 Good afternoon, lovely to have such a delicious lunch and to reconvene and to be here in this special space to learn from our next keynote speaker. My name is Connie Blomgren and I work at Athabasca University and I am part of the program co-chair committees for the conference and I am now calling myself a cousin to NorQuest because everybody... So it feels like family to be now be a part of AU and NorQuest. So I'm here to just warmly welcome Sandra LaMouche, who is a Nihau'a Eskwi kri woman from Big Stone Kri Nation in Treaty 8 territory. She's married to a Pekani man and has two boys age 14 and 9 and on Sunday afternoon she had a... because she's a hockey mom so she had to go to a hockey game first and the... that was the younger guy and then she came even the little older one was still playing. Sandra holds a Bachelor of Arts in Native American Studies from the University of Lethbridge and a Master of Arts from Trent University. Her thesis is entitled and I'm doing my best here but I am a baby when it comes to Blackfoot and Kri so Natona Mayo Pimadisawin seeking a good life through Indigenous dance. Her thesis is available online and I know I'll be reading it and I encourage you to do so as well. In addition to being a champion hoop dancer and an award-winning Indigenous educator, Sandra is also a visual artist with a new exhibition being displayed this November in the City of Lethbridge. She is authored a children's book, has a young adult novel under development and soon will be part of an artist in residence program at the Bant School of Fine Arts where she will develop a play about an Indigenous woman who encounters understandings of contemporary Indigenous life including the difficult topic of murdered and missing Indigenous women and children. Sandra recently auditioned and acted in the play Honor Beat, a story about two growing Indigenous sisters and their dying mother which was the role played by Sandra. During the summer she was part of a small dance tour with several other Indigenous women and they performed in Whitehorse and Dawson City in the Yukon and she told me that she found the Yukon landscape just so magical with the big mountains and the really large rivers. In July 2024 Sandra has a month-long sovereignty-themed art residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico. So as you can see her accomplishments just keep growing because that one about the Santa Fe she just told me at lunch and we had dinner together and we've been hanging out and so it's like oh yeah right there is that too. So as we welcome Sandra to our Open Education Global Conference let us soften our hearts and observe using our minds and enter into the teachings of her dance. Her steps and movement are part of her keynote message. I invite you to listen with your body and to feel with your spirit. Hi hi. Tansa, Sandra Lemusch, Nitsigasun, Nia, Nehiro, Esquail. I'm a Kree woman from the Big Stone Kree Nation, my mom's community and my dad is from the Kapawayno First Nation. Under the Indian Act I'm only able to enroll or associate with one of the communities of my parents. It is one of the ways that under the colonial policies that we experience the continued erasure and assimilation of Indigenous peoples in Canada. I am born of these colonial policies. I am born of missing and murdered Indigenous women. I am born of residential school survivors, day school survivors, Metis resistance and relocations. But I'm also born of medicine people, drum keepers, language speakers. I am born of hunters and trappers and bead workers and storytellers. And I am not successful and resilient in spite of being Indigenous. It is because I am Indigenous that I am able to be resilient and successful. It is the stories, the culture, the language, and the teachings that I've received that allow me to be strong and to persevere. So today I wanted to talk about Nidonak Mio Pematiswin. This is a Kree philosophy that I learned and Dr. Anthony Michael Hart did research with Kree elders and he came up with an explanation or description of what this means. Mio Pematiswin means the good life and Nidonak means seeking the good life. So it's an active and lifelong journey to seek a good life. It takes constant work and balance. What he described it as was a process of learning, growing, being, and being and becoming. So our Kree philosophy of living a good life centers around constant movement and growth. It's about always learning, always trying, always pushing yourself. And it is lifelong. So until you are an elder, until you are done living, you're always learning and growing. And I was really interested in the philosophies of Indigenous people because of the hoop dance. And when I first became a hoop dancer, I learned the different history, teachings, and stories that go with the hoop. And the hoop dance changed my life in terms of spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental well-being. And so when I did my master's thesis, I wanted to learn more about this. How come I didn't learn this as a kid? How life-changing this was for me? I wish I would have known earlier. And so part of that was learning of Indigenous dance history and more of the oppression that Indigenous dances and culture and spirituality were actually illegal in Canada and the U.S. up until 1950. And so when I started to learn hoop dancing, even starting as a child, as a dancer, tap, jazz, ballet, lyrical, it didn't have the same impact that hoop dancing had on me. And so I wanted to look more into the symbolism, the symbolism of the dances and the hoops. And so within the hoop you will see it contains, it is what encompasses all of the four directions. And so I came up with this idea of looking at wellness and well-being as tied to learning and growing. And all of this is essential to living a good life. And so here we have the Nehiwak Medicine Wheel that I was taught by family friends. And in the east is the spiritual. And I often describe spirit as our culture and identity. And in the east is like the sun rising as well. So it's represented by fire. And I think of spirit as that spark within us, that light within all of us that we all have. And so when you're taking care of your spirit, you feel that passion, that drive, that spark, that excitement in what you are doing. In the south is the physical body. And it also for me is our physical environment. It could be your home. It could be connection to the land, diet, fitness. For me it's going on 16 years sobriety as part of that physical wellness and healing. In the west is emotional characterized by adulthood. And that includes represented by the water because when you're really emotional, it shows up through the water. What my mom taught me is water is healing. In the north is the element of air, the mental, the mind. It's our thoughts. And it's represented by our elders. And in this version I also have the concentric circles. And so when the individual is in the center, family and community, or family and friends, and then community and then nation. And this is representative of Indigenous ways of being and wellness and learning, because everything that you do impacts everybody around you. And it also carries on throughout Indigenous in different generations. So it could be passed down from generation to generation. And so that's why you see the elder is connected to the spiritual. The elders teach the children and that cycle continues on. And so I have the picture of the ripples in the water, representing that stone thrown in the, like a stone thrown in the water, that ripple effect of all of our actions. And so in Indigenous ways of knowing that I am familiar with, we don't just grow up as an individual person growing from small to big. We also grow outwards. And so we grow as little spirits and individuals and babies. We grow out into the family to having friends. And then we grow out even further, maybe when you have a job and you're working with community, maybe you're traveling more. And then as an elder, you're actually growing outwards where you're influencing your whole entire nation and all of the young ones that are coming up. So that's part of our Indigenous ways is that we are connected to all of those around us. One of the ways we are connected is also through our DNA and what we would call blood memory. And so we have these teachings that what our ancestors have done, their knowledge, and even some of their challenges, we inherit that in our blood memories. And so as an example, a few years ago I was struggling with anxiety, so bad that it was sometimes difficult for me to leave my house and to be in public. And I remember sitting there and smelling this wahimasa gun, Diamond Willow Fungus. And for some reason it was just like a strongly, a strong scent. And I had kept it by my bed for a long time, for years probably, but during this period it was like it was a stronger smell than it had been before. And so I held it in my hands and I inhaled and exhaled deeply and I could feel myself calm down. And then I started to carry it with me wherever I went, out of the house in my jacket pocket, in my purse. And every time I was starting to feel anxious I would take that wahimasa gun and I would smell it. And I got really curious, why am I doing this? Like why am I doing this? I've only known it to be used as a smudge, which is where we burn it and the smoke is used for prayers. So that's the way that I've known it to be used. And so I looked into it a little bit more and I found this article, American Mycological Society Journal. And in there it said that kree people and kree women specifically used to make this diamond willow into necklaces and wear it as a spiritual protection. And I found that really interesting. And here you see a picture of my mushum and he's holding up a drum, but he is from the community where we use this medicine a lot and burn it and smudge with it a lot. So it was reminding me of that. And then the other photo is from the Glenbow Museum. And you see the wahimasa gun sewn on to the robes of the kree men. And so it was valued for its scent and it was worn as protection. And so I found this really interesting because nobody I knew had known this practice. And so it was a really old practice of wearing and carrying this medicine with you. And how did I, how was I able to learn that just through my body senses and my blood memory? So I ended up looking at some of the scientific properties of the diamond willow. And I found that sometimes these funguses grow out of the wounds of trees, of these willows. And the knowledge that I learned kind of grew out of my own wound of struggling with with the anxiety that I had. And so this this connection that we have, you know, our indigenous knowledge is not just all in the mind in the brain and with words. It's also in all of our senses. So the way we know the world is through smell, touch, taste, hearing, sight, feeling. And we also have other senses. Intuition is one that my mama has taught me about. But we also have dreams and vision. So we have all of this expansive knowledge system. We know the world in more ways than often Western education will allow us to. And then this knowledge is also intergenerational. So like the concentric circles, I had this knowledge within me that I didn't even know that I held until I went through this experience. And so part of this teaching for me is about related to the hoops as well. So each hoop is said to represent a challenge in our life. And the more we go through these hoops, the stronger, wiser, better that we become. And so it's a teaching about all of life that we go through challenges, struggles to become better. And as a hoop dancer dances, you'll see beautiful designs and shapes. And then you'll also see a moment of change, challenge, and transformation as they move from one design to the next. And so when I do the hoop dance, I often think of one of the ways I describe it is the beautiful struggle of life. And so for me, it's not just about always looking at the beauty in life, but we also need to look at those challenges that we have and go through those challenges and not always run from them, but take them as an opportunity. And sometimes I even take those challenges and I bring them towards me so that I could go through them and in order to grow and become stronger. So sometimes I go towards those challenging things or things that I know are hard for me that I struggle with. But it's not just to say that struck just because I've been oppressed that it's helps me. It's also a reminder about responsibility. And so with the hoop, there's no beginning, there's no end, it's constant motion. And so it represents what what you do in the world comes back to you. So it's a teaching about responsibility. So it's not meant to excuse oppressive or abusive or violent behavior of anybody. It's meant to show responsibility. But when I think of that, what you do has consequences. I also think of justice. And what does that mean in terms of justice for Indigenous people? What are the consequences? Are people having their fair share of consequences? Are people, are some people experiencing more consequences than maybe they deserve? And so I received, I didn't tell you about this Connie, I received another grant from the Canada Council of the Arts to do a dance piece. And I started to explore more of this blood memory and this wahimasa and medicine and what does it mean out of wounds is what it's called growing out of wounds and growing, experiencing blood memory and transformation through through trauma, actually. And so I was told if you're going to be a keynote, you should have a book to promote. So here is my book. It is called We Belong to the Drama. It was published this May and it was the experience my son had. So it's based on a true story. He was at daycare for the first time and he had spent, this is him in sitting on the grass, he had spent his first year of life going to powwows and being around the drum every weekend. And so when he went to daycare, he was the only Indigenous child in the daycare and it was really difficult for him and he cried every single time until one day I saw another parent who brought her child's favorite music and so I said, oh, I'm going to show them powwow music, drum music. And so they started to play different drums from around the world and it wasn't until the native powwow drum music that my son recognized it. He was able to distinguish that sound from all of the other drum sounds from different cultures around the world and he got so excited and they pulled out some of their little toy drums and he started to call his friends over, which is the teaching of our drums is that it brings us together. It brings people together. It's meant to build peace and he brought some little craft feathers to the drum and he started tickling their faces which is what I would do with him. I would carry him and I would tickle his face with the feathers that I had on my hair ties. And the next day, the next morning, it was time to have breakfast and then after breakfast, he grabbed his shoes and he grabbed his coat and he went to the door and he was excited to go to daycare for the first time. I didn't have to fight with him and then when I dropped him off, there were no tears and so he didn't feel bad and I didn't feel bad either. And so this story is about the sound of the drum and in the book, you'll learn the teaching of, you know, he was listening to the drum before he was born, not only at powwows but also that's the first sound that we hear is our mother's heartbeat. And so we used that in our teachings, right, that you're also teaching, you know, you don't also have all of your past ancestors knowledge but you're also carrying all of those things forward for the future generations. And so how we are bound now in time between the past and the future. And so my son now is 14 years old and he's quite a bit taller than me. And then my nine-year-old said I have to write a book about him so I've been like trying to trying to figure out what that's going to be. And one of the quotes I used in this book is from Brené Brown and she talks about belonging and belonging is not about fitting in, that's the opposite of belonging. Belonging is being accepted for who you are, not having to change who you are to fit into the expectations of others. And so that's the teaching in this book. I also really wanted to include some Cree language and so the Cree literacy network helped with the translation but I also use Cree kinship terms. And so when we say my mother, we don't, we say my mother, your mother or his or her mother or their mother. So it doesn't always have the same gender binary that we're used to in colonial languages or the English language. So I wanted to include that and to share that diversity and how important that is because when we're all trying to fit into one mold, you know, it constrains us and it doesn't allow us true belonging and to be who we are. A part of my thesis that we looked at was self-determination. And so self-determination was a key part in healing and so when you're going on a healing journey, one of the things that you need to learn how to do is to make decisions for yourself to go on that journey. And so a lot of our teachings are through stories and one of the people I interviewed, Rosa John, who has a dance company close to here, she shares how she teaches her kids and her grandkids and she tells them everything in your outfit is from a living animal and so you have to respect that animal and that person who made your outfit because they gave their life, they gave their time, you know, to allow you to have that. And so she said it's not a rule, it's an option of knowing and so when it's an option of knowing, those children and those youth are able to decide for themselves and when we decide for ourselves what to do, it's more powerful. We're more likely to stick to that rather than being told this is the rule, hard rule, don't do this. It's not as an effective way of teaching and so that's why I like to use a lot of storytelling and in my performances and my dances and in the hoop dance itself it's known as a storytelling dance. And so when you see the dancers dance they do tell their own stories and I think, yeah, so I wanted to say hi, hi, thank you. This is my Instagram thing, QR code. And yeah, I'm going to be performing a hoop dance for you and then afterwards we will have time for a Q&A. What can we say except wow, hey, amazing. So we'll just let Sandra catch her breath and drink a water and slow her heart down a bit. But we do have time for a couple of questions so I mean there's lots of things we could ask about as we can hear from her beautiful presentation, many points of entry for us so there's a microphone over there and one over here so if we have questions come on up. Okay, we're ready, yeah. Anybody with questions? Okay, we have a gal over here. Thank you so much for that. I was wondering if first before I asked my question could you tell us how to not bring our cultural ways of thanking you for your gift? Like I wasn't sure if we should applaud during your performance or not so could you tell us what, how would you like to receive our appreciation? I think it just needs to come from the heart but applause is good, yeah, it's okay to yell during the performance. This used to be a ceremonial dance and so ceremony is not appropriate but entertainment, how we do it now is okay to clap, cheer, whatever, pictures and usually people will tell you if that's not okay and so that's a good way to learn or else you could watch what other people are doing I guess. Well thank you again. Thanks. So my other question relates to that and a lot of what you said spoke to me as a mother and how can I create space for ceremony but I'd like to know your advice on you know as we learn about for example your culture and what ceremony means and how you described it and I'd like to carefully curate that into my life and how do I create ceremony in my life while teaching my child to respect what ceremonies mean in other places without cultural assimilation of your definition of ceremony in those sort of pieces. Yeah I think one of the great things is that there are so many Indigenous authors who share their perspective and if you could learn from the people where you live is the best related to the land you live on. So whether it's the plants or the stories the lots of the land places have you know stories behind them or certain significance to animals um and then like some of the practices like gratitude you could do every day and that's like a human you know just a human thing that we should all be doing um yeah. Thank you so much um what really came through to me was just how much you gave of yourself and um a question I have and I don't even know if something could answer in this sort time but was there a moment that you or some turning point that had you decided to share yourself like this because at some point that must have happened like I'm going to share myself my story um and I'm just left really moved and curious. My nickname in childhood was Mousy just because I was so quiet I was just like nibbled on food I was just really a mouse and that's what my young adult novel youth novel is going to be about but um as I started to dance people just asked me what does your beadwork mean what does the dance mean and that's how I got more into public speaking and I did like toastmasters and TEDx and stuff like that so I know just basically basics of how to structure and like not say um if you can help it yeah thank you. So I think being in education for 10 years um was a big drive and then sharing my son's story of how important our culture is was that has really been my my own fire of like kids that can't even talk yet know if they belong or not and I'm getting emotional just thinking of it right now. Yeah I'm not sure what we are like for time I don't have a watch on and my phone's there some yeah okay thank you well three minutes so we had well there could be time for one more question if there's anybody else with a question but if not oh I'm sorry there's one coming here okay not a question just a thank you and a moment of gratitude for being vulnerable with us as a group this is a really difficult thing to do and I think I'm okay to say this on behalf of everyone thank you for sharing your story with us. Hi Jenny there is time for one more question will squeak in. Great thank you thank you so much for your gift Sandra I really appreciate it. What I saw as an outsider in what you were doing was that it looked much more creative than tradition so I think I'm seeing a lot of your joy your art your interpretation of the art in that and I wonder if I imagine that you do share that with other indigenous women and others in your community how can we support you to keep doing that. Thank you for that yeah just share I think if you just share the book that I have a website if you want to share I have taught lots of youth and even like foster children I had a group that I worked with closely for years and mentored them and they've they're all some of them have continued and so that's how we that's how I do it because people just approach me one-on-one that's how my teacher did it yeah you could share if you ever need a conference speaker or entertainment I don't know thank you I do I do a lot of different like I do a lot of these so yeah I I feel like really blessed and grateful that I do have lots of opportunities so sometimes booking two years in advance for things or like a year in advance so yeah but I do as much as I can when I can without like depleting myself so I do make a lot of room for that self-care and stuff yeah yeah thank you thanks so much again we've had a wonderful time learning from you and we just have this small gift from dark quest college for you thank you so there's coffee outside and then sessions