 So thanks very much for those presentations. Lots of food for thought. And the idea is we've asked several people to respond. Please, would each respond in a state of five minutes. So we'll stay as close to the finish time as we can. People have places to go. And I think I'm going to give Dr. Dagonier the last word since it's, that was his mother who said that. She's nervous for you. She's nervous for us. But I'll be strict with him about the timing, too. So we might as well follow the order in which the names appear here. And so the first responder is Julia Cornish, UC, chair of our bar associations. Over to you Julia. Pop up here just because I have a binder and I don't want to embarrass myself by dropping it. Naomi mentioned at the end of her remarks that in Nova Scotia we currently have 50, I think practicing African Nova Scotian lawyers and 50 Mi'kma'a lawyers. That sounds great until I point out that there are actually 2,800 practicing lawyers in Nova Scotia. So I think we expect a great deal of the Mi'kma'a and African Nova Scotian lawyers who we have among us because we do count on them to keep our feet to the fire to a degree. And I did hear the remarks made, I believe, this morning that we shouldn't expect those lawyers to be the conscience of all 2,800 lawyers in Nova Scotia. I am here representing the Bar Society, but I guess that means that I'm here to some degree representing the 2,700 lawyers who are not members of the African Nova Scotian and indigenous communities. Lawyers are people who love tradition. I have a QC, QCs, if you know what that is, as a Queens council, I think most people would. And that was something that started by Queen Elizabeth I. Our Bar Society has been around as a society since 1797, although the first bar in Nova Scotia was around 1749. First African Nova Scotian lawyer, 1,900. First female lawyer, 1,000. First Aboriginal lawyer, 1,993. So we like tradition when tradition tells a positive story. As lawyers, we like tradition an awful lot less when it reminds us that if we do embrace the tradition of the legal profession, we then cannot turn our backs on the role that lawyers in the legal system have had to play in colonization and in residential schools and all of the legacies of those. And those are the things that I gathered from, in particular, Michelle's remarks. There was a great deal that was said in the presentations we've just heard about. We've heard stories, we've heard the parts of the traditions are painful. Those of us in the legal profession, as I say, cannot acknowledge who we are and what we do without acknowledging that uncomfortable part of our legacy. We have, at the Barista Society, had what was first called the Race Relations Committee. It was established in 1998 as a result of a Martial Inquiry along the way it's become known as the Racial Equity Committee, and it still exists. We do like to put high-minded phrases on the wall at the society. We have a strategic framework on the go right now that's where we're in part of a three-year strategic framework. And part of the strategic initiatives that are on the wall that we can all look at and admire says that it's our responsibility as a Barista Society to respond to the calls of action of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee to be fair or to be honest, I guess. And then again, this is something that I heard from the remarks about how important it is to not just hear the words and give credence to the words, but to embed and to acknowledge and absorb. And that is where we struggle, certainly we struggle. Someone in my office said today that they were hearing about reconciliation. And at the society, we are good at talking about reconciliation, but the action part so far is something with which we still struggle. And the message that I did hear from all of the speakers was that we need to do better. And it is not enough about congratulating ourselves for having a committee to deal with issues like racial equity and with inclusion. So what we are starting to do is to acknowledge that we are called upon. And Duma, you said, don't just focus on a couple of the recommendations. So I did bring all of the recommendations with me, but I am going to talk particularly about what we are starting to do as a response, particularly to the calls for the legal community and lawyers in particular, to respond to what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had to tell us. And mindful of the fact that one of our strategic objectives is to promote diversity, inclusion, substantive equality, and freedom from discrimination, both in the delivery of legal services and in the justice system. That's something we can do by the end of the year, right? Not a tall order at all. We meet as a council several times a year. At our last council meeting, we had a paper presented to us for discussion purposes that is the beginning of our work to respond to reconciliation. It's called Reconciliation and Practice at the Nova Scotia Bears to Society. It will shortly be online on our website. And what it requires us to do, our goal is to ensure consideration of indigenous issues in all aspects of the society's work. That means society's staff are to be culturally competent and trauma-informed, that we have a process for considering the legacy of residential schools in all aspects of the society's work, and that we are reporting back about our progress in this area, that we have lawyers who are competent in handling indigenous legal matters and not just lawyers from the indigenous communities themselves, that we have lawyers that know how to meet indigenous legal needs and again, we don't expect that burden to be carried solely by the lawyers from indigenous communities and with indigenous backgrounds, and that we understand the importance of maintaining positive external relationships and be aware of how what we do affects indigenous populations and how important it's going to be to work with our partners in the community and particularly work with the chiefs and with the nations and cultivate an appropriate relationship. So I did some more learning today. We do recognize how important it is to start with learning. As long as we like to learn, we tend to sometimes be a little bit less quick and able to put things into action, particularly when we have many years of inaction in this area to overcome, but as I say, I am counting on those among us and I have some council members here today to keep our feet to the fire on this and thank you so much for everything that you've taught us today to everyone who has spoken. Thank you. Thank you, DeRuella. Next we have DeRue and GuHu. It's well over for you, Sierra. Many of you know him. I'm not going to read it out. I will just say that he's currently the director of vegetation for me and my first nation. I learned one thing here today. I came here and I learned today why when I speak to my lawyer for 10 minutes, he bills me for an hour. Not the best people with the concept of time. Anyway, keeping me to five minutes a minute is going to be a challenge. I'm also like a storyteller. Dylan is my first cousin, he called me and he said to me, he said, Darren, you said, we need an educator for this Reconciliation Education thing. We want someone to be a responder. We need an educator. We called about 20 people and they all said no. So your name is, well, you are not on the list, but I'll put you on anyway. So I think my cousin for that. And I just want to start out by a few of my observations for today. Dr. DeGadne, you talked about access and belief. They are so important, access and belief. Duma storytellers, he talked about stories and the importance of stories. And he talked about where are we at and those stories and how they need to be told. For me as an educator, the importance is the next chapters, who's going to write them? And we need to write new stories. We need to write new stories. And they don't have a beginning and they don't have an end. And some will also be sad, but I also believe many of the new stories we're going to write will be written with hope. Michelle, Michelle, where's Michelle? She's still here, she's still here. And the next conversation with Michelle, it's important because my son, I have a 17 year old son at home and he is awesome. He is, first of all, he's six foot one. Yeah, I know, I asked my wife too. I don't know, he's six foot one, he wants to be a lawyer. He wants to be a lawyer. I always tell him, you want to be a lawyer, stop walking around with your hand in your pocket. It won't work. You got to learn to put your hand on people's pockets. I know, I know. She talked about building a network, building a network. That's so important. We just heard a few seconds ago, 50 lawyers, didn't know it was no show, they're 2,800. Three, three and a half percent. Awesome, awesome. Do we need more? Yeah, we need more. We certainly need more in the budget. I've been in the budget, maybe a lot of lawyers. Jane talked about colonialism and fighting racism, and the need to change this notion of a winner and loser mentality. So how do we do that? I'm going to tell a story at the end of this, I have a point here. So how do we do that? Great, very, very intelligent man. Share something, I also have a math background. And so, what does it do? So when I hear him talk about the math background and the desire to do that, my first, I first graduated from Teachers College, and I was a high school math teacher, and I applied at the school board, and they said to me, they said, this is in 1994, and they're crying for math teachers in this province. And they said, we got a job for you, you want to teach me these studies over at Riverview? I said, I want to teach social studies, man. What's up, you need a math teacher? Well, you know, so I never worked for a teacher at the Victoria School Board because I wasn't a native studies teacher. I was a math teacher, but I need to be validated for you. So, but really, what the thing I want to point out here is, what does mathematics teach us about problems in life? It teaches us one thing. In order to study mathematics and be able to solve higher level functional equations, you have to start and you have to find a solution. And the solution is often the set because in mathematics, higher level problems don't have one single answer. They have a myriad of answers. So you get an expression that has to the 15 power, the 15 different answers, but taken together, they are the solution. And that's part of the message that has to be here today. Chief Justice O'Neill, I agree with you. Let's get it right. Let's get it right starting today. Let's get it right. Naomi, I love this. She asked the question, what is a healthy functional community? She talked about the need for conversation in this country, like the ones we're having today, right here in this room. Part of the problem is, some of the people, we are the willing. We are the coalition of the willing. You don't need to convince us to make a difference. We're already doing it. Now I'm gonna tell my story, but when we're backwards, I'm gonna start with Naomi again. What is a healthy functional community? I've been a director of education in Memberton for 20 years. That's a long time for them to put up with me. What have we done? What have we accomplished? We've done a lot. You've heard of the success within the MK. You've heard of some of the things that we've done well. How has it happened? And what the difference is it gonna make? 20 years from now. So that when we have Ken this 1,775th birthday, what would it be like for my children? When my 17 year old is 42, and he's standing there and he's asking, where are we at? And did we get where we needed to be? So with that being said, how do we make the difference? How do we create an atmosphere that supports reconciliation and education in our communities? We have a four-pronged approach in our community in Memberton. Four things that we do, I think better than many places. We certainly do it better than the province. I say that, we do better than the province. We have a higher success rate in education in the province. We start with four things. And I call them the straight A's to success. And they support this effort. I don't need to point it, sorry. The first thing, attendance, attendance. The single biggest attribute that we had is the original people that allowed us to survive in this land. And as a people, was this notion of attendance. And the residential school experience absolutely destroyed it. Absolutely destroyed it. Why would we send our children? Why would we trust the system and send them there every day that did what the residential school experience did to our people? That's the first thing we need to do is rebuild the trust. And we need to do that by changing the value around attendance. And I'm not only talking about attendance sitting in a classroom and being there every day. That's not attendance. I'm talking about attendance. Attending to what you need to do to make your life better. What do we need to do to make our children's lives better? We need to get them to attend. The second thing we need to do is we need to talk about achievement. Achievement. Because for too long, our people were led to believe that we weren't capable of anything. That we weren't significant enough to achieve. Many of us sitting in around the room today, Duma and I certainly know this. We are products of the system. Not because of it, but in spite of it. And so we talk about achievement. And when I talk about achievement, we need to celebrate. When that original kid is doing the excellent and getting a nine in mathematics in grade eight, celebrate it. We do it in our community. We have a thing, we do the Chiefs of Words for Academic Achievement. And we honor every student in our community that makes the honor roll. And we encourage it. And when we first started this in 2003, we had three students out of a hundred and twenty-one students out of a hundred and twenty-two students winning the award. Three out of a hundred and twenty-two. Last year, out of a hundred and nineteen students, we had forty-two, forty-two. So we are, at this point, more than one-third of our community students in grade seven to grade 12 is a high achiever academically in the school system. And how do we do it? How do we get them to that point? My son's in grade 12, I'm so proud of him. He's gonna be a lawyer. How do we get there? By putting a focus on attendance. We started the Chiefs of Words for Attendance in 2003. And we set a gold standard for attendance in school. And that gold standard was 95%. Last year, our Honor Reserve Elementary School, our attendance rate at our Honor Reserve Elementary School from primary to grade six was 92.8%. And if we go back when I started my job, 95, 96, 96, 97, the attendance rate at the provincial school system was 76.2%. I know because of my first job, I wanted to know what's the problem here? I knew it was attendance. I knew that was the beginning thing we need to change. So I went in and I asked, and they gave me access and we figured it out. The third thing that we need to do, we need to talk about attainment. We don't talk about it. Attendance, achievement, attainment. What is attainment? Attainment is when you go from here to here, so you go from grade three to grade four. You go from grade four to grade five. You go from grade five to grade six. Attainment is also getting the diploma at the end of the day. Finishing, being a high school graduate, that's attainment. But it's no good if you don't have the skills to do what's required of you. So when I talk about attainment in my community is, do you go from grade three to grade four and have the ability to do that work? You go from grade four to grade five and you have the ability to do that work. And then the last thing we talked about and we do well in our community is aspiration. How do we get our kids to want to be? How do we get our kids to want to be? I'm happy to say that in my son's graduating class this year, there are 19 of them. 11 of them were on the honor roll last year. That to me is amazing, 58% of those kids on the honor roll. But more amazing to me, every one of those kids aspires to be someone. And we build that in our community. We build that in our community. We have these youth forums every three years. And we ask force fundamental questions of our youth. What are we doing right? How can we do it better? What are we not doing that we should be doing? Then we ask them this last question. What do you want to be when you grow up? Why is that important to ask original kids that in our community? Because for so long we were told we weren't able to be anything. We weren't able to be anything. And so we ask those questions. I remember the first one. I remember we did one in 2006. We did one in 2006, 57 kids and we had 54 different life dreams. 54, think about that. They didn't want to, and we have a wonderful economy in number two. There are over 2,700 jobs under our band's umbrella. And we own a workforce of 600. So it's different, in my community it's different. But I also think that we're a model for original Canada. And we're a model for how we can be included. We talked about winners and losers. You talked about that, that winner, loser mentality. We need to develop winner, winner mentality. A strong, aboriginal, educated population is good for the government of Canada. It's good for the country of Canada. And it's what we need to all be beneficiaries of our treaties. Anyway, I'm here today. I'm always conflicted when I come to places like this. I put on my shirt because we look like an Indian. I wear my school board pin, even though the government said, oh hey, you know what? You're not gonna be a school warm-ender much longer. I still believe in it, still believe in it. We've lost an important aboriginal voice at the community level, and that's a terrible, sad thing for our communities. But I also, I love this country, so I don't want my Canada sucked up there. We talk about reconciliation. The job of all of us around the table is to create the environment for the conversations to happen. Treaty education is important in this province for one reason and one reason only. So when my son, who was 17, sits down with someone in 15 years as a leader in this province, he's having a conversation that should have happened 50 years ago. Anyway, those are my thoughts. I really enjoyed today. Thank you. Thank you. And again, you have a biography. She's a system professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Nursing at Dalhousie and a member of the Randy River First Nation completed her MSE in PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience. Thank you. So I'm very happy to be here today. In particular to celebrate my friend, Mike Degagne, who I've known for over maybe 10 years now or so. And I just kind of want to really speak to today and focus on the needs of our young people. I think really following up on Michelle's comments and description of the importance of the IV&M problem and also Naomi speaking to that. That's been, I'm not in the law field, but I'm in the kind of health research, indigenous health research field. And I know from my own experiences, the need to provide indigenous students with support. And I just was reflecting during the conversations today about the diverse needs of indigenous students. And about a year and a half ago, I held a course that was called Community-Based Research and it was specifically focused for indigenous students only. And we actually held it here at the Friendship Center and we had about 13 students from Dalhousie, Nascad and St. Mary's. And they described it as being so transformational for them because it was the first time they got to really speak openly in an academic setting about issues that were affecting them every day. And for them, that was a very healing experience. And what we really learned was, I think was my own experience, that there's so many diverse needs of our indigenous students. We had students from, coming from community who that was really all they knew. We had students who had grown up in cities their whole life who were searching for ways to connect with their cultural identities. We had students of mixed race who were struggling with issues related to that. And I think our ways to support them also need to be varied because they have such diverse and unique needs. And we have to make spaces in our academic settings where they can talk comfortably about this and in safe spaces. For me, I found, I was lucky during my graduate studies. I grew up mostly in Ottawa. My family was very connected to our community and to the indigenous community in Ottawa, mostly because I was very involved in hockey and sports. So that connects indigenous peoples in many ways. But I didn't grow up with the strong connection to my culture and my traditions. And so when I decided I wanted to work on indigenous issues, it was because of my family's history related to residential schools. And I was really searching for a way to understand the long-term effects and to connect with indigenous peoples and my identity. And so during, so I started that during my undergraduate I decided that's what I wanted to do and I was trying to find how to make that happen once I was looking into graduate programs. And I couldn't really find any indigenous faculty that would faculty members at universities that I was interested in to help me on this journey. And I was just lucky to find some non-indigenous, amazing supervisors who were willing to support me on my journey and exploring the things that I wanted to. That said, there was still something missing for me in terms of, I felt very isolated in exploring these issues. No other students in the lab were looking at indigenous research and doing the same kind of issues. And so I was very lucky to come in contact with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and Mike and all of the other lovely people who really made me feel like I had a family there. And it made me feel, it really gave me a lot of confidence in the work that I wanted to do and the work that I, and my potential. There were many times I talked to Mike and others there saying I can't do this, I'm not good at this, but if it wasn't for them, I really wouldn't be standing here today. I'm getting emotional, I didn't expect that. And it's really, because I appreciate so much the work that Mike's done and it's been a lot to me. And I think the idea of networks is really important and I'm working currently with Jane McMillan and others here at Delhousie to build supportive environments for Indigenous students during health research. And I think I encourage that to happen in the law field. I'm not sure if that's already happening. It suggests maybe it's not just yet. And we'd like to team up and team up our networks because I think we're all working for the same goals. And I think we can all support each other in making the academia a safer place for Indigenous students. Professor Jennifer Llewellyn, my colleague at the Shoe League School of Law and currently subordinate for a year to the North Scotian Human Rights Commission. Yeah, so wow, that's an incredible afternoon, an incredible day, and an impossible thing to make much commentary on other than to say how absolutely grateful I am. From the moment we walked in, we arrived early and this much had taken place to make this a good space for good things to happen for us today. And I've been startled by the feeling in the room in terms of the engagement from the warmth of looking out over people this morning, as they celebrate it, you Mike, and of the incredible depth of contribution today. And I'm so pleased that at least we've captured some of it on video, so others will also be able to learn from that. So I have very little that I can add. I did strike me as Mike reminded us in his talk today to start early in terms of education and reconciliation, and then I was listening to you and we talked about stories. And I immediately thought of my kids, because for me, that's where reconciliation, where I'm reminded about the need and my hope for reconciliation every morning I wake up. And I was struck by the fact that we spent quite a bit of time in New Zealand. My kids lived there with me for a period of time. And then we were just back there in December. And while they were in New Zealand, they learned an incredible amount of Maori. They both enrolled in Maori classes. The school, they started with Maori song and prayer. They learned how to introduce themselves to have a mihi to talk about how they're connected to their place back here. They learned concepts of family and lineage, you know, fukapapa and iwi and fano. And they still talk about these things and can explain these things. And I find this, it was great to watch. And it was so devastating because I realized my kids came back here and they don't know any of that a month. And that's on me, you know, I can't wait like the calls to action say for someone else to fix that. I'm not exactly sure how to fix it. I have some friends who are language speakers and knowledge holders and can connect that. But it strikes me that that's part of unsettling my own ignorance. It was a profound experience for me that they are capable and attached to those ideas and ways of thinking in terms of the way in which they understood that world and themselves in terms of the stories they were capable of telling and the things they were capable of thinking. And I can only but wonder what's still open for them in terms of ways of knowing and ways of understanding their world. If we could bring that to schools here and why only the kids that live in my house, why not the slightly bigger kids that I teach at the law school or that I work with at the law school. And I was struck again by a recent advancement in the Ministry for Children and Family in New Zealand where they have different Maori concepts that are the principled framework by which Chow welfare works. And so they've developed in conjunction with young people who are in their care buttons to represent those principles, images that the young people drew to represent those principles so that they can be guided by them, know them every day. And it suddenly struck me like what if enroute to this institute that you've raised for us as a dream and an idea that I think we should pursue. What if every course in law school had to take up in the course of teaching the material of contracts or public law, statutory interpretation, one of the ideas of indigenous law from Igmagi, one of the principles and could carry it with them and try to engage in concrete ways that are relevant to understanding and opening their eyes to that area of law. What if that was a place to start small, but small like my kids started in New Zealand? And then I reflected that I think it's not just that reconciliation requires education. I think education requires reconciliation. So the reason my kids and I have been able to learn what I've been able to learn is because I've had the sorts of profound relationships that allowed me to learn and to listen to stories, to be present from others and learn from them, among the people who've been most important to me in that way has been you, Mike, so I paid tribute to you in that way. But if we don't create space in educational contexts where the way we educate, the form, the function, the structure of the classrooms, the way days start, the way days end, the way that we think that we should learn with one another actually matters, that there is space to hear stories, to know through one another's eyes and with one another in a fundamentally different way, we're impoverished in what we're able to know and what we're able to learn and how we're able to prepare ourselves. And so that reconciliation call for me isn't just about we need to learn more to be reconciled, we need that process of working on reconciliation to learn and to know. Thanks very much, Jennifer. We'll hear next from Mr. John Silboy. John is lead mom from Milbrook and he works in social and cultural development, health and education policy, research and community development for Atlantic First Nation communities. Hello. Hello, my name is Duma. I'm a student of the U.S. and I'm from the U.S. Duma is related to everybody and had also invited me to come up here to speak when I just finished my last sentence in my master's presentation and member to First Nation in front of 25 elders. So I had no choice but to say yes. There's three points I want to talk to and there are three things that I learned from my family and my community and the first one is that my mother had this notion and said that welfare is not an option. She said that from the first time that when I remember learning what welfare was, we grew up with it, we grew up with social assistance and she always drilled it into our mind that it wasn't an option for us to look at. So keeping that in mind, social capital and capital education that we have in our families is further growing but it's really slow but it's growing in bounds in each generation. When my mother went to school, she went to grade nine and then at grade nine she stopped and she had 10 children by the time she was 28. I was the eldest. And then she says I started going night school and then she was able to get a grade 10 and then grade 11 and then whatever. Then she drilled it into our mind that education was the only way we could do it. It didn't matter how we did it. If it was through going to night school, if it was going through adult ed, if it was just getting that high school and then from there moving on forward. Jumped down to the next generation, her children and of the 10 children she had, seven of us went to post-secondary and the three that didn't just chose to go through another route. And then with that generation, we started having a bunch of children. I have almost 40 nephews and nieces, no children of my own. But in that group of children now that we have, we have that motto embedded in our mind that welfare is not an option. So I have, for example, a sibling who has four children and one that had gone through the system here at Dalhousie and she went through economics. And then she passed her economics and went into law and she's here in law. So that's the eldest. Then her next sister decides, well, I want to go into medicine and says, well, I can't get through the process at Dalhousie. So I'll move aside from Dalhousie and I'll go somewhere else. And she did, she got into medicine. And then there's two other siblings following suit, one of which is going into sciences here and she doesn't know what she wants to do while she's navigating her area. And my next nephew in that category says, I play hockey, that's all that needs to be done. And looking at reconciliation and education, we have to look in our territory for our own resources and the most important resources that we have in our community and in our territories, our people. And I keep looking at the wealth of knowledge that we have sitting here in this part here but then trickle that down to their children and their relatives and their grandmothers and mothers. It's amazing how many people we have that have cultural knowledge, spiritual knowledge and that oral tradition that we need to incorporate into reconciliation and building of that education. We have to include that Unnuwe world view that we have to build and continue to build on to and pass down to our children so that that embedded code for example that says welfare is not an option is passed down as well. We have to make sure that we look at celebrations such as Dr. DeGanne's process and recognize that process is part of building relations within the academic area. That process of the academy needs to be shifted so that we include all kinds of spaces for everybody that come from our community. That sense of responsibility that you mentioned is where that looking at territory is very important and that we have to assume a responsibility if we are provided with the right resources coming from the Western systemic academic environment so that we can move forward with a sense of drive as well that we reclaim our place in those academic areas. The other notion is us as equals in that academic Western perspectives of the academy but also us as equals within our own community. So with that point when I presented a thesis with the elders and member two, Duma had asked can you talk about reconciliation from a perspective of a two-spirit person for example. And I said to myself well how would I approach that and then I came back to the same way that I started the thesis all together was looking at our history and reclaiming our identity within that history and making sure we may move forward with enough room so that we can explore that identity and make sure that we have the space to talk about it. And we also have to revisit our own identity within our own community, the Mi'kmaq community for example, and within our leadership to move forward because we can't do it alone as well because our own leadership has suffered from that process of not building relationships because of colonialism. So we have to address those homophobia or transphobia for example that exists within our communities. And an example of that is for example in Ontario they did a study about people relocating because of their identity and being trans. And they talked about how let's say in Ontario they said 400 plus people had talked about having to relocate because of their being trans. And out of that about 30 plus percent of that population was trans. But you compare that to the indigenous population it jumped right up to 67% of that relocation that was needed for people. So the importance being of sharing this part of that story is the fact that we need to go back to history and reclaim that history of ceremony, of spirit and identity to make sure that we also have within our own communities a sense of reconciliation with our own past that a lot of it has gotten as well. So that sense of responsibility that you mentioned is part of relationship building within our own community so that we can move forward as well. And then we also move forward with the rest of the community and how we work with outside of our indigenous culture. The other last point that I wanna make sure that I pass on is that in reconciliation with post-secondary education there's a few models out there that we can take advantage of. And one that I like is looking at the 10 seats that Acadia, St. Effect, and Mount St. Vincent have for example in the PhD program. And I keep going after the Mount President, Dr. Lankin before and now the current president and saying, when are we gonna turn those 10 seats into 10 indigenous people doing their PhD here in our territory? We shouldn't have to send people to Montreal and to the states and somewhere else in Saskatchewan where chances are once they leave, they will not come back. So we need to make that room here available for people in the PhD programs here. We need to look at how we can close that gap for PhDs to be produced here in this area and make sure that they stay here. And then we have to make sure that those gaps that we address are addressing the real needs of our territory in this area. So as I say equals look within our territory and welfare is not an option is how we have to move forward with reconciliation and education. Thank you. So the final responder, I think it's appropriate that it should be Dr. Mike DeGone, and so I'm gonna call on Mike to make a few final comments. Thank you. Thanks very much. Jean asked me, has you had a good day? It's, there's no better, I don't think there's three days like this in a lifetime where people have been so kind and acknowledged some work that I think we're all proud of, especially around the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and others and to see good friends. So I'll just try and sum it up by saying that we have three different histories here today. And the longest history, people with the longest history have spoken to us about a time when we never spoke about indigenous issues. This wasn't part of it. We didn't talk about rights. We didn't talk or challenge the treaties. And now we know that you are knowledge keepers. You have to keep telling us that these things have not always been discussed. You have to go, we have to go back to those first meetings and those first discussions, those first encounters when we finally, even only a few decades ago, we finally got indigenous issues on the table. And so you are knowledge keepers. There's another group that have a slightly shorter history and you're the ones who are asking why these injustices that were identified so long ago and these issues that we just started talking about, why do they persist today? Why are, in spite of the fact we said never again, why are we recreating the residential school system? Why are we failing our children? So you're the ones that are going to help us not repeat these mistakes, but you're going to be the new leadership and you're going to provide the evidence we need to move forward. So that's you, Amy and Naomi and others who will take up this baton and be the leaders for moving us forward. And finally, the students, you have the shortest histories and you're now realizing based on what you've heard about our past and what you've heard about our present that you're the people that have to shoulder this particular burden. You're the ones who are going to have to solve this problem and you're going to be the one that will have these very, very difficult conversations. And all we can tell you is that we are here to support you. We're here to help you. And I think you hear that very clearly with what happened today. So I close with a very small story sort of directed to you as students, but don't be afraid. I go back to when I was 11 but it's not a very long story. When I was 11, my highest aspiration was to be an altar boy. This was a very important goal for me. And I was allowed in the small community in Northern Ontario that I lived in at the time to apply to be an altar boy and I did so. And it was very close to the beginning of Lent. In fact, it was, I was given a notification just before I think it was a Friday that said, on Monday, we'd like you to come. You're going to be your first day as an altar boy for the 7.15 AM mass. I thought this was fantastic. And in fact, I remembered well being on Monday because my father had promised to go fishing with me on Sunday, but I was so worried that we wouldn't get back in time that for some reason I couldn't be there on Monday morning at 7.15 that we canceled. I just, you know, I got to be ready. I got to be ready to go. So first, so my father drives me at 7 o'clock in the morning because I didn't want to be late. And at the time there were lots of altar boys, okay? And so there were rooms where you could, roving rooms, you had brand new little surpluses and cassocks, those little black robes with the white, the short white smocks on top. And they had shoes. And of course I was the only one there, oddly enough, at 7.15. And so I got to choose just the right shoes and just the right cassock and just the right surplus. I went back into the sacristy and talked to the priest and he says, all right, let me show you what you need to do. And I got to light the candles. It was a long rod with the candle layer on the top. And on the other side, of course, you could extinguish candles with a little cup. Some of this might be familiar to some of you. And so I got to light the candles and set everything out. And it was just the priest and I, that was it. That was the, there wasn't more than one altar boy. And so he said, now what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to do the readings, first and second reading. I said, I just don't know about that, Father. No, don't worry about it. Here's how it's gonna work. So he took me out onto the altar area. The altar area. And there was a podium. And in that podium inside was a little step. And he pulled the step down. He says, you step up on this. And he says, I'll just leave it open. The first ribbon marks the first reading. And then he said, when you're done that and you go up again for the second reading, you just go to the next ribbon. And that's right there. Fantastic. So we started the mass. There were three people there. Three very elderly women. That was it in a darkened church at 7.15 during Lent. Except for my father, who was way at the back and I suspect he was fast asleep. But that was it. He was sitting there. So when the time came, he said, you know, first reading, absolutely. And I went and I would imagine that given the level of the text, I just stumbled through the whole thing. That's fine, no problem. Second reading, I did it again. And there was no pressure to do well. There was no pressure to perform. There was none of that. And after the mass, I was sent out to extinguish the candles. And one of the elderly women came up to me and said, you did such a wonderful job on those readings. And she opened up a little cloth purse and she gave me a nickel. I have never in my life been uncomfortable speaking publicly ever since that time. And it didn't take much. It took five cents and a little bit of praise and the opportunity to stand there and make any mistake that I had to make without judgment. It was really marvelous. The priest then said, you know, you did such a nice job. Is there any chance you could do the 715 mass for the rest of Lent? Wow, what a treat that was. Told my father, who then had to drive me for 35 days and seven days in the morning to do exactly the same thing. And there I was on this little bench, you know, speaking to a darkened church with the same three ladies who gave me a nickel every day. And I'll tell you what, it was the most powerful and affirming thing I think that could ever have happened for something that gives people all kinds of stress in their lives. So I say to you as students, and I think on behalf of all of us who will support you in your journey, it doesn't take much. It just takes a little bit of knowing that you're being supported, that you're being praised, that we watch you succeed and fail and get back up again without judgment. But that, it's very clear to me through this discussion that your education will be important to all of us and that we're all here to help. So thank you very much for a wonderful day. Thanks, Michael. Thanks to all of the presenters and responders and to everybody who attended. It's been a great day. I'm certainly taking away some good messages. I won't repeat them. I mean, being a Cape Ratner, I like the, it's friggin' tough. That's pretty good. You know what I mean? That was a pretty good message. But there's lots of positive, within the hard work that we have to do, we've heard lots of positive things as well. So I wanna say a thank you to everyone. All we're thinking of way is to keep this going and to deal with the point that they're made about, I think not only about preaching to the choir and find ways to extend it beyond the choir, for sure. As an educator, but just as a citizen. It's been a real pleasure to work with Tuma, Duma and this Cape Raton University on this initiative. And again, I'll repeat what I said this morning about a warm thank you to the Friendship Center. It's been great to be here. And now that we've done this once, I'm already keen to find another way from back and do some sort of community event here. Tuma, you've been a partner in this. I'm gonna leave and make the last thank you or goodbye to you. Well, I'll do it in a way, I'm just gonna say thank you for everyone for being here. This was really a good experience for me. And when we had started this and I said, I told Dean Hemmer and I said, I wanted to replicate the experience I had down in Arizona when I was doing my residency and my supervisor, we were talking about the problems of implementation of under and they brought in the think tank CG, C-I-G-I. And CG brought all the top legal indigenous academics from all across Canada, John Boers, and Saad Gage, and Jeff Hewitt, and others. Everybody came to Tuma through 10 and they presented their draft papers. And we were invited to respond. And I remember sitting there and there was also students behind and then we were also, some of those students were saying that they were there to listen. And I thought that was the greatest intellectual exercise we can think. It was just a generation of ideas and we, every single speaker, every single presenter, and we went further, further up in how we thought. We went away from the minute details that can bog us down and it freed up our mind to think large, big picture of what we can all do and energize us. And I said, that was my goal for today. And to continue this. So with that in mind, I'd like to say we're all in for the Friendship Center and President DeGertie, who was always there, you know, in the middle of the night. I was able to come home here. And I am going to ask, I don't know if our elder's still here, but if not, then I'm going to ask Bill. Bill? Bill, come up and pose us off here. I don't have to put you on the spot, Bill. Bill and I also go a long way back. The days of, I was working at Steppenstone with his wife. Well, as usual, we got all kinds of notes, you know, go away and think about and then come back with these brilliant ideas now. It was a great discussion and I was glad to be a part of it. It represents the direction that we have to go and we do have to all come together. So we just improve the educational system but improve our own communities too. And I keep thinking of all the things that have been going on lately and what comes to my mind is when I lived up in Madeleine where these two eagles used to sit in a tree and then the tide brought their dinner in and the tide would go out to the fish there and they come down and they'd grab the fish and take off. And then there were a little crew of crows that would go underneath them and just aggravate them in the way the crows do. They'd just do a barrel roll and go, you need it. And I watched that one time and what I was struck by when we were dealing with the Cornwallis stuff that here the eagle just didn't bother with it because it reached out and squished their head at any moment and just kept going higher and higher and higher and at some point of height the eagles, the crows, took off, right? And that struck me at that time as being very representative of all the nonsense not that what we were doing around Cornwallis was wrong but somehow we get drawn off into things that were not as important like the fact that we were dealing with colonialism not the personality contest vote Mr. Eddie and so I thought of that and how it applies to so many of the things we deal with that we sometimes have to rise above things and not only that to see the bigger picture the things that really matter and that's kind of what I got this afternoon through all the little things that we were talking about we're not so much little small things but how we have to see that bigger picture of the colonial powers and what we need to do and to me that was the lesson I drew this afternoon and I just wanted to share that because it seems to me it'd be good if we can go away with the thought that carries us forwards not just a period of really small stuff so I hope to leave it with that and we'll allow you to everybody thank you