 My name is Valerie Pilgrim. I'm originally from Nain, Nunatziyabut. I self-identify as a Chalunaniuk, which is essentially a mix between Inuk and the European Settler Labrador in Nunatziyabut. I work as the manager of the Aboriginal Resource Office, which is a very new position since November of 2018. As the manager of the Aboriginal Resource Office, I, along with my co-worker, create a safe space for Aboriginal students, provide academic programming, social-cultural programming for Indigenous students here at the Aboriginal Resource Office, and sometimes in partnerships with other units or departments across the university. So, yeah, providing a safe space, welcoming Indigenous students on campus, and having supports in place to help them during their university years here. So we have student programming. For example, Fridays we have a weekly drumming circle. We participate in Sisters in Spirit. We have our orange shirt day. We have our tent gathering every semester. We try to have Aboriginal artists' nights from time to time. We've had drum-making workshops, circle time. We have fun things such as midweek munchies to gather students together. We have our open house for anyone at the beginning of the semester to come check out our office to see what we're doing. We have movie screenings to bring awareness across campus to students, faculty, and staff. We have story and circle sharing at times. We provide writing clinics within partnership with the writing clinic here. We find tutors for our Indigenous students if they need them. We provide scholarships, information which we've gathered that we share with our students. Just basically navigating the whole university system with different processes. We try to make it as smoothly as possible for our Indigenous students. I'm sure that we do a lot more, and like I said, I'm new to the position, but a lot of different things. We try to spread awareness across campus regarding Indigenous cultures in our province, and that's a big piece of the puzzle there. Spreading awareness about the history and culture of Aboriginal peoples in our province is important because it allows, I guess, other departments, faculty, staff, even students to understand the history, or even prehistory, or the history, I guess, of our Indigenous peoples here. We participate in the blanket exercise. It's one good educational piece that we appreciate and has a lot of informative and interesting pieces. There's a lot more that we can be doing as well. We do work with other units, I mean department of education, social work program. We just started our first pilot project in a visiting elders program here at university. Our first visiting elder today was Saga Ma, Misselle Jo, and that was just today, our first official visiting elder, I guess. He's been to campus for other reasons, but we hope to make this another part of Indigenous education here on campus as well. Well, in partnership with the School of Social Work, we are the Aboriginal Resource Office where I work partnered, was partnering with the School of Social Work to provide a space on campus where an elder can visit and talk to students, staff and faculty. So one day a week, the elder will be with the School of Social Work. Another day of the week, the elder will be in our office, Aboriginal Resource Office student lounge. And we're basically telling the elder whatever you're comfortable with and sharing, we're open to, you know, sitting down having tea, talking, telling stories. And so it's a one-year project and we hope to make it a permanent project year after next if we can find the funding. Because they are knowledge holders, that's a big piece of Indigenous education. Various elders have different strengths, we recognize that. And they just bring, like today, for instance, when Miss Seljo was here, he told stories, students, the energy in the lounge was light, it was happy, people were asking him questions, whether that was about language or about just out on the land or about just experiences growing up. It really brings out pride in Indigenous students to talk with an elder and to, you know, really feel proud about who they are. And have the honour of meeting someone like Miss Seljo or an elder on campus to get advice from guidance, counselling and to have a laugh, laughter is medicine. And I think it's just bringing things down to earth and just students having the opportunity to talk to an elder, I think it's just important in many ways, right? It's good for the spirit. There have been various partnerships over the years from what I can remember of students going into communities through engineering, through other programming. So I do know a handful of students who have gone to Con River, gone to Southern Labrador, Northern Labrador. So there are opportunities but there are too few that could be expanded on as well. It just gives, I guess, students the opportunity to not only learn about the different communities in the province, Indigenous communities, but also to learn from each other as well. So sharing and being able to share different stories and share different experiences with each other is important too for the students and bringing that pride back and making it stronger even. The tent gathering on Friday will have three elders present actually, two Inuk elders and Sagomah Jo who is Mi'gma from Newfoundland, from the island of Newfoundland. So it'll be a chance for students, faculty and staff to come together again, talk, even to eat. We're going to have the food. We always hire four fires catering from the first light, which is formerly the St. John's Native Friendship Center. So we partner with them sometimes too on events as well. And so on Friday people have a chance to talk to elders, meet other students, new students will meet students, faculty, staff, so everyone is welcome. So it just gives a chance for the university community, I guess, to get together and to share, I guess, and eat. I've been thinking about that and I consider it a broad yet unique area, right? I think it's education based on, I guess, could you say grassroots, practical knowledge. Knowledge coming from knowledge holders in communities that have people with strengths coming and values coming from their communities. It's something I would have to really think about and it's much broader than that. But I just think it's a type of education that is very valuable coming from original thought perhaps, original peoples that are based on very practical and very harmonious. A big piece here at the university, I should really speak for the Aboriginal Resource Office and what I'd like to see is building relationships and providing awareness of Aboriginal culture and history because there's so many misconceptions. And of course, at the same time, my office would like to continue to provide a safe and welcoming environment for Indigenous students. But relationship building and the cultural awareness piece is huge and we're hoping the whole university community will come on board and just, you know, we can all work together to improve, I guess, many things for our students here on campus. So during the winter semester we will be moving into a bigger space, we'll have a bigger student lounge, we'll have three offices for staff. However, in the long term we're hoping for an Aboriginal or Indigenous house, our own building at some point if we can get the funds. So that's what our aim is to have actually a bigger, much bigger space or our own building at some point, yeah. But in the transition period we're going to be in a bigger space hopefully this winter, 2019.