 And cultural expression society is called the beginner's carving program What is the age range of your participants? Who is your target audience? Our target audience are a high-risk youth up to age 30 The age range of our participants. We've opened it up recently. So it goes from anywhere from When we say cradle to grave. Yes Everybody who's interested What is the aim of your program? The aim of our program is to connect or reconnect youth to traditional ways of Knowledge making art Connecting hopefully in the future connecting to the land and language and elders and Really just connecting youth and to something that they feel that they can be a part of And so that when they leave this place they can You know be productive people in the communities And it's also a wellness program. So they can come and Hopefully be substance free Have a safe place to hang out Learn and really the aims sometimes change, you know, the objectives and the aims you sometimes change Dependent on who walks through those doors and what they need. What are your learning objectives? our learning objectives Wellness is probably for me. Anyway is the top objective funding balance in your life And we achieve that through art through connecting to elders Now we have elders here, which is awesome, but through art and culture and just You know traditional knowledge so Wellness is our objective and those are our means to get there Would you say this program is an example of excellence in indigenous education? Uh, that's a really that's a loaded question Yes, I do I think um because When When it's working and when we have individuals in here that are connecting with what we're doing It is all it is kind of a traditional way to learn you learn by doing you learn by Having a mentor and you watch and you learn and you progress It's you see the changes in in kids who come in here and do connect And it's transformational as opposed to when we go into schools and we watch the students in schools and public schools where they're lost So, I mean if I don't know I mean maybe not in terms of indigenous Education is excellent. But in terms of what's out there, it's excellent You know, and we're always striving to do better I think we do pretty good How would you measure the success of your program? Do you notice a change in the participants? Is there an evaluation form? Is there feedback? There's constant feedback And yes, that's how we measure success is on an individual basis on Where each of these guys have started and where they are going Sometimes it's as simple as how many wood chips that they've made each day And really in in terms of how they've changed as humans Can I give an example? For example is Stuart I always use Stuart as an example Because he was a part of the program in elementary school high school and then he started Working here coming to the the beginners program Then he went away to school. He started working here now. He's teaching elementary school kids how to do the art forms From your perspective, what is indigenous education? How would you define the word indigenous? Oh indigenous education Well to me I think indigenous is like Uh a lot of cross cultures I don't find indigenous should be used Uh to take away the word first nation Um Which our organization is a lot of cross cultures Working together But that's how I see the word indigenous I don't usually use that word So this is is this a word you would normally use no How would you define education from an indigenous perspective? I think indigenous Education from the indigenous perspective is it's like land or place based Like so whatever is Wherever you are You need to know about your surroundings And your relations and interactions with them Right So often that other form of education where you're learning about I don't know the physics of You know the space shuttle there's not a there's no context. So it's context based Right hands on You know doing something to learn that in my mind, right? It's it's finding that balance and that harmony with your surroundings and so And then that's what I think an indigenous education is and I think that's it's not just here in canada, but that's A universal thing all the indigenous populations all over the world That's what it is. It's Learning your connections You know with your surroundings But we don't usually use that term. It's just kind of what we do. Yeah And I feel like our organization too Um You don't leave here with a certificate of completing anything or get a degree or masters in anything But you leave here with so many skills that you could use throughout your whole lifetime to sell your artwork or to teach people or inspire people or Uh Those are other forms of educated education for them Or even just finding balance in your life so that you can do whatever it is that you want to do You know We have people who've come through here who started and they design and they draw and they carve But they don't end up doing that later on in their life But they've stabilized in their life so that they can hold down a desk job Or they're a carpenter or some of them have gone to You know art school Or whatever, but Yeah balance What is your vision for the future of indigenous education in your community? For me it's to take over the education system Because if because I believe it's universal And that you know all cultures, you know all kids if you watch kids, they all learn this way They learn by doing right and I think if we connect our kids to our communities and to our environments that surround us They'll have more it's they'll have they'll be they'll be more buy-in so they'll want to protect it they'll want to Save it and If you don't have that and there's no connection. That's when it's easy to just destroy the environment. Oh, I don't care about that forest I just care about my phone You know But in our community that it really takes hold and there's more Yeah, there's more opportunities for kids to learn hands-on learn traditional ways of Being on this land because that's how it was done for thousands of years Without any kind of tipping point where we've Taken too much or we've destroyed it or whatever we need to find a way to get back to that and I think if we learn Um those ways then And respect them then we'll go back to them in my mind anyway Canada, I don't know if it's possible Baby steps baby steps. What is your vision for the future of indigenous education in Canada? You know how I see it happening in How it would be ideal I think about my community like a small community I think about how hard it is for young people to um Well anybody actually like to stay engaged and interested in schools when you're On is structured. This is what you have to learn. This is how you have to learn it. This is um what you need to graduate even though You're not going to use all of those things when you're done school um I think that it would be amazing if all the First Nations had their own schools where you could teach um Art like this carving um have a beginners program Teach them the just the basics that they need for the career that they decide to go into So if they need to go into carpentry Um be flexible just let them graduate with their math and science that they require English or whatever grade 10 Um get them started in their apprenticeship Uh be flexible with ours Let's be real Youth don't get up at 8 30 in the morning to go to school and function properly, right? So I see that's how I see things working Within the smaller communities or even in smaller areas like Whitehorse on the bigger cities in Canada It's a whole other challenge. It is I laughed a big city to come here. I think grew up in Vancouver And I don't know It's because of those are those like those types of education in that way of seeing the world are so polar opposite And often kids are I've heard it said before the kids, you know, all you need to walk in both worlds Right, but how do you do that if you live in the city all the time? You can't so maybe then the city needs to come to this world Yeah, I don't know. I don't know either But I think in indigenous education and I think what's often forgotten and you see it in the schools There's a huge disconnect. I mean all these kids who are in the schools if they wanted to They could do fine in these schools if they wanted to Something they reject it, right? And that's actually pretty cool that they reject it because it's not natural But there's a lot of healing that needs to happen before Even basic learning can happen. And so I think that needs to be recognized and acknowledged and really These kids need to feel safe. They need to be healthy Be heard and heard and when you have that Then let's worry about how we're going to do it Because until you have that you'd all you're doing is putting up fires Because these kids are coming to school. They're hungry or whatever. They're hungry. They've witnessed something terrible And they just shut down It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you do in that school Even if you have the greatest programming Then you're going to do it because they're hurting So maybe educating the educators and yet yeah, that's probably a big deal To to create that You know some some understanding And maybe even some compassion because you see that a lack of compassion in schools Why can't you do this? You should do this No, you just witnessed your mom get beat up last night You know this math problem really doesn't Have any significance to me right now so um Yeah, I think a lot of healing before you actually move forward Can you think of any types of information material resources you need to achieve that vision aside from funding? I like that from funding We need our own piece of land to achieve that Donated to us With a beautiful building that's functional where we can make all of our dreams come true I'd like to build that building actually Why not we could hire students to come and work And uh Yeah, it's a dream My information You know how many times we've moved since 2004 How many times that we move Colin lost track? At least five times You know and that's a lot of times to pack up and pick up and relocate and change everything The name has been changed twice Um, and you know it takes what how long we've been in here year and a half. Yeah It takes at least a year before you feel comfortable in any place. So You know you you that's that whole two steps forward One step back right in fact sometimes it's one step forward and five steps back So, you know like the amount of youth that we would love to have here The amount of programming we want to offer the amount of vision that we have to expand this place to live up to the name That we have is really difficult in a small space like this We're going to be doing um We have sewing machines. We have industrial sewing machines. We're getting a silk screen machine And there's like and where are we going to put it? um, I would love for I know he said aside from funding So like I think you know, it'd be great if a group of first nations or government or educators or anything would come together and Really see like the the purpose behind this place and how much how many artists have actually come out of here How many youth that we've that have said we save them? uh, listen to all our success stories and Helped us to find a place that we could call home for a long time longer than three years, right and affordable You know even knowing other people You know just in you say in terms of the types of information who else in the country Is doing this kind of work if we could connect with them, you know, maybe you could share You know visions and share resources Um and connect with them, right? Because I really do think the model that we have here Would work in other communities, you know, maybe not with carving, but just the model you