 in the Department of Social Policy here at the Higeltani Inuit Association and our headquarters office is based out of Iqaluit but we function in all 13 communities of the Bafna region. Can you please describe your program? I have been working in this position for 16 years now and I have committed to this work because I believe in creating more programming that are made for Inuit youth by Inuit youth or by Inuit in general. And so I have designed and created a wide range of programs to help meet needs of Inuit youth in the Bafna region. So a lot of the programs that I design are focused on capacity building. This means providing opportunities for young people to gain and develop leadership skills. So anything from public speaking to proposal writing to program delivery to to give them the skills and extra support in running projects and programs of their own choosing in their own communities. So I'll give you one example. One youth conference that we had we flew in youth from each community and we used a tool community development tool that I developed that I call the Inuit Sainik tool and took me six years to develop and the youth went through this tool and each youth from each community after they finished using this multi-page survey style tool they were able to prioritize exactly what projects and programs that they want in their communities because I don't believe in me from Iqaluit deciding what should be happening in the communities. So I've developed a way for me to help support the youth in the communities to figure out what kind of programs that they want and need. So this particular time we've done this several times but I'm giving one example. When they each community in this big leadership gathering when they completed the survey each community had different priority projects and programs and they each presented to the rest of the group and so I remember Grace Fjord came and said we want to have a land skills training for youth learning survival skills and land skills but that they would be a video program so the youth would be learning how to make videos and so their subject would be making survival skills training videos for youth and so I was really happy about that we and then we had them write proposals and learn proposal writing so that they could get funding for that exact program that they want and then the youth in Pond and Lit I remember they said that they wanted to do also a survival skills training program but that it would be focused on youth empowerment so they would choose carefully choose youth take them out on the land and they would learn empowerment and leadership skills while also learning survival skills so those have been learning youth empowerment survival skills and art such as photography and video have been very popular also sewing programs so sewing hunting land survival skills and media multimedia programs have always come out really popular and the top two or top three priority areas like as for themes have always been like language and culture and then secondly what's rated high as well has been suicide prevention so that youth begin so that we can design some programming to help youth gain more skills around knowing what to do when there are crisis situations in the community prevention intervention and also postvention skills so it's hard for me to describe for you just one program because what I've designed has been an approach to programming where we help the youth leaders in each community figure out exactly what specific programs and projects that they want for their community and that in itself is a program in helping to determine that and then help to teach them and give them the skills so that they're able to find the funding and the resource people to help support the process so that they're able to actually run these programs successfully and we've had a lot of youth run programs in all of the communities over the years and right now I just got some funding so that I'm able to fly youth in from each community in the new year and then I got some separate funding for us to do that in a look saying that surveys again right now we're calling communities getting people who would be the ones to run these surveys so that we can have new and fresh data to work with to just to decide what the programs will be for the next two years and then I got extra funding from another source where we can give money to each community and the money will be used for whatever the survey information says that are the highest most wanted coming programs or projects in their community so working here for 16 years I really committed to making sure that the process that there's a good process in place so that we're getting more funding for the communities that we're getting more youth who feel confident enough to try to run these projects even if they're not the ones teaching for example if they want a sewing program they don't have to be the ones teaching sewing they could just be the ones to hire the elders and be the ones to you know handle the money or to do the reporting and stuff like that so that's what I focused on is building the capacity and confidence of new youth and also trying to find funding so that we're able to get a lot more programs happening and not just any programs exactly the programs that are wanted and needed the most and you talk about not just one program but many programs and how do you assess the success of these programs that's a good question it's been a little bit challenging the evaluation aspect of all of this I know that there are different methods that you can use for evaluation and for me I've never been a fan of just giving everyone a piece of paper at the end of an event where it says like you know from one to five how do you rate how well we did or like what would you like to see next time I do do just a one page very simple one because anytime I'm at conferences and events and then they give me the several page thing at the end usually at the end everyone's tired everyone's drained everyone like because you're talking and you're just so busy and engaged for the whole time that you're in a conference or a workshop and then at the end giving them this piece of paper usually they just kind of fill it out as fast as they can and just kind of give it or whatever so what I try to do is build in evaluation aspects that are not in written form but more discussion form and interview form sort of and do it throughout not only right at the end so it'll be like the end of the first day we'll check in on everybody and we'll get each person to describe their experience and then based on feedback on the first day it helps us to tailor the second day and then we hear from them again on the end of the second day it'll help us tailor the third day whatever so it's like I try to gauge how it's going and how everyone's doing and I get a lot of verbal feedback and so I've focused on that because I find just waiting till the end and giving a piece of paper hasn't been as effective as I'd like it to be so but to give you some some of the indicators that I look for I guess of a successful event is like the emotional response almost every single conference or event that we've held the youth will even cry and they'll even come and hug me and they'll say this conference changed my life or I understand now because we all we always build an inuit history as part of our workshops for example we always get really really high praise from the youth saying this makes so much sense now I'm so glad I came to this I learned so much about inuit history and now I'm really looking forward to the programs we're going to run in our community and so that's kind of been how I've been measuring success is the response of the youth and also where they take it from there if they actually run programs in their communities and really follow through and that it wasn't just a conference and that's it but that there it creates more opportunities now after that in the community so that is something I'm working on though formalizing the evaluation aspect like maybe that is something I can work on more is like a certain system that would work right now I'm you know it's I'm pretty satisfied with how we've been doing it but I feel like I want to explore more ways for us to evaluate our projects and programs and our approach just to make it even better so but we always do get a lot of honest feedback it's not just all you're doing greatly give actual very specific points on what we could do to improve the work that we do so yeah we do definitely keep track of the high points and areas for improvement have you ever throughout the years that you've been doing this have you ever faced challenges and overcame them to make that program that success that it is yeah there are a lot of challenges in this type of work for example one is that I live and work in the hallowed and the youth that I want to work with are spread out across the 13 that 12 other communities of the baffin region and one time I looked up the distance from grace fjord our northern most community to sanikilok our southern most community just to see like just how big our territory is and how challenging it can be for us all to work together when we're so separated and I looked up the distance and it was roughly the same distance as from Ottawa to the Bahamas like here like Ottawa to the Bahamas seems so far and that's the distance from grace fjord to sanikilok and trying to pull these youth together and to work together like I wish I could be in all the communities in person when we're talking and that's why I host these conferences that way we're able to actually all meet together and stuff but just the distance and how expensive travel can be like if you're given a certain amount of money you know say I was given 80,000 or something unless you break it up and just let each community have a piece then you're pretty like if you don't do that and you want to see people in person and if you want to like provide that training and build up their confidence then there's going to have to be flying involved and then suddenly 80% of your budget goes just towards flights or whatever so that's just one example of how challenging it can be when you want to use your funding for like resource people you want to be like hiring elders you want to be maybe doing video projects and maybe you want video equipment maybe you know that just means we have to work harder to make sure there's enough funding for everything just because travel takes up so much um just a high percentage of the budget always ends up going to the airlines and other challenges is when you're doing youth work you often will have like a young person who's really interested in doing youth work but then they move away for school or they get a new job or something happens where they're not able to commit all their time anymore to the youth programming work so then you always have to start over like finding new people that's a blessing because now you're getting more people trained and more people that I'm getting to work with more people but it always almost feels like you're starting over from scratch and I had to learn to accept that and see it as a good thing because for a while I would be like okay let's work together to design create maybe um exchange programs let's work together to try to get more youth exchange programs going you know into a community to different inner communities and that's going to take a lot of work and commitment that's going to take everyone like giving their time and energy and then some of the youth leave or whatever and then you like you're trying to build up a team and then half your team disappears or whatever because these aren't full-time jobs like the main challenge is that a lot of times youth work you expect them to do it all on a volunteer basis I've always felt that we should be doing youth work in a more formal way where you have a lot more funding for like youth coordinators in every community not just the recreation coordinators at the hamlet but it would be great if it could be expanded so that you have more youth being paid to do youth work so that it's more sustainable so that you don't have people getting burnt out and quitting or leaving because it's too much work on one person on a volunteer level and all of that so right now the surveys I was just talking about for the communities I just I'm really happy that I got funding from the federal government so that we're able to pay the youth to do the surveys and then pay the youth for providing their input and so yeah so we have to work hard to make sure that youth really get something for the time and energy that they put in there are a lot of challenges my main challenge is working alone for the last few years for several years I always worked with a partner for the region and so we could split up the work like they would have like six communities or seven communities I would have six or seven communities and we're able to split up the work more but the last few years I've actually been working alone and it's led to burnout and stuff um because it's not easy work and for me that would be almost a political thing because if you look at you know regions the regions but also like on a community level plus on a regional level and even on a national level it remains that the percentage of youth as a demographic within the population that we're the majority so in the youth are the majority of the population in inner regions and and there are a lot of high needs like high suicide rates and it's mostly youth and you know there's a lot of need for support and yet we're only few youth coordinators so it's like it doesn't seem balanced like politically we should really be pushing for more money funding and support to be dedicated specifically to youth because we're the majority of the population and we have high needs you know so part of my work is not just programming but also advocacy speaking on behalf of the new youth and fighting to make sure that we have more support and that we create more opportunities and that we you know just to have it balanced like we're not we as youth don't fight like all the attention and money should be only on youth it's like no it just needs to be more balanced like the same way in none of the government we're trying to bring up the inner employment rate to 85 percent because in our 85 percent of the population and we have a public government in place yet the inner employment is only 40 something percent so they're working hard to get more inuit employed so that the none of a government can look like can be more representative of the population so it's like 85 percent you know our inuit so 85 percent of government employees should be inuit so that it can be representative of the population now if you put that in terms of programming what we should really look at what kind of funding and money is being put towards youth and is it representative of like you know to have it balanced like there needs to be funding and support and everything for elders funding and support and everything for your kids like in those early childhood education programs and stuff like that and then programming for adults and you know like if you break up the pie if you made a pie chart or whatever like do we take time to really look at that like do we take time to actually look to make sure that we're making decisions in a balanced way for different segments of our population you know like having very few youth coordinators for me like I think if you even just doubled you know like two youth coordinators per community so they can work together to do youth programming for me like I think that would be amazing and then if we had a regional youth council a model of that is actually Nunavik if you look at Nunavik they actually have a paid youth president paid youth vice president paid board members and council all young people all young youth leaders being paid and they have their own youth organization with an operational budget and then they employ and work with youth in every community because they work really hard to have that model in place and Quebec is more supportive of that I guess but all of the other intimate regions across Canada that's NWT, Kirtelmilk, Kevalik, Baffin and Labrador or Nunavik the rest of us it's all mostly on a volunteer basis with very few youth staff and so that that's a continuing challenge is trying to make sure that there's sustainable funding in place because every bit of funding that we get is usually third-party funding that's short-lived like just one year or you know but imagine having like full-time positions where it's not something you have to fight each year to get funding for or whatever so that's just describing for you some of the challenges that we face when doing youth work and youth programming is sometimes the funding you put in your proposals and for example if I wanted to do a summer project and if the proposal deadline for some like national funding program or something was like March 31st imagine I'm March 31st give this proposal for a summer program and if it's like federal government sometimes you don't get approved until like September, October and then you don't get your actual check or money until like November, December and it's like well now we have to turn it into a winter program because we weren't we didn't get our money in time and then you try to change it to a winter program and then they're like well that's going to change that changes the intent of the program you're going to need to get a letter and we're going to need approval for this change or whatever and then you can't just move it to the next year to use it next summer because the money has to be used before March 31st so then you're in the cycle of like okay you have to reapply next year for a summer program but then you don't always hear back right away or get the money right away and so then we end up having to do most of our programming in the winter months and so like we have those kinds of challenges like it's not always like that for funders like funding the different funding sources have different turnaround like turnaround time and all of that but that's just been one issue that I know a lot of youth coordinators have had all across Canada is when you're trying to run programming it takes long to get the funding and I remember one time they only got their funding which was like over a hundred thousand almost two hundred thousand dollars three weeks before the deadline to use it they finally got their money in March and so in a three week period they spent like two hundred thousand dollars or three hundred thousand dollars trying to do as much youth programming as they could in that short three week window and then the next year they ended up losing their money um this is from the federal government they ended up losing money because they said well you guys didn't use it enough you you guys didn't use it all last year because they they tried to spend the three two hundred grand in three weeks but they couldn't because it was just not enough time to be like hiring enough elders and all that kind of stuff to run programs and qualified people and then so the next year they said oh instead of two hundred thousand this year we're only giving you fifty thousand because last year you guys didn't even use it they're like well we would have used it if it was given to us and you know and time and so we come up against those kind of challenges where like we have to work really hard to make sure that any plans that we're making that we're smart about trying to like right now one major solution to a lot of these issues is for there to be multi-year funding instead of just doing it year by year by year so if we were able to get a commitment for like three years or four years ahead of time then we're able to do the work like in the months that we want and all of that rather than spending the whole year trying to fight for that funding and then it finally comes last minute or whatever and I'm actually really happy that those regional youth leadership summits that I told you about that like I'm going to have one in the new year that we just got a four-year commitment for that about ninety thousand a year for four years to be able to do that for all the um to be able to do the capacity building and all of that over the next four years so it's like what we've been fighting for for a long time is finally here we finally have that multi-year agreement that multi-year commitment and so yeah so the challenges that we face are different you know from year to year and it's seasonal and it's like different issues come up but then all your work does pay off and you do start to really see it come together the way it should and this year is kind of a perfect year almost because we have all this funding from four or five different sources coming in and they seem to really understand our needs that they're not going to make it really hard for us to apply or really hard for us to report or really hard for us to get the money and all of that so yeah I'm pretty happy about where we're at right now but over the years we've had major challenges that we've had to overcome for sure do you also have any programs just towards you know education in general or promoting in we not specific to youth but also to like younger than youth or older than youth for education meaning like post-secondary or just in general just to promote that in we culture well those are two different things education or culture or do you mean culture in education just in a culture promoting any culture I guess do you mean cultural education yeah or me that's a very big part of what we do because for me I worked for many years with mental health for example I was one of the co-founders of the embrace life council which is the territorial suicide prevention body and I used to be the president for them and before president I was the secretary and also treasurer and board member and I still sit on the board right now and when we look at these complex issues that we're facing and you have all these youth who are struggling in different ways what we keep coming back to is a lot of in youth struggle with identity cultural identity like who I am as an inuk and so I design a lot of programs around inuk identity like showing them using actual like scientific methods and also I wish you could come to one of my workshops it's actually really fun but I use different methods to describe and show how just because inuit youth aren't wearing seal skins or using dog teams every day or like only speaking you know to do or like living completely traditionally I show how that doesn't mean you're any less inuk or that you're not inuk and we describe what true inukness means and it's a very deep thing and we spend days going deep into what true inukness looks like and what it means and so there's that side of it is inuk identity when then a second part of inuit culture is hands-on skills like learning sewing hunting navigation you know all these skills that are related to where we live up here and that's those are cultural because for me I teach how inuit culture that a lot of it is very much based on our environment like we sew and wear fur clothing because it's right for this environment you know like people who live in the amazon jungle they don't need to be learning skills around sewing fur because it's too hot down there like but for here it's important I talk about how we don't need to learn inuit culture only because we don't want it to die but it's like no because it's perfect for this environment learning cultural skills inuit cultural skills is perfect for this environment like we don't need to learn non-inuk ways to survive this land because the inuk ways to survive this land are already so perfect because we've already been living up here for thousands of years so we are the experts in like survival in this environment in this climate so we really shift the focus it's not just like oh you need to learn your inukness your inuk ways your inuk you know identity just so it won't die it's like well it's not just like oh we just don't want to lose it it's like well if we lose it that's actually really serious because inuit culture is perfect for this environment like for where we live if we all if all inuit suddenly move to Africa or something then the inuk ways wouldn't be as important in that environment then maybe if we lost the inuk ways in that environment that would be a different story but the inuk ways for this environment is very important it's like it's perfect inuit culture is perfect for survival in this environment so when we teach programs and teach inuit history teaching inuit history helps youth to understand why we have a lot of issues trust issues a lot of there's a lot of hurt and trauma appear after residential schools and dog slaughter and some of the things that we've experienced and then that also helps to understand why we've lost a lot of these amazing skills cultural skills and why there isn't strong cultural education in place because now education for us means the Alberta curriculum and how traditionally in four thousands of years we would get this cultural education and training through our you know parents and family members and that so what we're trying to do now is really promote moving forward and the term I always use is the best of both worlds we want the best of inuit culture traditional cultural education learning how to survive in this environment learning cultural skills which are so important and they're so perfect for where we live like we don't need to be ashamed for our you know our culture and who we are because it's perfect for this environment and so you know the best of that world and then also the best of the new world which is the formal education system we want to blend the two so that we have more cultural education within the education system and we also want to have the education system work for us where it can really you know have us advance in our own lives we can you know if we have a specific career path in mind we can take advantage of the education system so that we can really thrive kind of in the new wage economy using education but then we don't want it to be one or the other because for me when I grew up in paying I was born and raised in paying hunting fishing and with elders speaking only you know to do I didn't even know English and then when I moved to it and I went to high school here went to us I remember feeling almost depressed or angry because any everything I learned as an you know seems like I wasn't getting any recognition for any of it in the school system I was like how come I'm not getting a plus for knowing you know to do how come I'm not getting a plus for sewing or hunting or fishing or you know like all those cultural skills seem like they just didn't hold value in the education system but if you're able to tell them about farm animals and European history then whoa you're so smart you know European history wow you're such a smart you know because you know about chemistry or whatever it's like only if you do non-inook things then they say wow you're so smart and then if you do inook things it's like well where's my big gold star and my a plus like you know so I had a lot of anger about that when I was younger and so what I'm really hoping that we move towards is this best of both worlds which is let's not lose our traditional cultural education because it's so important for this environment and it's important even for non-inuit if non-inuit move here they should be learning you know stuff and they come here because it's right for this environment and it's how we've lived for thousands of years and like why would we want to undo all that amazing history and just start from new start from new when it's a different culture from a different environment you know anyway so for us for cultural education what we do is one focus on inuit identity making sure inuit youth understand who they are as inuit and kind of where they fit into the world picture and our own unique inookness and what that means and what that looks like second in it history we give that education cultural it's educate it's culture related education about some of the loss and that we've experienced and then third is empowering the young people so that they can create more opportunities in their communities for there to be more cultural education for us to be working with elders and having more cultural education in place and fourth giving providing funding so that that actual cultural education that we want can actually happen and take place so that's kind of what we do when it comes to cultural education from your perspective what is inuit education inuit education from my perspective in education as in educating inuit or like educating inuit or what what topics going to inuit education or what is important in inuit education for me the most important aspect of inuit education are the foundational aspects which means that we first before educating inuit or having us as in we educate ourselves on any given subject on a very foundational level what's most important is for inuit to come to the realization and understanding that we are truly equal to any other people group in the world and this means that we as in we are not and our ancestors were not primitive simple barbaric savage some of these labels that have been placed on us as inuit for me true inuit education is making sure that your starting point on your education journey starts high up where you realize that you have the mental capacity and the intelligence and the potential to do you can be an astronaut you can be a lawyer you can be a seamstress you can be like if you look at maslow's hierarchy of needs you know that triangle at the very bottom are basic needs sleep food you know and at the very top is self-actualization which means actually being able to be what you want in life like you've worked hard to make sure all of your basic needs are covered and you're able to do you know like you're able to fulfill your potential as a human being it's been shown through studies that any people group or any individual of any culture doesn't matter if you could pick people from japan you could pick people from the netherlands you could pick people from kenya it doesn't matter pick any human beings from anywhere on earth and if you take that people group and if you subject them to trauma cultural trauma historical trauma like the kind of like the kind of historical trauma that we've experienced as inuit expose them to systematic trauma and cultural trauma it's been shown that that people group will start to be on the lower part of that triangle where they're just focusing on their basic needs making sure there's enough food on the table you know very basic needs because when you've gone through trauma you're in healing mode it changes your mind where you're focusing just on surviving rather than focusing on becoming an astronaut or something major like whatever whatever inuit education would mean for an individual whatever they want to learn if their starting point is that of having a lot of trauma that you haven't dealt with it's shown that you're going to just kind of be in survival mode and just like basically surviving day to day and trying to put food on the table and like very focusing on your basic needs and so for me inuit education at its purest and most beautiful form would mean having overcome trauma and having that understanding of our history and understanding the context of who we are and that we are truly equal to any people group in the world we can be astronauts we can be I just give the example of astronaut because that seems like something that takes so many years of dedicated work and a lot of study and it's something that you really that you can't do if you're just in survival mode and you're dealing with trauma in your life like if I want if I today want to become a lawyer or an astronaut something that takes years of you know study and whatever if if I just got you know if there was like a very serious situation in my family maybe there was a murder or maybe you know something like that it's very hard to be able to pursue education it's not impossible but just adds just layers of like just adds so many obstacles when we have trauma that we're dealing with but then okay there's trauma that's one thing that can hold us back on a foundational level and then the second thing that can hold us back is our thinking and our belief system if you think that in we are inherently inferior to colonel for example you're going to not be able to fulfill your potential to what it really is so one thing that I show when we're doing our workshops is scientifically there have been tons of studies done on different people groups around the world and I use the term people groups because I don't like the term race because race tends to make it seem like if you have darker skin or versus lighter skin that you're smarter or better or like race for me is almost a racist term I guess so I use culture and people group you're able to show scientifically that the difference between Inuit and non Inuit for example that the difference can only ever be 0.012 percent this means the difference between me and an olympic athlete is not because well I can't win a gold medal in the olympics because I'm just a you know actually you know the difference between me and that olympic gold medalist is 0.012 percent so that means the main difference between me and that olympic gold athlete is they wake up at like 4 a.m and start training and they work really hard all day every day they invest money the hire coaches they give their whole life to whatever sport they're in they practice all day every day they're very strict with their diet they you know like everything that that gold olympic athlete does I don't do those things I don't wake up for in the morning I don't spend tons of money hiring coaches I don't practice every day I'm not super strict with what I eat so that I could you know increase my performance whatever so that's why we're different it's not because I'm Inuit do you know what I mean like we tend to use our Inukness to hold us back like oh I'm not good at this because I'm Inuk or I'm not good at that because I'm Inuk that's like actually being Inuk the difference are differences between Inuit and non Inuit pick any people group in the world or whatever is less than a percent and that's scientifically proven because our differences are actually very small compared to what we make them out to be in our heads so for me if you asked me to define what is Inuit education for me it would be an understanding of ourselves as Inuit where we stand in the world who we are and our own capacity and our own potential as a people and our own strengths that we're actually very smart very capable that you know we're human and we can run fire run fast jump high read lots of books we can invent be inventors if we want we can be teachers we can be you know just like our potential is just through the roof and because we've experienced colonization in our parents and grandparents generation it's very easy for us to believe that we're less than it's very easy for us to believe that we don't have what it takes and well you're just going to fail or you know like it's just the battles in our minds as Inuit and I think if you conquer that battle first of one understanding our history and why we have so many issues around feeling inferior and two realizing as a human being that we as Inuit that we are capable of so much and our potential is so high and when you realize that you're equal you're not less than anyone else on earth you're equal and you can that there's no one to stop you from achieving what you want to achieve then Inuit education for me means well you can do and learn anything you want you want to become an expert hunter and all year around live on the land navigating and using traditional ways that's a full time job for me being a hunter is the same as trying to be a lawyer or astronaut because there's so much to learn and so much to know if you brought me out on the land I probably wouldn't survive because I don't know all those things it's just like getting a degree or more because life out on the land is like it requires so much knowledge so much skill and it's not a simple thing it's easy for because what we've experienced is Inuit have been put down for who we are and so for me Inuit education would mean you as an Inuit if you wanted to pursue a life with something traditional that's your right that's your prerogative you can go out there or if you want to pursue something in more formal education you want to be a heart surgeon or something like that yeah you have what it takes like so for me Inuit education is really specific to each individual what they want to do in life but I hope that their starting point even before education they realize that they have the same starting point as anybody else on earth and that they're not any less that colonization making us feel and believe that we're less or that we're stupid or whatever is not true it's we have the same starting point as everybody else and we have that same potential to be anything we want to be and that we could use education as a tool to get us there what is your vision for Inuit education over the next 10 years Inuit education over the next 10 years along with what I was saying is making sure that Inuit realize their value and potential potential for Inuit to realize that that we collectively can achieve great things the way our parents generation and our grandparents generation went from living on the land to fighting to have our own government they accomplished a lot in their generation our parents and grandparents generation they were able to go from living nomadically living traditionally out on the land and in just one generation very fast we became a whole like workforce a whole new like where our leaders went and lobbied the federal government down in the state down in Ottawa with the parliament and how they the very first generation of Inuit to learn English or the very first generation to fight hard for our rights and we were able to gain our own government four different territories in Canada and to have our own land claims and to have our own land our control over our own you know land and to have all these organizations and like if you look at how much we accomplished just in one generation the very first generation to even learn English like that shows the amazing ability of Inuit to accomplish amazing things like we got our very own government without any bloodshed or any violence if you look at people around the world there are certain pieces of land like in the Middle East where it's like 200 years of fighting and thousands killed over like one piece of land Inuit we were able to get in Nunavut's case over two million square kilometers of land and our own government and we never hurt a single person for that so for me in education would be I hope we stay true to who we are as Inuit you know the non-violent and smart amazing ways that we work as Inuit with each other and humble ways respectful ways the true Inuk way of living and being and being who we are as Inuit that we don't lose that but also that we take advantage of the opportunities that we have in the formal education system so that we can further who we are and so for me I would like to see more programming more schooling centered around Inuit subjects like it'll be so cool if you can go and get you know enter a program for because nowadays you have like say a jewelry program and it's using like silver and gold and whatever what if there was a like traditional tools program where you're making all traditional tools using all traditional methods nothing modern like how cool would that be if you could enter a program like that where you're making boy narrow bull drill cookie book you know bana harpoons all of that using 100% traditional methods and you know something like that makes me almost cry just thinking about it I get like goosebumps and I almost cry thinking like how beautiful would that be if we're able to like enter a actual accredited like program where you actually get marks for very traditional skills and stuff like that so for me I would love to see that where we don't that we as Inuit can identify exactly what skills and programs that should be in the education system and that it's not only what's provided for us from the south or whatever like that we that and for me my dream would be that more Inuit are confident enough to become teachers in these areas so that you know we can't wait for people to run these programs for us we as Inuit have to step up and teach these programs design these programs and that's why I've been in the work that I've been in for 16 years because I believe in the work designing Inuit specific programs as Inuit using the Inuit mind to design those programs rather than sitting around waiting for non-Inuit to come and design them for us or whatever so I'm really proud of you Randy that you're working to become a teacher because that's an example of the dream that we have kind of like coming through of more Inuit teachers so that's what I hope for is more Inuit taking advantage of education opportunities but even bigger than that more Inuit signing up so that they can design teach and run these high-level very Inuit specific programs