 Priorities in planning with the clintial government. In terms of this interview, I've been involved from the beginning with the establishment of Tadat-Zitze, the clintial research and training institute. That was, we developed terms of reference in 2013, I believe it was, and it was established by the chiefs. And it has done a variety of, made a variety of activities and involved in a variety of things in those years. It hasn't been consistent, we haven't, we've kind of gone up and down based on the intention is to situate the research and training institute right within the clintial government. And so we've had to go through processes of setting up various departments in the government and restructuring and so on to allow that to happen, and that's still underway. But the purpose of the research institute, or just even the focus on research, was that there were all of these different activities that were going on in various places. Some of them were being done well, some of them were dying, all of them were important. So there was research happening within the region, primarily with the, I shouldn't say primarily, but largely with the clintial community services agency, I had been involved with that and we had been doing significant research there within the education side of things and also with health and social services. So we had set up groups, I don't know if you've ever heard of things like the CART team, which was the community action research team of young people that were working specifically on health issues in the region and we had also set up groups of elders that were advising in some of the work and some of the work was tremendously successful. There were two, on the health side of things, there was a community-based strategy dealing with sexually transmitted infections prior to foxy, in fact I think foxy in some ways may have been based on many of the things that were happening in the clintial region and very dramatic success rates in terms of what happened there. There was another, many of the activities there which were based on indigenous models of research that involved elders that involved action research methods within the community, they were applied again to another infection in the communities and very dramatic decline. So the methodologies were sound, other things that we were doing was research at that time were developing a dictionary and working with University of Victoria on the development of a clintial dictionary, Treaty 11, which was a predecessor to the clintial government, had been doing caribou work, they had been doing different activities with elders and so on. So there were all of these research activities that were basically projects, they weren't part of an ongoing systematic, well-funded activity. So we needed to deal with that and research seemed like a superb activity primarily because in terms of your interest with education and indigenous education, it's a wonderful way to, when you look at the methodologies of working through research questions and so on, it's a wonderful way to get out in the land with young people and elders and so research actually becomes a model of a strategy that you can use to further the goals of the clintial government which are to do those kinds of things. So we've had, just for instance, one of the big research movements at the moment is what's called our Boots on the Ground group which have been going the last few years funded by mines, funded by different governmental groups and the clintial government to get elders out on the land and collect traditional knowledge related to caribou. And so each summer you'll get groups of elders to go out, we'll have groups of clintial youth going out with them and so it's just a wonderful way to connect all of those pieces and then also end up with a research report at the end of it. So those were some elements of what the Research Institute was meant to do. If for years and years there had been literally hundreds, if not thousands, of audio tapes of clintial elders that had been collected over any number of years and there was a real need to digitize those audio tapes and get them preserved and protected. So there were various activities and strategies done to do that and now we've got a very basic digital archives going. It's got thousands of photographs, thousands of hundreds of video and film pieces dating back right into the 1930s actually and books and documents and also these audio tapes that are digitized. And that's another piece of what's intended to be the Research Institute and the basis for all of that material is an educational basis in the sense that the materials can be a foundation for the development of educational materials and so on that go into the schools. So for instance we have a grade 12 course that was developed by the clintial government for the high schools about the land claim and the land claim settlement in the region and it uses a lot of the materials that were in the digital archives and so on. So you've got those things, you've also got research that's happening from corporations and institutions across the country and they're looking for science licenses and approvals so they go through our research institute and we see it and it enables us to connect with other researchers that have things that they want to do. But all of these activities had been going on the last couple of years and in some ways it's exploded in the sense that because of the health research that I talked to you about we put in proposals to Canadian Institute of Health Research and won a multi-year, multi-million dollar research grant for what is being called HOTISEDA here which is here and we've got funding to actually help with promote health research all through the territories but it's actually vested and nested within the clintial government. John's probably talked to you about the land claim one, two that it's again another multi-million dollar multi-year project focused on land claims and so on. So there's a lot of activities that are going on and it's kind of an exciting time. You ask what's the age group or target audience? So if you can just describe within the program what are your age group and target audience and sort of what the aim of the program is with the audience? Well I think generally the clintial government, the chiefs have goals that they want as many people out on the land as much as possible living traditional lives and they want young people to be connected with elders. So whatever age you can get people out, the research projects that we do they tend to be high school and university students that are going out with elders. I think I kind of talked about aims and what happens and how you measure success to some degree. I think part of it is just doing it. I mean we need to get people out and we're told by the chiefs, we're told by elders get people out on the land and so just by doing that it's certainly important. We've played around, there's been different research projects over the last few years about indigenous evaluation and so on. In fact we even co-sponsored an evaluation conference here this spring and we've done some things in that area but it's not what I would say that we're actually out there measuring the success of things with particular materials. So I guess the next one would be from your perspective what is indigenous education? Well I mean ideally indigenous education would be education that emerges from culture in the communities with language culture and way of life and I think I was I've been a teacher here 30 years ago in a principal and a superintendent and I mean that's really what the agency was meant to be all about the TCSA and to some extent it's been done well sometimes over the years and other times it's been done terribly and it all depends on who you've got at any given time to work with but clearly I mean the communities tell us the elders in the communities the chiefs tell us that languages and language revitalization is absolutely essential so in the schools and I don't know if you're meeting with anybody at the TCSA. I have met with Rosa and Lucy. Rosa and Lucy and I mean there's been a lot of work over the years in terms of the development of language classes and so on and courses for the high school kids and credits and programs that get kids out on the land and so on. So those are the kinds of things that the school has focused on and again as I say it depends very much on who's there and how much effort is being put into it. The TCSA is in between the GNWT and the clintial government but it's funded as a public school system under the GNWT and they're always being told to cupboard as bare and so for the years that I worked over there you are always struggling with no money or no resources to do these things or very little money and resources and the wonderful thing about the clintial government these days is that there is significant resources coming here and it's certainly unique in my career in the north where you you're working for an organization that actually has the resources to do things so if you have good ideas there's a large opportunity to get them funded because if the chiefs hear that you want to do something and push something forward there's often money to do it so in some ways that takes some of the I think the TCSA was more of a leader in the past but now the clintial government is getting stronger and building its capacity and is taking over many of the things that the TCSA used to do and part of that has been we've been poaching staff so for instance Tammy Steinwand is our director of culture and lands protection here and she was a colleague of Rosen and Lucy's and Anita Daniels is here and she's a director of our social programs and she was one of the original CAR team members over at the TCSA and were involved in health research and so on over there. Mason Mantla was a student from there I don't know if you know Mason or have talked to Mason but he was a young kid in high school that we brought over to the TCSA and trained in film and video because we wanted to reach out to young people using that medium and he's actually become quite a skilled filmmaker and he's back now working with the clintial government. What would I like to see achieved it's not for me to say in that sense we take our direction from the chiefs and elders and their goals clearly have been a strong desire to build a government that focuses on language culture and way of life and that's not easy in this world I mean it's it's a really difficult thing and when I started teaching in Wati 30 some years ago all the kids that came to school spoke clincho so you'd have little kids coming in kindergarten grade one and they were they were unilingually clincho. Today it's not the case and in all of the communities clincho is now the second language if spoken at all and even in homes where parents speak clincho and it's the language between the mom and dad often young people your age won't speak it even though their parents use it regularly in the home so those are huge challenges and they're not they're not just challenges in this region I mean if you go anywhere in the world where there are indigenous people they're all struggling almost to the same degree with those same issues and it's it's it's something with modernity and colonialism and all kinds of issues that cause that but the clincho government there's like three to four thousand people very small group but it's exciting because there's so many interesting things to to to capture and to have the kids proud of who they are and I think I think if anything that's what I would love to see achieved if if I did talk about it as a as a young teacher here I I started with John Trezzo or ancestors canoe trips and those were trips where we bought all of these canoes we took kids from the school and we matched them with elders and we went out on canoe trips and those trips the original ones anyway were significant in the sense that I mean I was on the first two and and I was gone six weeks with one of them and that's when you're out in the land for six weeks it changes you you it's quite an experience and when you looked at all of the stories that were happening on the land and the way that things happened I was I you know I was a very cynical sort of person and you I was the way to put it you look at this thing and it was wondrous it was absolutely wondrous you know and if you didn't if you you know I'm not necessarily what I would call a spiritual person but on one of those trips you know we had run out of food and there were 30 of us in these all these canoes and we had tea and we had porridge and the elders said okay we'll stop and we'll pray for for food and so you kind of say yeah right you know and I'm not a religious person but you sit there and you respect what they're doing and they were praying for food and got back in the canoes and went around a corner and there's a moose and not only did the moose not run away it came forward and so when elders talk about that animals give themselves you could see it you could see it you know and this elder and the canoe pulled out his gun and shot the moose and they cut it up and butchered it and people within an hour people were eating this meat and and I think after the weeks on the trail for a cynical person to look at those things even though it wasn't necessarily that I would I believed that I could see why elders believe those things because the world was acting the way they said it would you know and it it was very powerful and for kids to see that and my own kids are are clinch of citizens and for them to see the wonder of of that side of their culture to me is is is a real gift and so I I hope it survives you know in the next into the next generation but it's you know it's probably all over the place and John I'm not sure I should have talked to John to see what he was talking about first but it's it's exciting and I think I think one of the neat things about the clinch of Evermont is that because of the resources that are currently here and will be and seem to be continuing to flow they'll be able to ramp up and and build build things that maybe other groups in the territories that don't have their claims yet can't do so for instance part of the restructuring to hold the the research institute was this development of a department of culture and lands protection well there's over 30 people in that department now and they're core funded by the clinch of government I mean to me that's amazing you know that's that's a there's something going to happen there and it's a real it's it's it's a real opportunity to move forward with these things