to empower others as well. It's indigenous-based, delivered indigenous from an indigenous lands. Because for instance, I mean, just the relations, interpersonal relations, helping us understand why some of our young people look at the floor when you're talking to them, helping each other understand why one person will say, if you're going to shake somebody's hand, it's a nice firm hand shape versus a gentle hand shake and not expressing power or other things. So certainly helping them identify cultural differences in terms of where they come from and where they live. Because again, as from a Western society, there's very different ways in which we engage each other, interpersonal. In terms of the other things, again, helping them to connect with their identity, who they are as a people, be it Anishinaabe, Innu, Dokota, Dene, Oji Kri, the distinctions that we have. And go beyond just the simple, an Indian is not an Indian is not an Indian. An indigenous person is not just simply, and unfortunately, indigenous is a very broad brush to paint with when we think about the distinctions between our communities. And of course, it's a whole lot easier to say indigenous than to investigate where in fact a person comes from, to be able to acknowledge that part of them. So again, in terms of the education, it's not a structured around being education, it's structured around experiencing life. And these are different ways that you may experience that life. Well, I think one of the ways that we measure our outcomes, of course, is when we're able to tangibly witness attitude changes. And sadly, really sadly, the attitude towards themselves, when that attitude towards themselves changes, that is definitely one of our measurable outcomes. Although it's anecdotal because we're simply documenting what we observe. But I know, with a considerable amount of consistency, I can ask a young person in one of our programs, are you proud to be indigenous? And they'll say yeah. And sometimes they'll say no. But for the ones that say, yep, I'll ask them why. They don't really have an answer to that. Some do, it's much, much, much, much more. Certainly a heck of a lot more than when I was a teenager. But to be able to then instill that pride and instill those pieces of themselves that they are able to express and carry forward. Some of the stuff that we do, mostly land-based, mostly cultural, spiritual base. But one of the things, for instance, with our sweat launch, we talk about a circle. Well, a circle is 360 degrees. That is math language. That's something that they can then incorporate into when they're taking geometry in math class. When we talk about our sacred fire, 454 degrees Fahrenheit is what, I don't know what the conversion is to Celsius. I remember the book, but wood burns at a certain temperature. So being able to talk to them about the fire triangle and about what is required in order for us to actually have that sacred fire. So that it is translatable in ways. That's our goal, for sure. And then just to be able to, again, talk to them about where they're at and where they want to be and how they're going to get there. And to be able to incorporate indigenous values around that. Of course, it's very generic here. Very broad or narrow because, of course, my teachings come from a specific area and region within Manitoba. For the other employees that we have that are more of a cultural or spiritual focus, they too have similar and different regions and teachings and gifts that they bring. And so one of my responsibilities as executive director is to identify, to help identify A, the kind, soft, gentle approaches that can be taken and how to safely administer those, so that to help our young people connect with who they are as a people. A very broad definition, but again, it's from the people to the people. And when I say from the people, it's from that indigenous lands. And not just consultation, but to actually incorporate what is being said, traditional land knowledge. We didn't camp here because every once in a while, the creeks would rise and we'd get wet. Or we didn't camp here because it was too far from where the herds were in terms of the deer or any of the other animals that we may have been hunting. Doesn't have a whole lot of real world right now benefit necessarily, but for a young person to be able to then navigate time in the bush and do so safely. Because that is, I'm a city kid, I was born and raised in the North End here and my first time in the forest, I twisted my ankle and banged my head against a dream ranch. And if I didn't have somebody with me, it could have worked out pretty harsh. I'm getting better at it. I am getting better at it. I spent a lot of time in the bush now, so I live in the country now. And that's another thing too, because so many of our young people, their earliest memories may be the bush. But because of the way the system is set up, the way it works, the lack of resources in the North, many of our children are coming from the North. Because of the lack of resources that are up there, they're forced to come down here and become urbanized. And so, yeah, their very earliest memories may be rural and in the bush, in the medicine and that. And to help them restore that and to help them reconnect with that is, I think, one of the ways that we're able to realize success when we're assessing how we're doing with the programming that we're providing. I wouldn't say outright indigenous education. I mean, I use the word just simply because it is certainly the acceptable way and politically correct now. But I mean, with my friends, I'll use NDN. N-D-N is ingenuity. Ingenuity. But all of that, all of that kidding aside, the idea that traditional knowledge and traditional to a region, to a people, and to history. Because even our own, you know, in terms of indigenous knowledge has evolved and indigenous knowledge has adapted and indigenous knowledge has changed in many ways. But certainly for the purposes of promotion, you know, absolutely I'll use those catchphrases. But really what we're trying to do is just being able to provide our young people with a leg up and an opportunity to be able to get one ahead of the person next to them. Even if it means surprising somebody who may be ignorant or out and out ugly. But to be able to surprise somebody with, you hear stories about somebody recognizes you as an indigenous. I have one personally. I worked in construction and landscaping company. My boss had no idea that I was indigenous. He thought I would be assumed, based on my appearance, that I was Portuguese or Spanish or Italian. And with the last name like Campbell, may not have fit. But still, he didn't assume indigenous heritage. Soon as he found out about it, he said, if I don't know that I wouldn't hire you. He said, but you surprised me because, you know, here you are, you know, the harder working guys on the team. And needless to say, I didn't react very well to it and was right rude and obnoxious about it. But to be able to come across somebody with an ugly attitude like that, based on either just, you know, meanness or ignorance. And to be able to provide them with knowledge and education around knowledge, you know, there is a different view. And they may gel and they may conflict. But there's a different side to our stories. And that's one of our goals in terms of being able to provide a young person with a better grasp of how they can present themselves in the broader world. There is a distinction. I believe that there is a distinction. But mostly that belief comes from the novelty of the idea of indigenous education. It's not a very old concept, certainly not in accepted terms, being accepted. Of course, it is an ancient concept, you know, the way that we interact with each other and the land and the environment is indigenous knowledge. And of course, that farming here in Canada, those skill sets were developed across the ocean. In many aspects, of course, many of the First Nations people had their form about agriculture and their form of farming. But, you know, some of the other gifts that were brought forward from Europe and other countries through that colonial process. But those original ideas come from an indigenous level of knowledge in Ireland. You had the Celts and, you know, in the Netherlands or maybe in the Sannys and the Steppes. And, you know, so there is indigenous knowledge, you know, even going back to Great Britain, you know, a thousand years ago, there was indigeneity within all the regions of the world. And then, of course, through assimilation and colonialism as people were able to further their movement, that gets lost. But it's still there and it still exists. I don't know if I'm exactly answering the question outright, but in terms of indigenous education, it needs to come from the people and it needs to come from the knowledge keepers and it needs to come from people who have had a focus on learning and developing and, you know, being able to express and transfer what they've learned recently. Well, not very recently, but for instance, in our field, the idea that an indigenous knowledge keeper is thought of, not thought of as a professional. For instance, you know, the work that I've done in the community, in community organizations around spirituality and around singing and the drum and other teachings, you know, in terms of what helps a person connect with their identity. You know, a discussion about being a support worker versus a clinician. And, you know, so when I was, you know, in the argument, I was asked, well, what do you think you should make? And I said, well, I think what do you pay your clinicians? And they, well, according to that, you know, they got, you know, they got degrees and they said, oh, degrees, right? So degrees are based on credit hours. And yep. So I go to a ceremony at least once a week for eight hours, eight hours a day. So what's eight times 52 times 20 years? Because there's eight, you know, eight hours in my ceremony and 52 weeks in the year and 20 years, you know, how many credit hours is that? So I got the clinician rate. And, you know, it was a, you know, tongue-in-cheek and I'm being somewhat facetious, but it was, that was an actual conversation. And that was what I had, you know, again, brought to because a clinician or, you know, people that have those, you know, higher levels of education in the Western, they bring a specialty and it's based on their, you know, the time that they've spent learning, be it reading or through practice or other things. And of course, so do our knowledge keepers, so do our elders, so do our, you know, our spiritual care, you know, people are spiritual leaders, sweat lodge keepers, pipe carriers, drum carriers, Sundance keepers, Sundance participants, you know, and that's just the spiritual aspect of that, you know, in terms of, you know, our ceremonial aspect of that. But even, like I said, even within a ceremonial spiritual context, you can be able to provide education or knowledge or information that can help a young person translate that into which way I'm going to go for my career, which way I'm going to go in terms of housing, which way I'm going to go in terms of the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. Absolutely needs to be expanded. It needs to be explored. It needs to be broadened. And it needs to be, it needs to be incorporated into much more of our, of our little systems. And again, keeping in mind, I said earlier that indigenous knowledge is a new, kind of new in terms of acceptance and in terms of your hearing about it more and more often. But it, you know, in 10 years, it is absolutely my hope that the amount of information that comes from an indigenous land is increasing. Like 20 years ago in the public school system, there was no, with the exception of one or two schools, there was really no consideration for indigenous knowledge. Eight years ago, I participated in the very first smudge ceremony at a high school in St. James School Division, the very first time. And now the St. James School Division is very progressive and very forward thinking. You want to talk about education, the contact Henrietta Huck. I keep messing up her last name. She's a principal at Buchanan Elementary School. And, you know, some of the work that they've done around, you know, utilizing their AAA dollars, the Aboriginal academic achievement dollars that they get, the extra money they get when a child declares their indigenous heritage. They do so much really tangible, positive work with that money. A couple of examples are making hand drums. But making hand drums not in a completely traditional sense where they were using deer hide or other things that, you know, they adapted. It was much cheaper to buy a whole bunch of goat hide than it was to buy, you know, a limited amount of deer hide. And in so doing, they were able to make drums for every single student in school that they took home. And then, of course, you know, through the course of that was talking about the spirit of that hide, the spirit of the animal that created the hide, the spirit of the tree, the wood that makes the hoop, and the marrying of those two spirits to create a new spirit in terms of that drum and that drum having a voice. That is some of the work that they didn't have any knowledge keepers around that. So they sought out and I happened to be the one that they connected with. But the absolute genuine interest in learning about it and sharing it and making it a requirement of their curriculum. It was truly, truly impressive. This age of social media and then, you know, they looked at all the craziness that's going down in the States and how that's kind of amplifying or echoing up here in Canada and all politics and garbage and that stuff aside. But within the last year, we've heard horror stories coming out of the relationship between First Nations people and settlers or colonizers but the non-indigenous people that are in conflict in Saskatchewan, for instance, with the Colton Bushey being killed. You look at the lack of perceived empathy and perceived that I mean, I truly believe it exists, but the lack of empathy and care that the justice system and police have with Indigenous people in terms of the lack of resources that they have to be able to deal with somebody over and over and over and over again and to be able to provide that serve and protect mentality even in our schools. Children care, our population of young people, you know, they're further marginalized frequently because the school system, not having their own resources, you know, putting up roadblocks to a young person's education, you know, we have acting out young people who then their education plan at school changes so that they're doing an hour and an afternoon. I can think of probably eight or nine times that that's happened in the last five years where we have a young person who's only school because of course the education system must provide education to them. That's the law, but they're getting an hour. They go sit in a classroom and how much they're getting, how much instruction they're getting, how much knowledge they're incorporating and then, you know, granted that they don't want, I didn't want to be in school when I was there, you know, the young person that, you know, that I'm talking about doesn't want to be in school, but what are you giving? Are we even meeting standards or is just just meeting our standards our goal? Or do we want to over, you know, surpass what the standards say that we must get? You know, can we enhance the standards? Can we go above and beyond? And I believe that the other thing that's really important to what I believe that the Indigenous knowledge coupled with the Western knowledge, that's twice as much information that our young people can take with them as they move forward and become better and to improve society. Funding, and I know what I know it says in the preamble, except for funding. But I think that an acknowledgement that, you know, as I was talking about earlier, an acknowledgement that a traditional knowledge keeper is bringing a specialty to the work that you're trying to do and compensating them appropriately. An acknowledgement that an oral tradition has as much value as a written tradition or an oral history has as much value as one that is in writing. And of course, because the consistent argument that I've heard in the past was that an oral history is open to interpretation and can be altered so frequently. But history is written history is just another example of this happened in 1600 and a change to this in 1680 and then a change to this in 1735. And, you know, so even written history shows evolutionary change or revolutionary change, but it shows change. So does our oral history because, you know, technology or contact or, you know, cataclysms. If there was a particularly really, really hard winter, that means history, our oral history is going to change as a result of those experiences and how we're able to navigate those experiences. So that's part of it. And, again, I can't express it enough that it needs to be promoted and it needs to be acknowledged and it needs to be accepted. I think that particularly for, you know, in my stream of work with children in care of CFS, we're hugely overrepresented. 90% of the, 88% of the kids in care are Indigenous and Manitoba has per capita the most kids in care. So what damage are we doing? What history are we repeating? What significant impact are we going to have on the next four generations or the next seven generations? One of the things that I, that we each one promote and nurture and foster is that idea that, you know, in terms of a community raising a child, it takes a community raising a child. We hear that as a metaphor or a catchphrase or, but and that's something that we take to heart and we take that next step. And in terms of our staff, our professional, I don't know our treatment philosophy, we're a professionally staffed community-based organization. We're a professionally staffed organization. But we take that to a different place and also acknowledge our humanity and our relation. So because we become aunties and uncles, that's one of the things I tell all of our all of our new applicants, you are not their mom and dad, you will never be their mom or dad. But you certainly can be their uncle or their auntie. And that's one of the things that I tell the kids too is, no, I'm not going to be your dad. I can't be your dad, but I could be your uncle. And, you know, do you want me to be the crazy uncle that, you know, has lots of honor? Do you want me to be the crazy uncle that nobody wants to come to the barbecue, right? But that idea that, that connecting via that relationship is another thing that is vital to education of any kind, a relationship needs to exist. Foster a positive relationship and I believe we foster a stronger education.