 Good afternoon. My name is Constance McIntosh, Associate Director of the Health Law Institute. And to all of you, I say, Jalassi, welcome, as we stand together today in Djibouk, in Magmagi. And we're here to welcome Dr. Cindy Blackstock, Spirit Bear and Noah Bear. Dr. Blackstock is a kikusan woman and social worker who, in my opinion, shocked mainstream Canada with her work exposing horrendous discrimination against First Nation children. As you all know, she has worked tirelessly to end this discrimination and the fight, unbelievably, is continuing. She's the Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. McGill University is extremely lucky to have her as a professor in their School of Social Work. I'm going to hand the podium over to Dr. Blackstock, because I know you're all here to hear her, not me. And she'll share some words with us until approximately one, and then, of course, we'll open the floor to questions. And I ask you to join me in welcoming Dr. Blackstock. I would be honored to be here in Nicaragua Territory, and in Halifax, where there's less snow than there is in Ottawa. And less political crisis than there is in Ottawa. So it's always good to get on the plane when that kind of stuff starts. When I started, I saw the injustice of First Nations children, that they were getting less public services than all other children. But being judged by Canadians who didn't know any better, as if they got more. And the hardship of those compound inequalities was piling up on the hopes and dreams of the kids. And perhaps most tragically of all, is the kids didn't know that the federal government funds services on reserve and that the federal government was choosing to underfund those services on reserve. All they knew is that life was a lot harder for them. And other kids seemed to be able to make an easier go of it. And other people in Canadian society were sending messages, well, it's because the First Nations folks don't know how to manage the money. It's because you're not working hard enough. It's because you won't let go of the past. And so what did those youths start to do? They started to codify it as a personal deficit. That there was something wrong with them. And so it's no surprise to me that we see the tragically high youth suicide rates in First Nations communities. When they don't have the same opportunity as everybody else. But they're being judged as if they have a better opportunity than everyone else. But when you walked into that landscape, I knew one thing for sure. And that was that I was absolutely not the right person to take this on. I was not smart enough. I didn't know enough. There was somebody else out there who knew how to do advocacy. And especially against the government of Canada, right? It's not like starting slow, right? And so I did. I don't know if many of you have done the same. But I decided, well, I'm going to keep my head down for a bit. And I'm just going to work with the families I'm working with. And wait for that magic person to appear. And I looked around after a few years and I realized everybody else was doing exactly the same thing. And so one of the first lessons of advocacy is that you have to do something. It's not enough to know. It's not enough to care. You have to do something. And that means you're going to have to risk failing. But one of the elders always told me that, you know what? By even trying, you're telling the kids that you love them enough to try. And isn't that a better message than saying that you're too afraid of failure so you're going to let them suffer? And that's why we're all in this room together. Because what I realized and I was guided to understand is that doing advocacy when you don't know anything and you don't have much money and the government already knows the answers to implement to make kids' lives better but just doesn't want to do it that you actually can do it without any money or knowledge. That's the good news. And in fact, I would argue that it is a small group that is in a far better position to take on a large government or a multinational corporation. That the smaller you are and the less you have to lose, the more successful you can be. If you are grounded in ethics, if you are determined to do right versus being right, and if you are determined to represent the people you have the honor of working with, with dignity. And that's an important thing. You've got to manage yourself. The most challenging bit in doing advocacy is not managing Canada. All governments, no matter who they are, they have good and moral people inside of them. But as a general characteristic, governments are not logical and moral. But you always have to conduct yourself as if you're logical and moral. You must hold yourself to that standard. Because by holding yourself to that standard, you already have an advantage the government doesn't have. Now, one of the things that I think is really fundamental is understanding what is the solution you want to advocate. Notice I'm saying solution, not problem. It is really easy to complain, right? I see a lot of complainers out there in Ottawa in front of Parliament all the time. But if they're just going to complain, aren't they just by default leaving the solution to the government that is already not paying attention to their issue? I think it's far more important you advocate for a solution. But what is that problem and what is the solution that you're going to go for? And in my case, I could have done First Nations use suicide, I could have done housing, I could have done water, I could have done education underfunding. There's a whole host of things. But what I decided to do is kind of peel back those layers and see what's common to all of them as a causal factor. And that's inequality. If I decided I wanted to get into politics and run for Prime Minister in October, and let's face it, I think it's time for a gal to get in there, right? You know? Do you think so? I'm not politically motivated myself, but I do think it's time, right? But if I were, I would actually just run on one platform and that would be to reduce the inequalities in our own country. Because the best research in the social sciences say when you reduce inequalities in your own society, you not only contribute to a growing economy, you contribute to the lowering of health risks for your population, lowering of incarceration rates, lowering of child and care rates, increased education rates. All these good things come from that one thing. And this is the proof, for those of you who want to look at it. This is the World Health Organization study on health inequality and equality. And Margaret Chan is a physician from Canada. She was Director General of the WHO at the time this report was released. And she says that social injustice is killing on a grand scale. And it truly is throughout the world that social injustice, at the root of that inequality, people who are suffering and bearing down under the weight of that inequality, are the ones that are most likely to be at the top of every list you don't want to be at and be at the bottom of every list you do want to be at, right? And for those of you who are doing studies, you want to go to a website called Gatminder.org where they've actually done a lot of the calculations about how inequalities are linked to some of the major issues you're going to be dealing with in law and within the social sciences. So once I've settled in on that, then for First Nations it's vitally important that it's culturally based. That it's not a perpetuation of colonialism. So all of the things that I try to work on in the company of many others is about culturally based equity. That is the three words lingo. And this is a report that just came out. I'm just highlighting it for you. It's from the Pan American Health Organization. And I was a commissioner on this study led by Sir Michael Marmot who's one of the world experts on health inequality. And the reason I bring it to your attention is that it's the first international report that we're aware of that actually includes the land as a determinant of health. And it was spurred by the contributions of indigenous people throughout the Americas. But I think we can all agree that that's been a huge missing ingredient for all people, particularly in this tragic time of climate change and how that's impacting people's health around the globe. So the executive summary is out and you can get it on the Pan American Health Organization website. But this is further evidence about looking at inequality beyond the typical Western paradigm. So Canada often says when it comes to remedying the inequality for kids it is broke, right? We can't afford it. You have to take it one step at a time. We can't fix it overnight. We're making good first steps, right? Now that might sound like an appealing argument. If you didn't know that Canada has known about the inequalities in its public funding since 1907. The person who raised the alarm in 1907 was where their own Chief Medical Health Officer who noticed that the death rates of kids in residential schools was 25% a year, rising to close to 50% over three years. And he said back then, his name is Dr. Bryce, he said medical science knows just what to do. So they knew how to remedy it. But he also knew that the people in the city of Ottawa were getting three times the health care funding of all first nations across Canada. So he said even out that health care funding and provide implements of practical reforms and you can actually reduce these death rates. The cost to Canada back then was $10,000 to $15,000. The national treasury pulled in over 100 million. The government said no, it's too expensive, right? And thousands of children died as a result. Dr. Bryce courageously leaked his report to the public. And one of the leading lawyers of that time, Samuel Hume-Blake said that in the Canada failed to obviate the preventable causes of death. It brought itself into unpleasant nearness with manslaughter. Editors of newspapers were outraged at this preventable loss of life. People at that period knew about the inequalities, knew about the deaths of kids. And I could cite a plethora of reports going through the ones that were done on Canada's Centennial in 1967 by George Caldwell and Alex Sims to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples to the Auditor General's reports, the parliamentary budget officer. The evidence is overwhelming. But Canada still maintains its broke, which brings us to this. Now we are a Gene 7 country and we have all politicians, regardless of what party they are, they care about kids at election time. They basically say, vote for me and I'll get you a job and you'll be able to care for your family. It's kind of the narrative, right? And it just depends on what color of suit they're wearing about what party they're for. Now the problem is that's not really true. And here's the data that proves it. This is a study done by the Kids Rights Foundation. You can get it at KidsRights.org. Kids Rights Foundation has partnered with the Nobel Laureates to give out the International Children's Peace Prize every year. Malala won it, the March for Our Lives Youth won it this last year. And they partnered on an economic study. And what they do is they rank how well countries are doing for kids, proportionate to their wealth. Now the data I'm about to give you applies to all Canadian kids. It's not desegregated for First Nations and Métis and Inuit kids, which would give it a worse ranking. But last year Canada ranked 52nd in the world. And when you looked at the sub-index on Child Rights Environment, which looks specifically on the level of attention, provincial, territorial, and federal governments give to children in budgets and legislation, Canada ranked 138th in the world. Right? And this is in proportionate to our wealth. So clearly there's more we could be doing. And the other thing is that James Heckman, the great Nobel Prize winning economist of the University of Chicago, has provided significant evidence that the best investment is not in university students. You're not happy to hear that. And it's certainly not in people of my age bracket, right? I'm a bad investment for public funds. The best investment is in kids. For every dollar you invest in is a government in a child you save $18 U.S. downstream as a minimum expenditure. So it's not even an expense, right? The payoff of that is going to pay a lot more than the buying of the pipeline, right? And this shows how Canada is choosing political priorities that are not children, right? So what I'm showing you here, in the way that I'm trying to nest the argument, by dealing with some of the major stereotypes and rationales that are given, right? And we're feeding those with evidence. There's GATMINDER, that's their website that you're all going to take a look at. And they have got all kinds of tools and videos and things and you can actually do data searches as well. So when you have the knowledge, the data, what's tempting is when government doesn't act on solutions like and the inequality, which is pretty simple, and often in these studies they actually cost out how much shortfall there is. So there's no mystery about how much money is needed to be invested. And they are not going to do anything about it. It's tempting to think that you need to get even better data. And certainly I was there, like I still remember being at the University of Chicago taking a hierarchical linear modeling course. And there I am at the University of Chicago, amongst people who like doing hierarchical linear modeling. And you know the Sesame Street, like one of these things is not like the others. And so I'm not sure if it was out of personal self-interest or out of intellectual awakening, but I realized that if I was going to deal with Canada I needed to have a conversation with Canadians, not with the government of Canada. And hierarchical linear modeling was not going to convince Canadians. The evidence was already in. And what I needed to do is find a way of being able to share that message with Canadians and engage them in a broader movement. The next piece of it though is how courageous are you? The word advocacy gets thrown around a lot, right? When I look at the children's NGO sector there's a lot of us who are pretty gutless. We like to advocate as long as our funding is in cut. And the rationale for this protectionism of our own organizations is that well, if we go there will not be anybody there. But the elders have always taught me it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees, right? And so you have to have moral courage in advocacy, particularly in social justice advocacy. And what do I mean by moral courage? Well, in Western culture physical courage is widely lauded, right? If one of us saw a child crossing the street and we put ourselves in harm's way to rescue that child we would have the mayor's medal around our neck and be on the front page of the paper, right? But moral courage is often punished in our society. We don't want people who rock the boat who are insubordinate even to bad ideas, right? People who are subordinate to bad ideas tend to rise through bureaucracies. People who are insubordinate to bad ideas tend to not go very far, right? We don't like people who are going to, you know, make a big fuss about things. So we punish moral courage. And what Rushford Kitter says about moral courage is about taking a courageous stand, doing something, not just carrying in your mind but actually saying something or doing something where you know that you're going to take a personal or professional hit. And the requirement of those of us in this field is not only be willing to do that but we'd be willing to take that hit for people who will never know to be thankful to you. So it's astounding to me in social work and in law how we don't teach people how to be courageous. And then we wonder why people aren't courageous when they're professionals. And one of the things that I always ask people to do is to understand that moral courage is something you practice every day. So living with moral courage is actually easier than living with moral cowardice. And I'm just going to prove that to you now. Who here has been in a situation where someone did something or said something and you thought, oh my god, that's not okay. I should do something. And then you get that not in your stomach. Well, do I want to bring more attention to this? It's really not my business. So you decide not to do anything. Who has been in that boat? All right, the rest of you without your hands up are not being honest. Okay, now let's forward the tape a week. How many of those people who chose not to do something, that means all of you, are feeling good about yourselves a week later? Or are you replaying it in your mind thinking I should have said that? Right? Now let's replay the tape. If somebody does something or says something you know is wrong. You still have that feeling like, oh my god, right? You're going to have to step up here. But before you can allow those thoughts of rationalization of why you should be quiet, your mouth opens and you do something. And it's almost as if time itself stops in that moment, right? And you're like, oh my god, did I just do that? And sometimes it makes a difference and sometimes it doesn't. But regardless of whether it makes a difference, let's assume it doesn't. Who here feels badly about themselves in the incident of two weeks down the stream? I think you would have to do a lot less self-care classes in social work and law if we talk people to live with integrity and courage. It's when you need self-care is when you're breaching your own ethics on a daily basis and you don't have the guts to stand up for it. And thankfully there's a whole YouTube channel on moral courage. And I thought I would show you a segment so that you know that anybody, no matter what walk of life, this house two to three minute big nats are people of all walks of life, I'm telling you. There's a teenager who's teaching sex education in Lubbock, Texas, which is the second most conservative city in the United States. There are people in housing sector. There are people inside of corporations who are whistleblowers, people inside of government. But I thought I'd show you a snippet so you get a sense. You want to see it? All right. My name is TJ Leiden. I'm a former neo-Nazi skinhead and white supremacist. I wish I could have those 15 years back. I was with a group called Hammer Skin Nation. My job is to recruit kids into the movement. I'd drive around and give out CDs and then three or four days later I'd drive back by that high school. Kids would be waving me down. Do you have any more of that music? Yeah, but you know, you need to come hang out with us. Once that camaraderie is built, you say, Steve, it's gotten jumped last night. What are you going to do about it? You're just going to sit there and be a coward. And if they just say, oh, I'm not going to do nothing, then you show everybody else what happens to a coward. You beat them down in front of everybody. The violent aspect to the movement didn't worry me. I didn't care if I got killed. I didn't care if they buried me. I did not. That was just a price I was willing to pay. But when I thought about burying my son, if I didn't want my boys to grow up and be me, what was wrong with my premise of life? What was wrong with who I was? I was married to a woman who had two of my children, and I was afraid if I told her that, she would tell somebody and I'd get murdered. So I left the racist movement, I kidnapped both my sons, filed for divorce, and they would cause the other kids. The only people I had was my family. My mom had seen the Museum of Tolerance and Rabbi Hire on television, and she said the next morning I should go to that place. I said, Mom, okay, he's a rabbi. I'm a former Nazi. It's not going to work. Trust me. They actually asked me to come in. They asked me if I'd ever consider speaking out against my former friends. I told them, well, I got to think about it. Because I know what happens. I know the ramifications of speaking out against this group. And my brother, the cop, actually told me he spilt the milk. He basically said, you made a mess, go clean it up. I hid my very first junior hide and did my very first talk. 24 hours later, the white supremacy movement had six websites about me. One website actually said, terminate on site. The websites that are literally 90 minutes, we know where you live. We're going to come kill you. We've got your number, man. You better watch your back. When I was in the movement, I could have been killed because a rival gang could have been killed by guys inside my own group. It's no different now. Now I'm just doing something right. I'm doing something good. The people who should hate me the most, to be angry with me the most, because of what I did in my past, embraced me the most. They think it's not still around, I've gotten almost 100 kids out of my former lifestyle, white supremacy, and I've gotten kids out of gangs, too. You can help people in any way, shape or form. Everybody can. You just have to be willing to do it. I am TJ and I am moral courage. I grew up in Lubbock, Texas, which is the second most conservative city in the United States. One of the things that kept coming up were the really high rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections amongst our peers, and how we knew absolutely nothing about it. So there's the website. You can watch these people. What I do in my classes, by the way, is I ask people to pick one of the characters and just explain why it spoke to them and what courage is about. Your assignment is to practice moral courage in all aspects of your life, because you do need to practice it. Because if you don't practice moral courage, when the chips are down and that big calling comes, you're more likely to wimp out, right? But if you practice it and it becomes part of your personal ethics, just to not only really understand your own ethics and value system, but develop the moral courage to defend it, when the chips are down, you'll be ready to do it. So this is a great news tube site. It's out of the United States. I wish they would do one here in Canada. Maybe someone here with great film skills will make that happen. Here's a couple of examples of moral courage we've seen, right? Anybody remember this lady? Sally Yates? The first attorney general, right? Wouldn't go along with the ban in the United States at that... I don't even call him what his title is. I just say kind of the dark shadow in the White House, you know? But here she was and she was a lawyer. And she understood that she had to have the moral courage to stand up for what was the fundamental principle of the law. I'd also argue that's what we saw in Ottawa, with Jody Wilson-Raybould's testimony. And there you know. It takes a lot of guts to do that, right? Here's another example. The Catholic Church. This is... Anyone here have nuns with a bus? Well, these nuns are in the United States and these sisters have it going on, right? They understand with poverty there's a lot to do and you've got to get involved in politics and social justice. So that's what they did. The Vatican was not happy with that. So they send over some cardinal or bishop. I'm not sure how it works there. But anyway, somebody from the Vatican to get the ladies in line, right? He lasted maybe a couple of months before he was shipped back, right? And this is sister Simone Campbell. And she runs the nuns with a bus. They literally have a bus, right? And they go around and doing political advocacy around a whole array of social justice issues in the Catholic Church. So, you know, it doesn't matter what organization you're in. You can still kick butt a little bit, right? Here's what gets in the way of moral courage as loyalty to the organization. When you are loyal to an organization and not to the people that you serve, then you're in trouble. And Alder told me, never fall in love with the caring society, which is my organization, never fall in love with your business card, only fall in love with the kids because there might come a day when you sacrifice both those things for them, right? And great sociologists like Ziegman Bellman have always said one of the major reasons that people do wrong is they walk into a bureaucracy and they replace their own personal ethics with the good of the organization, right? You ignore a minimized dissenting opinion. In this case, I really made sure I went to places like Red Deer, Alberta, right? And really, Circle of Alibaba, that's kind of like the most conservative territory you can go into, because I wanted people who didn't agree with me because they've been very helpful to me, actually, in kind of challenging some of my assumptions that turned out to be wrong, but also in being able to reach out to that group and have a new conversation, right? Too much reflection and not enough doing, right? This is big in reconciliation on the non-Indigenous population. Well, we know we need to think about it some more. Don't think about it. I gave you bookmarks. There's seven free ways for you to make a difference. I don't care if you don't know anything. You just get on there and you do those things. Bystander apathy, right? I was a bystander for a few years. We often do this, and it's not okay, right? Especially in today's world of populism. You can't segment your values. I don't have the privilege of just caring about equality for First Nations kids. I care about equality for all kids, right? And we cannot find ourselves getting into this psychological game where we think if we're supporting someone else's human rights, we're somehow taking attention away from our own. I totally disagree with that. You either stand up for a value or you don't, right? And you can't say I'm for LGBTQ plus people, but I don't feel very good about giving more money to First Nations. That is a total hypocrisy, right? As would the other be, a total hypocrisy. And we're warning conformity. I would love to see a lot more black sheep awards, right? Where we actually honor those troublemakers who have had the moral courage to do the right thing. I think it's fundamental in our society. And I want you to think about your own social interactions with others. When you see someone having moral courage, your next job is to stand with them, right? Because you have that person with moral courage and all of a sudden it's like they have some kind of contagious virus. Everybody kind of is away from them. What you need to do is stand with those people. And I would say to you, those of you who are in a position to nominate for awards, one of the things I do is I look for those people and I nominate them for an award. Especially if they're getting targeted by their own organization because they don't want to fire their award-winning... Well, sometimes you just got to think these things through. So, here's a mosquito advocacy and it started with the case. I come from the bush in northern BC. My first job was being a pine cone picker. And that's why I live in big cities today, right? Because I just... There's only so many wolves you can make friends with, especially being kind of a social girl like I am. But when we came to the case, I used to learn a lot from the animals. And certainly those are our teachings, that they're not just to watch, they're actually to learn from. And I was thinking now, okay, so now we filed this legal case against Canada, we got all of our funding cut. How do you take on something as big as the government? And so I thought you'd think about something as teeny-tiny that has made my own personal life miserable. And that is the mosquito, our friend the mosquito, right? How many of us have spent like untold dollars at the drug store with the various sprays, right? Or if you're as old as I am, does anybody remember the mosquito coil? The most ineffective device on the planet, right? I wanted to better understand what they knew. What do we have to learn from them? And how can that instruct us going forward? And mosquito advocacy kicks in after you've done these other steps. So you've documented the problem. You have a solution, an evidence-based solution, not an ideological solution. Again, resist the temptation of being right. Commit yourself to doing right, which means you're open to new information as things come along. You ensure that the government or organization or corporation actually can change what you want, right? You don't want to be knocking at the wrong door, right? So make sure that they can do it. And they choose not to do it. Then you move into mosquito advocacy, which is non-voluntary change, right? So here it is. So the first thing a lot of people do is that they're not targeted, right? The mosquito does not make that mistake. How many people here have been in a tent, right? When people say they don't have an agenda, I think they're not a good advocate. I absolutely have an agenda. I don't really... I want every one of you to leave and do the seven ways to make a difference, right? For First Nations kids, I want you to do something at the end of this talk. And if you don't, I will be back. So be targeted about what your message is, right? On that solution. Remember, we're focusing on the solution. We're not going to just complain. The second is you need an infectious message. So many people have come to me and they said, oh, I got this cause. It's such a big human rights breach. Why doesn't anybody see it? And they tell me what it is and they tell it to me in such a boring way. The human rights advocate are kind of snoozing at the end of it, right? Because they're so deep into the data. You need to buy a book. Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff. Has anyone read that book? Bring your message, right? George Lakoff is a linguist. And what he tells us is that people create understanding of language based on deeply held human values. And if you can hook into those human values, your message is more likely to be retained. So at the Caring Society, we are for... Let's test it here. See how well I did. At First Nations, kids get an equal chance to grow up safely and their families get a good education, be healthy and proud of who they are. How many people in society do you think would oppose them? It passed unanimously in the House of Commons, right? Because even if you do oppose it, you're too embarrassed to oppose it publicly, you might get on Twitter later as, you know, a fine cat for something and put out a thing, but you're not going to do that in public. So it's how to frame it. But the other thing that Lakoff teaches us is how to argue with the other side. And this was a mistake I made a lot, right? Is I would take up the language of the other side to do and defeat it, right? Now, Lakoff shows us why that's a bad idea right in the title. If I asked all of you to think of an animal, but nobody thinks of an elephant, no elephants, don't think of it. What are you thinking of? Right? To the degree that you pick up the language on the other side, you actually reinforce it. Right? That's why George Bush, remember him? I used to think he was the worst, but now he's gone up. I've promoted him. Remember the mushroom cloud? Because it links into fear, which is a very deeply held human instinct. So often that's what they go for. What we need to do is hook our messages into another narrative and stick with that narrative. That's our frame, right? Build a swarm. I can't believe, like conferences, I go to about 60 a year. And how many people allegedly go there for networking? And then they're like, I don't know, it's like crazy glue gets attached to them when they get their badge, right? And they're all sitting together at the same table. And in fact, they're checking out what workshop the other person is going to because God forbid they'd go somewhere by themselves. They might have to talk to somebody they don't know. Right? So you have to get out of, and the elders really taught me this and were guiding me through it, and so they said to places where you know nobody. Because first of all, that's where you have the most to learn. And second of all, that's a new opportunity to engage people. So stop going to social work conferences. Right? And so that's how I ended up going to a lot of different conferences. But I also have a strategy. And that is, and I'm going to let you know, and I expect you all to sit with me anyway, that I'm going to tell you this. I walk into conferences, usually I get there early, and people are having their coffee and muffin. We know the scene, right? There's a whole pile of vacant tables. There's a couple of people cloistered together for networking purposes from the same organization. And I always find, I always sit by myself. Now imagine you're coming in with your coffee and your muffin with your pal from the same organization who you're networking with. And you see me sitting by myself. What is the polite thing to do? Join me. Right? And then I'm really interested, I am sincerely interested, I am interested in what other people do, but I will ask you what you do. And you're going to tell me all about what you do. And then what is the polite thing to do? Exactly. And fortunately, I have something for you to do. My goal is to get every one of those people as part of the swarm by the end of it. The other thing is you have to have something for people to do. You can't just give up and give talks about your issue without engaging people in solutions. And here is a critical piece, I think of ethics. One of the shortcomings I think in the NGO sector is that I know from Ottawa I travel through Confederation Park on my way to the office. And no offense to young people, but I see them there on a corner. Right? They actually are not interested in my day. They're interested in how my wallet's day is going. And they're there with a bunch of NGO kind of things, right? Do you have a minute? I'd like to talk to you about something. And so sometimes I engage with these folks, right? When I've got some time on my hands or when I'm feeling crabby, and I just say, can you tell me something I can do that doesn't take any money? After the gobsmack of that question. And the reason I ask that is I value deeply the citizenship of every person. And I am not going to allow the only way in to be financial. That's why everything we do at the Caring Society is completely free, is open to persons of all ages and abilities and takes under two minutes for the entry level person. There's other things you can do after that. But even if you just do that two minutes that makes the lives of kids better. And that's your challenge too is don't just do donations. I don't even hold feed and food drives for kids in school because the reason for that is that some of those children come from homes where they can't afford to make a contribution, right? Sometimes we don't think about these things. I want all children to know that they're valued for who they are, not for how much income is in their family, right? Bounds. That gets back to your framing. I think another big mistake is having a day of action. Or somehow we're on indigenous day, right? Which means we can feel check that box off and move on to the other 364 days. That's a mistake. You have got to keep this up all the time. And the good thing about a mosquito is you can infect other people with your message, right? Especially if you've got bookmarks like this and each one of the campaigns when you go on to our website and you have a day on it that you could take to your workplace and then hand out the bookmarks to your workplace. You could show it at somebody else's conference where they're already there, 60 seconds. And by the way, I've put in a cuteness factor. I'm not against child labor. So most of my stuff has got children to explaining it. So people are much more happy to put out kids on a PSA than they are adults because we're not as cute, right? So do that and know who your public speakers are. I know it's an undervalued skill. I personally come from the Scared Stiff School of Public Speaking. I would literally transfer out of every single course in university that had the word presentation. It was almost like, you know that horror thing where you get that walk, walk, walk. When I'd see that, it was just like, oh my God, right? And that's how I ended up in obscure courses like 17th century literature. But I think what I really realized back then is that I was probably scared of the thing that I could probably give the most. And when you have someone who's a good storyteller, the elders always tell me your job is not to fill people's head with information. My job is to hopefully change the way you feel so that you can think differently. You can't make people think differently unless they feel differently. And that's what good public speakers their job is to do. I don't do many workshops. This is kind of an exception because I really prefer to do the keynotes because my goal is to make you cry, to be angry, to laugh and then to do something either out of fear for your own life because I will follow you until you do or something else. Come from all directions. Access to information is great with governments. It freaks them out and you also can get good information for $5 or in some provinces completely free. I use it all the time because I want to know where they're at internally so I know what I need to do. Maybe you're missing a piece of information. We'll get a good researcher and give that to them. Or maybe it's that they're interpreting and spinning things in a different way. It's always valuable to do it. Get free research done. Get researchers and other friends to do this. Send the data to groups like the Canadian Pediatric Society or the Canadian Medical Association so that they can understand what's going on and what's going on. Get researchers and other friends to do this. Send the data to groups like the Canadian Pediatric Society or the Canadian Medical Association so that they can publish it and analyze it. That's a mosquito advocacy thing. You're creating the swarm but you're also creating a swarm where people are buying it. Be persistent. So many people give up way too early. You cannot take an off ramp on this. I've been doing this for 30 years and we're still at it. We filed the case against Canada 12 years ago and we're still litigating against them. Finally though, we're making some progress. Over 210,000 services and products have gotten out to First Nations kids this last year under Jordan's principle that would not have gone. But had we given up earlier, these kids would have never gone. Here's the piece around moral courage, the bite. You have to plan for this end step all the way through. The bite is the peaceful nonviolent strategy that can enforce what you need to have done. So in our case, it's the courts. It's also the social movement side because politicians don't create change. They respond to change in society. But you have to plan for that all the way through your movement. Don't just all of a sudden do all the previous pieces and then think, oh my god, we got to come up with something. This should all be leading towards that. By the way, a biologist was in one of my talks and said, you know, something interesting is that only the female mosquitoes bite. This is a great case example. I recommend all of you. It's about a multinational corporation, McDonald's, many of you have eaten there and you're still alive. And this was a poster worker and a gardener and they were part of a group called Greenpeace in London and it's not the Greenpeace you know about, it was a different one. They had a whole pile of desperate views, right? People were concerned with animals, others were concerned with the environment, others were concerned with workers' rights, others were concerned about exploitation of children. So they really were spinning their wheels until somebody came up with a brain job that all of those issues are all united in McDonald's corporation. So they did a myth of facts about McDonald's and they go in front of McDonald's UK and they hand out flyers, right? To the group walking by about what you really need to know about McDonald's. And McDonald's has a very well-oiled machine. Whenever someone prints scandalous information like their food is not nutritious they just arrange for their legal department to ring up and to say you know we're a very wealthy multinational corporation and you know we would test this in court as long as it takes and you don't have the money to match us. But if you retract this it can all go away, right? So that was their strategy and everybody in the group folded with the acceptance of these two. Dave, because he's a single parent and he said look maybe I won't be able to give my kid an iPad but I want him to grow up with integrity. And Helen is just stubborn. Say the two of them are being sued by McDonald's Corporation. Right? And this is them in the middle of the litigation that went on for seven years it was one of the longest civil trials in the UK. Clue here thinks that they would have been better off with more sophisticated signs. Are they okay with these signs? What does this sign say to you? There's just two of them. There's just two of them. Regular people just like you and I. Right? By an American corporation. The David and Goliath thing really works well. They were standing up for their values and integrity in both cases. So the UK sympathy from the public went to them. And when the trial finally wound up the media was taking a lot of interest in this. So the judge who issues the ruling and it turned out the first award was financial against Helen and Dave because they didn't prove to the judge's satisfaction. By the way, they self-represented themselves and McDonald's had a whole cast of lawyers. Right? So they didn't prove to the judge's satisfaction that the rainforest were being pillaged. So that was going to be the headline and then the judge said there's more. It turns out McDonald's is not nice to animals. Now you're on newspaper editors who here votes for the headline not guilty of pillaging the rainforest versus who votes for the headline McDonald's is not nice to animals. And then it turns out that whole playpen, you know what the prize you got to pay the extra buck for and the kids thing is child exploitation. Right? So the headlines are McDonald's exploits animals and kids. Now you are the board of McDonald's corporation just been promoted. We're meeting that afternoon. Who here votes to collect our money? Hi, we won it. Barren Square, these guys. So how much legal fees have we got out the door dealing with these two? Right? No takers for cocking the dollars? Odd PR. Can you imagine? Right? Now these two are like heroes in the UK and you're going to go and take their house and your dad who wants his kid to grow up with integrity and a gardener. Right? So sometimes we inflate what we think that the threat is to us without thinking about what the other side is. They are always more vulnerable these big organizations. You can read all about their story in McLeibol it's a book. And this is one of the banners the kids did for us and it I think it really sums it up. It says just because we're small right? Small organizations like mine, we only have two full-time staff and a few part-time staff. A lot of people think caring society is much bigger than that and the reason why I think we've been very effective at dealing with Canada is because we've really tried to act without integrity and with the facts and that same David and Goliath kind of narrative works for us especially because they're picking on kids but we are fast right? So when something happens and there needs to be a news release I go to the news department which is myself. Then I have a copy edited by the editor which also happens to be actually I use the word thing you know the grammar and spelling deal right? And then it comes to the decision about who's going to pay for it well I'm also finance so we can get it out the door to the AP right? And also because we're broke we're creative right? So we actually have realized that there's lots of fun things you can do so we have something called have a heart day where children of all diversity write valentines to the politicians so First Nations kids can grow up safely in their home, be healthy and proud of who they are and they also show up on parliament now you can imagine yourself as a prime minister on parliament and they make their own homoid signs and they have a microphone right? And some people think that kids don't understand stuff but those of us who have kids know they do right? And I'm just going to read one of the letters and then we're going to stop for questions so this little kid his name is Harry and he had a we were in the middle of the trial and he had actually come to watch right? and it just didn't make any sense like you know what the heck is going on? like why would you treat kids this way? they just didn't square up for them so have a heart day was coming up he wanted to write a letter but he also was a kid who had was on the autism spectrum and so he was bullied a lot in school and so he writes out his message but then he throws it into the garbage can and then the teacher goes and puts it on his desk and he throws it away a second time and then she brings it back to him and says why are you throwing it away and he says because no one wants to listen to a kid like me but when she told him that he could make a difference for 165,000 kids he said someone needs me someone needs me like I could do something to help people, someone needs someone like me he adds his valentine and he puts on his coat he's got his big park on and he's out there right in front of Parliament and he weaves his way from the back right up to the microphone you can see this little green jacket going up the stairs and then he puts down his hood like you can imagine the moral courage it took for this kid to do this puts down his hood and then he starts reading his letter do you want to hear it? he says dear Prime Minister do you have a cat? I have a cat, his name is Micah because I like collecting rocks and he's a boy and he's black and he gets right down to business anyone here in a PhD program? okay so your dissertation has to be this cute and this short and this precise one I don't know why we get in this place so he says if you do not build more schools you're going to create a crime wave and lose all of your money because kids who cannot go to proper schools can't get jobs when they're bigger but some of them they're still going to need money so some of them are going to have to steal it and then people in the community are going to get mad because crooks are invading their homes he looks down at his paper again and he says my teacher tells me you're in charge so you better man up right now and build more schools love Harry right? you know it's that kind of clarity of message that I think is missing in Canadian politics right? this is another piece that I'm just going to highlight is when you're building a social movement build on the special gifts of people including yourself there's a book called The Element which is really about what is good out but you're passionate about and that's what I try to do with the children I find out what they're good at and passionate about and then use that for social justice if they're passionate about music every good social movement has a musical theme if they're good about building stuff we build mailboxes so they can put their valentines in them if they're good about planning then they plan the whole event right? don't just say have a list and then when the word finance comes there's room empties because there's actually someone who likes that stuff and is passionate about it so know what that is to you and how to do it most importantly you got to have the guts to do the right thing and you got to have a plan to do the right thing and you got to do something right? it's not enough to care and it certainly doesn't change the world when you're waiting and if we're going to together try a world where every person counts where every person's dignity is respected it's our fundamental duty as members of the human family to stand up and be counted and even if we fail we're going to show people around the globe and the earth itself that we love them enough to stand up for them so thank you very much there's have a hard day if you didn't get one of the bookmarks if you didn't have it in front of you you sat down there are more and you've got friends I can see all of you have friends or you have family who are captive so that you can give out these things and get them to do it so I'm going to hand the floor to the audience at this point questions was this helpful to you to get some practical tips that you actually can use Hi Cindy thank you comment maybe on bill c92 just got passed in Ottawa that's been transferred government back to indigenous communities as pediatrician I thought that's great my concern is more resources to be attached to it or it'll just be an orphan sort of an organization to run it properly both to prevent and to care for these kids C92 was just tabled yesterday it's supposed to be about indigenous child welfare giving a jurisdiction to First Nations Métis and Inuit peoples for the provision of those services the big missing ingredient is money and we had said to them that those two things absolutely have to go together there are some First Nations who despite not getting any funding have actually drafted their own laws and for those of you who are interested in child well-being law is you should look at the honest topic child well-being law you can see it on the internet and it really is shows you the promise of that approach but without the money there's not going to be any kind of reality to this and that's demonstrated by the current situation there are First Nations in the Northwest Territories who already have jurisdiction over child welfare they just can't draw it down because there's no money to do it and that litigation I've been involved with with others that's been around trying to get equitable resources and it's been going on for 12 years we have 7 orders against the government and they're still not fully compliant so it shows you that getting the resources to be able to deliver services to First Nations kids is absolutely essential and I think it's a big loss of opportunity that they didn't include it in the bill and I suspect they didn't do it intentionally but we're going to give them a chance at committee to actually throw that in there and see what happens but I'm worried about that Yes? The issues that I have to take care are within the nest of many other issues in the same topic and I find myself competing with other narratives so other groups want priority for their issue within that same area but the issue I work on is what effects people in day to day life what leaves them vulnerable but everybody else is talking about pricing and the issue and it ends up drowning because there's so few people because it affects the vulnerable who are sick so how do you my question for you is over the years how have you competed or not competed but how have you found your way out of that drowning within the other narrative? It's a framing of it, it's absolutely critical and this is another website you can go for free it's called Frameworks Institute in the United States they have pre-developed frames and what I find is even when you're in a busy environment like that if your issue is well framed it's going to have take up it's going to finally it's going to take you a while but it'll surface to the top and percolate to the top and particularly because a lot of people don't pay attention to this so I really recommend this is another free resource you can tap into I really recommend that you do and one of the groups that's really good at that is March For Our Lives a bunch of teenagers who are involved in that tragic shooting but the way that they frame up their message is just absolutely astounding they won that prize by the Kids Rights Foundation with the Nobel laureates last year and their strategies are all free and they're all easy to understand if you cannot explain your cause to a four-year-old and they think it's important and they know they can do something you're going to have the framing right your target test audience is daycare keep that in mind right? because if the four-year-olds get it then everybody else will get it too right? and these guys one of the things they did I think that was so interesting around the NRA by the way you know all the multiple efforts to kind of get rid of the NRA but these guys have reduced the revenues of the NRA more than any other movement and one of the ways they did that is the price tag campaign did you see that one do anyone know that so what they did is they got a hold of the NRA donation list of how much they're giving to various members of Congress right? and so they'll take say we have our member from say New York New York and they get say a hundred thousand bucks and there are tens to be let's say a hundred thousand kids in that domain so the price for each life is a buck they're willing to be bought off as a politician because they think the children's lives in that constituency are worth a dollar so the kids will all wear these price tags and go to the political campaigns right? these kinds of websites when you go on to them don't just go on to them to support go on to them to actually learn how to do effective advocacy because this type of stop is just really great what they're doing for March for Our Lives and I think that would help you with yours too the question I have back to you is if I wanted to help you today what do you have for me to do that takes under two minutes and is free? I have a storage area so if this is so my field would be for storage area okay alright so I would be thinking about that right? but fun that's the other thing at the Caring Society everything we do is fun no one wants to be around a campaign where you have a bullhorn and people are crying and angry right? you have to build only sustainable movements are built on love so everything we do is fun right? like to have a hard day we have teddy bear tea parties right? where everybody brings a teddy bear in memory of Jordan River Anderson the founder of Jordan's principle and then we have a tea party where kids share their stories about what Jordan's principle is we have Bear Witness Day how many people in this room have a stuffy at home? okay now I know a lot of you have stuffies but you're just too embarrassed and this is an opportunity for you to bring that stuffy out you know little Elmer who's on the top shelf of the closet bring Elmer out and on May 10th you take a picture of your stuffy and you tag it with spirit bears and that creates a twitter narrative on Jordan's principle so think about things like that that are fun, loving, but meaningful to do and you'll be able to have that sustainable campaign and you'll be able to more likely invite someone like me in there I'm just going to see if there's any other there's our embarrassed program by the way teddy bears are big at our carry society you had a different bear when you were in Dublin in Dublin yeah well that was one of the embarrassed this is the original one so he's actually been the witness to the case and he just prefers to so he symbolizes the children and when he was there as the witness for the case the children started coming and they wouldn't come up to talk to me when they saw a teddy bear like it's like magnet, right and he disappeared originally he didn't have any clothes he was back with like heart shaped sunglasses and fan mail and over the years he was dressed by the kids and so this bear is now 12 years old because that's how long the case has been going on and he's been at every case and he comes to all the major events so he's at the TRC closing ceremonies and things and the special thing about him is he's become really famous with children so he writes books about how children come together to make changes in social justice he has his own Twitter feed actually done by Twitter Corporation because he's famous even with Twitter and he, most importantly who here is hoping to get a law degree alright so the bear is more qualified than all of you the bear actually has a barister degree from Osgood Law School and Paul HD in social work for you Vic and a bear so wise from McMaster so this is just an educated bear but you can see how having something like this a symbol, using symbols can engage and reach out and allow people to interact and build relationship and he'll also have a couple of animated series coming up pretty soon that bear in Dublin was one of his his colleagues who gets farmed out to other groups and they have to continue with his work alright so we have ambaristas that children can adopt and then children in the daycare or the school have to work with the elder and they have to read the bear the book in the First Nations language and then they have a naming ceremony for the bear and then they have to take them through all these efforts on reconciliation so it's stuff like that that you can do that really engages people but on that basis of love yeah this is Marco and he said something about loyalty parallels moral courage so with the law the rule of thumb is you have to be like an advocate to be loyal to your client so my question to you is how do you reconcile those two things to be loyal but also have the moral courage I actually see them often as the same thing I think that people in my own life the people who have really taken an interest in me becoming the best me I could were the ones that gave me a kick in the pants and really helped me think things through differently and I think sometimes we conflate loyalty we're just going along with where everything is and I think and I can just say in our case because we've been fortunate enough to get pro bono legal counsel during the first part of it I ran it on my own which was a huge mistake but anyway we have survived it when the lawyers actually we have good arguments and sometimes they win not often but they do win every once in a while and I think having that debate and just really enlightening those ideas is really good service from a lawyer and I appreciate that in the end you have to represent your client but I think you have to have the moral courage to be able to preserve your own ethics and really deal with that client and be honest with that client as they're going through the legal process right so that's the way I would reconcile right that's why we don't make a very good lawyer because at the end of the day if I thought they were screwing up I'd say in front of the judge well look he's screwing up but he really wants off this crime right so you're happy that I'm not a member in the bar I'm sure I do want to just spend a moment dealing with backfire because one of the things that I think we do is we teach kids that they'll get into trouble for doing the wrong thing but that's for amateurs right any fool can get into trouble for doing the wrong thing experts get into trouble for doing the right thing and if you're dealing with a large organization be it a government or a corporation they are going to come for you so it shouldn't surprise you when they do they are going to protect yourself with a high level of integrity or do your best because it is especially if you're one of the visual leaders of the movement because one of the easiest ways for them to come after the movement is to come after you and Gray and Martin are two folks from Australia who've done this really good peace on it and they say the way that they will come for you is one to cover up right so we've seen lots of examples of that right and then there's the devaluation of the target which we're kind of seeing in Ottawa regrettably right now but we've seen it around the world in other examples where we're just going to go after this person's credibility the other is a age old intimidation and bribery the old passing of the paper bag full of hundreds no questions asked right but more likely it's going to be intimidation we're going to cut your funding so professionally ostracize you whatever reinterpretation of facts is another big thing right where this was in the Iraq war remember that we're going in there because al-Qaeda took out the towers and they're in Iraq and when that did not pan out it was weapons of mass destruction remember that and then when that did not pan out it was we're there to free the Iraqi people whenever you see that slipping of the narrative that's a real warning sign and then here's the one where I think most people get trapped the use of an official procedure to mask action so that's like calling for an inquiry don't call for inquiries because you're going to get it what you want to do is frame your action so that actually creates change on the ground that thing I said about kids growing up with their families getting a good education being healthy and proud of you that's your public call then you can have a whole range of things you can call from in the meantime and governments are really good at wanting you to do studies particularly in academia and unfortunately academics are not very good at researching what was already recommended in the past so often these things are on the books there's already solved the government knows the solution and yet we give them cover by saying we're doing more research and this organization is great frontline defenders it actually is there to protect human rights defenders all over the world so some of you may know that I was under surveillance by the Canadian government they deployed over 189 different public officials to follow my movements and to monitor my online communications and the reason they did that is they wanted to get the case kicked out on frivolous and vexatious grounds so I found this out because I did a privacy thing and I got all this DVD of my life and conversations I was even having in the middle of the desert of Australia verbatim so these guys were of great assistance to me because when that happens you're going to feel all the human emotions of anger fear shock this is the thing where I'm thinking I don't even have a parking ticket let alone criminal record and they're following me around seriously and then there is also the more embarrassing thing they've been following me for four years and they get to find one scandalous detail and I thought my god my life is so dull right but no it is very intimidating and so there's this organization out there that can really provide you or those clients that you're working with with support so that you're managing it in a way that actually brings dignities to your cause and doesn't actually feed into their narrative which is if I would have burst out and been very angry with Canada and used every tool I had in my toolbox which is a lot of media exposure and stuff it could have totally fed into their narrative that I was some kind of whack job in it for my own reasons right any last question from the floor I was curious you mentioned that you shouldn't use their language no you want because you reinforce their message that's a don't think of an elephant thing so that's why you need to reach George Lykoff's book he's also on YouTube but I find his book is better and it really is about when you use their language to counter them then you do reinforce their message which you need to do is you can still take on their themes but nest it in your frame right so I don't talk about the case the caring society versus Canada I talk about the case as a kids versus Canada right that's a far more power and it's actually true I mean as the kids started going we're trying to free from discrimination there are the beneficiaries out of the case so the way I frame it I deal with Canada's arguments and say in the kids versus Canada case it's really not about fairness to the federal government it's about your opportunity to show fairness to First Nations kids so when they say well it's not fair to us for you guys to be doing this I say well you're grown up and you're nice and big now so that's a piece and check out frameworks they'll give you a better idea I'm just going to say a word or two and we'll get the applause for you happening again I just want to remind people that our last talk of the season is a few weeks from today we have our own Matt Herter talking about the public sector and vaccine development a case study of the Merck Ebola vaccine a little bit of a step this way in terms of our topical issues please join me in thanking Dr. Blackstock for being a spider