 My name is Todd Labrador. I will talk about Canoe Building, Birchbark Canoe Building. So what's the target age group with your program that you work with? Maybe some youth are not accepted as well. So it can be from... Is there a name for the program? Besides Canoe Building. But Canoe Building is really the one that I've got a lot of focus on. So what do you think makes your program or your workshop stand out? Because it's mostly one of a kind. Only practicing does this. I tend to get booked. What impact do you see on the people who take the workshops from being involved? By the trees, the roots, and the wood leaves. Hand tools like crooked knives, draw knives. We'll start with no experience at all. My courses sometimes will run for six weeks. A functional birchbark canoe. Different things away from my courses, they'll take how to use a knife for the first time. Some will learn how to chance, in some cases, participate. Do you see a change in the students over time? Yeah, the muscles that are required. And when they know what they did, some of them are shot. They don't speak well, and as they're working, they develop more confidence and are able to share visitors from all over the world. So I really see a positive change. I've always said it benefits the McMah nation. It benefits the province. Because we have people coming from all over the world to watch. So you have people of all ages learning together at the same time? Yeah, sometimes I'll only work with a few at a time, because I don't have enough skilled helpers. So I'll take two or three at a time. And then, sometimes during the project, we'll have time where people can sign up and come work with me for a couple hours and maybe do some work on the canoe. So I've had people from the ages of probably five years old to probably 80 years old. And sometimes it's only for a few hours. Sometimes it's for, you know, longer period of time. Because it's such a rare opportunity, it goes over very well. Is there a language component to the program? I mean, you know, I've worked with... Mostly my goal is to work with the First Nations youth, the McMah youth, to revive this almost lost tradition. And my great-grandfather was the last builder in our family. After he died, it almost became lost. And so I have people from McMah communities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. I have people, Indigenous people as well, from all over the country and all over North America. But I also have Germans, people from France, people from all over, and sometimes to take part. What do you tell you that your program is working? Last summer, I built three canoes. Two in Nova Scotia and one in Prince Edward Island. I was born in 1990, 2020, and 2021. So I get so many calls. Last summer, I had 20 requests. And there's more than I can handle. There's programs with youth in schools. I went to Teachers College and studied to be a TechEd teacher. I'm a licensed carpenter as well. Could you talk a bit more about what happens in your program? Sure, it's a six-week course. I will set it up so that most of the roots are harvested. The birch bark is harvested. A lot of the woodworking is done. And what we do over the period of six weeks is we put everything together. From the frame of the canoe to the ribs to the birch bark, we sew everything together. But during that time, we will go into the forest and we will actually harvest birch bark. And we will actually harvest spruce roots and we'll boil the roots and take the bark off. We will split the roots. Like splitting roots is a skill that's developed over lots of time. A lot of these things you can't learn in a day or a week. Not many people can take a six-week course and then go home and build a canoe. It's a long-term apprenticeship where sometimes you have to work and develop that skill. It's a skill that you can learn how to build a canoe, but out of that you'll have other skills that develop like how to make birch bark containers, how to make other things with spruce root, how to bend wood, like how to bend wood, how to identify wood. There's many different things that may spin us, I guess, from the project. But also for them to know that this is what their ancestors did with very limited tools. They had stone, bone, and wood. And they created canoes, you know, travels the ocean and across the lakes. What would you say is the aim of the program aside from making a canoe? Like is there maybe a healing aspect or spiritual component or aim? It is. It's our spiritual, harvesting the spiritual because we do ceremonies where we offer tobacco, we do smudging to harvest the canoe, harvest the bark and the roots. We ask our ancestors to help guide us. So it's a healing process. And we've always, my father always said it's a healing process of, as you're building, it's a very spiritual meditating in a lot of ways, too. But also it instills a sense of pride back to our people because the youth come along and they start to develop skills that they didn't have. So that makes them proud. But the elders start coming out and saying, I remember when I was a child and my great-grandfather made baskets. So other than stories come back. Maybe stories that were almost forgotten until the elders saw spruce roots. Then they start telling stories of when they were little collecting spruce roots with their grandparents. So it's a healing process but it's also bringing positive things to the communities where the elders love it because they travel for hours to come and just to be with us for a few hours. And because they are so pleased with what we're doing. Have you found any challenges that you've had to overcome in running the program? Yes, there's many challenges. For me, I always said building birch bark canoes because I didn't really have a teacher. It was like taking the road less traveled because the road I took, people traveled it. But when I traveled it, it had been all grown up because it had been almost lost and the path that was created by my ancestors had not been traveled for a long time. So I had to clear that path again. And to understand today that not every birch tree works only a certain tree works. So I have to find a certain tree but today all I find is clear cuts. So the land that I go on to is usually not my land it's usually not reservation land and most of the trees are cut. So I have to get permission from Crown Land, the government, Parks Canada, private wood lot owners. And there are times that they want to help but other times they don't want to help. So it's always a challenge to explain to them that this is a good thing. It's valuable for our nation, our youth but it's also valuable for the country and the world. So those challenges, and a lot of times the government will say well how much did you pay for the birch bark or how much did you pay for spruce roots? So my challenge is I can't tell them you know I bought birch bark at Canadian Tire I bought birch bark at home hardware because it's not, you can't do that and I have to go and harvest and dig my own roots. So those are challenges that are, you know I can't go to the store and order 700 feet of birch spruce root. So things like that and also to make the government realize that this is a good thing this is very good for our community our people and our nation and so those are challenges but after you know 20, 30 years I have a lot of people willing to help me now because they do see the benefits of this. Tourism is a huge part of what I do because it's a very rare skill and we usually do it in public so people can come and see. What to you is like a measure of success in your students? I guess for me it's even sometimes a little hard to talk about but it's a smile on the faces of the elders but I can call success when I can see an elder smiling and coming up to me and say you're doing really well, you're doing good you're doing good things but also to have a five year old little boy come over and help me with this canoe and tell me when I get older I want to build a canoe too boys and girls and that you know it's worth more than any money for me, it's really and also the amount of people that these projects attract because I have hundreds of people coming from the country so my people come from Texas from Ottawa and they'll tell me we came here just to see this and I'm really humbled by that they actually think that my father was born in 1874 he died in 1961 he didn't have any electricity but he raised my father because my father was died shortly after World War I and so my great grandfather raised my father and he also kept my father from attending residential school great grandfather would hide my father in the woods every time they came to get him so I've taken that negative thing you know, my grandfather my father's father shot himself made a suicide because of World War I of what had happened when he came back he had one leg he couldn't work he was chased out of town because he was an Indian when they buried him they buried him outside the fence in the cemetery because he was an Indian and bad terrible stories and terrible negative things that had happened in the past you know, I've taken this and this canoe has brought a lot of positive things and it's because of the efforts of my grandfather and my great grandfather and my father and you know, my grandparents that I'm able to do what I do The next questions are more about Indigenous education in general but was there anything else you wanted to say about your program specifically? I would like to see the programs in schools whether it be a training center community college, university I do know one thing is that I cannot do it alone I, you know, I'm getting to the point where I mean I can go for another 10 years but my hands are sore I'm developing arthritis but I have 30 to 40 years of knowledge that I need to pass on so I really need help somehow to get people involved so I can pass this on and somebody will take it because I, you know, this is going to be a day that I'm not going to be around and I hate to see that 30 to 40 years of knowledge that I have, Birchbark and things that I've been taught I hate to see that lost I want it to keep going Do you ever work with the craft college here in New Brunswick? No, I haven't Right now we're back in Nova Scotia probably from May to September sometimes longer but this summer we're building two canoes next summer we're building an ocean canoe for the North American Indigenous Games and that's 21 foot ocean canoe so I'm really, as I said, I had over 20 requests so I'm limited as to possibly next spring so there's a lot of interest out there and mostly what I have to do is for 2020 I have to harvest in 2019 so I have to harvest almost a year ahead so that's what I try to do and it's like one canoe, 16 feet takes more than 700 feet of route somebody to help me to split those routes and learn as they do that would be really good Crafts College would be great you know, Community College would be really nice to see But do you ever work with the Red Road Project? Very little, I did some presentations for them but they only asked me, I think, once at Stone Bear Lodge that I'd never heard from them anymore From your perspective, what is Indigenous education? I say the doors wide open on that because I grew up really not having it in school in saying that I never really had Indigenous education in school and what I did have wasn't good it was negative so I think the doors wide open and we can really develop something incredible there's so much from the land so much that we can do but also modern stuff like right now I'm carving in red cedar because I'm here in British Columbia I'm carving Mignol petroglyphs on 3 foot diameter red cedar so I'm taking an old tradition in modernizing it so there's so many modern things we can do endless so Indigenous education I really think it needs to involve Indigenous people there's so many elders out there with stories and knowledge they want to share unfortunately sometimes in our First Nations governments because of First Nations politics a lot of these elders aren't on their lists and they get missed so in some communities there are elders who don't have a chance to to take part in different things because you know and sometimes maybe it's because of politics so that's unfortunate because our youth lose there and we all lose there because there's still elders out there who have something to give and are being missed so I think that's very important not to miss those elders because once an elder passes that book is closed for the future what is your vision for Indigenous education for the next 10 years? what would you like to see? well for me I will continue to do what I do as long as I can always as I said over the years I can build a canoe or I can do work in my shop with the doors closed but nobody benefits from that I have to pass on things so I always have to be involved with teaching and so I'd like to see it continued I'd like to see schools where people are taught how to make baskets people are taught how to how to skin deer how to tan hide how to make drums I'll have leftover pieces of birch bark I'll have leftover pieces of spruce root but I can't throw it away because what I can't use on a canoe can be used somewhere else it can be used for making little containers I can do etchings on the winter bark and it can be a 2 inch square piece of winter bark it's so much that can be done with that the Abbey Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine incredible work and the youth, incredible things you know, baskets birch bark it's really inspiring to see that I would like to see maybe certain centers in certain areas where you can set up and people can come and learn I'll be teaching, physically I'll be teaching at least for another 10 years but verbally I can still I want to do a book I would like to do videos but I would love to do a book because I have knowledge that some people because I've worked with birch bark for most of my life I do have knowledge that many people don't have and I really think once you gain the knowledge you have a responsibility in our culture my responsibility is to pass it on so that's what I hope to do what do you think makes an amazing like the Indigenous program amazing or effective? you have to get really nice to work with Indigenous people but there are non-Indigenous people that can help as well but I think it needs to be Indigenous run we have to have we have to have criteria that makes it successful but it really needs to be run by Indigenous people and not always do they have to be University educated because I did spend 3.5 years and teach this college and I'm a licensed carpenter but my qualifications are written on birch bark and I I can't go to university and learn anywhere what I know but I can teach it that's it for the questions here but was there anything else that you wanted to add or say? I'm sort of doing similar to what this program is I've sort of been doing it all along sometimes people have incredible ideas but they're travelling parallel it's like train tracks you go side by side doing the same thing never touch so I think if we can come together and help each other it'll become stronger