 My name is Sheena Robinson. I work for the Indigenous Education Wichahe'u program, and Wichahe'u is a mid-chief word for support. So it's offered through the Mid-Island Métis Nation Association to help all Indigenous students. We work with high school age students. I present to usually grade 10 through 12, and I talk to them about transitioning to university, and then I'm here once they get here, so I work with all ages once they're at university. And I also work with the Learning Alternative Programs. So the students there are anywhere from grade 8 to 12. Well, my office is based in Nanaimo here. I go to all of the high schools in this district, as well as the Learning Alternative Programs, which are through District 84. And I come to university once a week, and I also travel all around the city, like, if a student wants to meet for coffee or to get a tutor, you know, at a library, wherever they feel comfortable meeting, I go to them. The aim of our program is to just offer support to Indigenous students as they transition to university. So we do this by sharing information. I talk to them about the resources that are available to them on campus, like Aboriginal counselors, teachers, the students for Aboriginal services, the navigators, anything they need help with. And when I talk to the high school students, we tell them all about that, but we also tell them about community events, so events that'll help them get sort of in touch with their culture. We serve Métis and UIT First Nations, so there's always things for us to offer to them. Yeah, so it's a little different for everywhere I work. So when I'm working with the SAWAC Learning Center, they already have a lot of cultural activities with them. So what we offer to them is physical education activities that have a cultural base. So things like Archery and La Crosse, I get funding lined up and we do those events with them. So those count towards their PE, you know, for their certificate to get graduated. And when I work with high school students, I go to present to them. I tell them all about VIU and what they have to offer. And I do sort of healing and wellness activities with them, sort of based on the medicine wheel and circles of support, anything that they can do to stay mentally healthy. And then what I offer when I'm at VIU is I sit at the gathering place at Shkopset every day or every Wednesday. And I've got my sign on the table and I'm there to offer any kind of support anywhere from emotional support to telling people where the education advisors are or you know, how they can declare a minor or major, who they should go talk to for certain things, directing them in the right direction. Well, it's a relatively new program. So how we measure success is pretty much through student response. And it's by each student. So when a student tells us that the program has helped them either get into a program or just get through a program, you know, anytime a student says thank you for helping is basically how we're measuring it. So I do a report every week and it's called weekly measures of success. So we talk about how many students that we get involved with and, you know, we attend as many events as we can and talk to the students and we have surveys to ask them, like, after we've talked to them, if they've felt that they've been helped. So that's a lot of the way that we measure success. Seeing a difference in a student after we've had a one-on-one, you know, I'll probably have helped them figure out how to get a tutor or where to go for help. And that's helpful in that sense. But overall, we're hoping that in more in the future, we'll be able to see that there's more retention of students staying in university, staying in high school. And because this program offers support from high school through to university, we'll be able to see more in a couple of years that it's helping. But it's definitely starting to show already. So we have a lot of students that are just thankful for the support like for an extra, extra bit of support. You know, sometimes they don't know who they can ask or they're afraid to ask for help. And this is a way for me to be able to guide them in the right direction. So I don't always have the answer for them, but I always usually know someone who will. So yeah, that's been the most common feedback is thank you so much for your help, basically. Couldn't have done it without you kind of thing. The challenges that I faced are working with two different school districts and the university. So trying to juggle all of those, they all require different different ways for me. Like I said, with the learning centers, my role is a lot different. And so I really need to build trust with the students one on one before they really are able to absorb what I'm trying to like tell them about educational goals. Whereas when I go to the high schools, I more present to the class like almost like a teacher. And then when I come to VIU, I'm more of a peer because I'm sitting amongst them. And yeah, it's it's just been a challenge trying to juggle my different roles within it. But the longer I've been doing it, the more easier it's become. So I can see the program being really successful as it goes on. It's quite a new program. So I think within the next couple of years, we'll really see see the benefits of it. It started, I believe, two years ago and it started out as a just simply for Métis students, because it is the Mid-Island Métis Nation. And when they were presenting to the high schools, there was obvious need that, you know, all the Indigenous students need needed help and need these resources and knowledge as well. So they expanded it to all Indigenous students. So I believe that just started this past fall, even though this program is new, it's already really showing signs of being a benefit to students. And there's a lot of interest growing within the community. People that want to partner with it, you know, everyone want has been emailing, calling, they want to get involved and help in any way they can to support Indigenous students as they make this transition. And it's starting to become more of not just post-secondary, but just support in other ways, like helping them find careers, helping them get more involved with their culture, their communities. So it's really becoming something bigger than when it started. To me, Indigenous education is finding a way to walk into worlds, to balance the Western ways of learning with your traditional ways. So a lot of community-based, land-based, language-based learning paired with Western learning. So you can, so the students can make it in either world and both worlds when they graduate. I think it's really important to be able to find work within your community, but also anywhere in the world. So with the knowledge that you're gaining, just to be able to have a solid sense of identity when you come out. I think language revitalization is a really important part of Indigenous education. It's starting to become more common. There's schools that are ahead of others. And I think it's really important to learn the languages when you're on someone else's land, like if you're in a school like VIU, you're on Stenaimo territory. I think it's really important to learn some of the Coast Salish language and protocol to show respect. But I also think it's really important to learn your own from your own community. And I grew up away from my home and my language. And just going to school and realizing what Indigenous education is, I know now like how important it is to learn. So my hope is that we'll find a way for people to learn their own languages even when they're away from home. My vision for Indigenous education over the next 10 years is to have families and communities more involved. There's a lot of Indigenous students that are in school away from home and they really don't have that support system. And when things go wrong at home, the tendency is to go back and be with your family. And I just hope that there are ways that we can incorporate more support from the family and community supporting the student while they're away at school. And I don't know what we can do about that, but I think a lot of it's going to come up, you know, it's going to happen because we need to work on the retention of students. And a lot of the times people will drop out to go back home for various reasons. So I think that's really important. And I think the language revitalization is key. Finding ways that we can learn our own language, like even if it's through directed studies, even though we're away from home. For me, what helped me on campus being away from home and community is finding a mentorship program. Like the community cousins is what I joined when I was in school. So it's an Aboriginal mentorship program. And you kind of have your own community on campus. It's really what kept me here. You know, when I was struggling and feeling lonely, that's became my home away from home. And also the gathering place felt like a really safe space. And just the fact that they brought in traditional knowledge keepers, there's elders there, there's always someone to talk to. That's what kept me here. So for the next 10 years with this program, I think we're going to start to see a cycle of community helping, you know, we're going to I'll be talking to say the grade eight students. And then the next year will be there'll be in grade nine, 10, 11, 12. And then when they get to university, they're going to see a familiar face, you know, on campus, they'll be able to come talk to somebody and, you know, we'll be connecting them with resources that they'll have their whole time here, like the mentorship programs, elders, people they can talk to and, you know, just involving community more.