 So my name is Krista Button. I've been teaching in the community here now for 12 years. Right now I'm teaching in high school and one of the courses I'm teaching is the Innu Studies course, which is a brand new course. And I'm from Northwest River, which is just across the bridge. So my family has been really close with the Innu people, I mean for like 100 years. Okay, so right now I'm teaching the new Innu Studies course. The course is designed, I mean as you know for most Indigenous groups now across Canada especially, one of the major issues they're facing is the loss of their culture, which includes their language, their traditions. So this Innu Studies course begins with cultural identity and so that would involve learning about traditions and you know like past beliefs and practices and then it gets into the actual land-based component as well as bringing in community members like community knowledge holders where they become the teachers and they teach the kids about their traditions, their culture. So it's bringing the Innu culture into the education system and it's bringing the community members in here into the school and also bringing the school out onto the land. It's the Innu Studies course. It's offered to all high school students but the way it worked this year because it was the first year for the course, the way it fit into the schedule was it was mainly open to the grade 11 students. So the majority of the kids in my class are grade 11 students. The aim of the program is to bring like I said the Innu culture into the school so it's trying to connect the students with their culture and it opens the door then for like I said community members to come into the school and for the students to learn that their education can be made up of not just a material from the western culture but also from their own indigenous culture and that both world views are valuable and that students don't have to fit into either you know a western world or an indigenous world. They can you know still be Innu, still have their traditions, still have their beliefs, still have their culture while gaining knowledge from a western point of view. So it brings both the indigenous culture and the western culture together. We started off with a lot of identity and we went through the Indian Act. We dealt with you know the media, how the Innu are portrayed in the media, how the Innu govern themselves and then we got into the land-based components so the kids got to go out and set snares. They learned how to set snares. They learned how to set up a traditional Innu tent. They did it right from scratch going out into the snow, beating the snow down, you know cutting the trees, setting the tent up, brushing the tent down. We set the rabbit snares and the kids learned how to clean and cook the rabbit and partridge. We learned how to make moccasins and each of these things that you know each of these major things that we did we had community members come in and actually be the teachers for this which was good because I in turn you know became a learner instead of a teacher so it was really neat to be able to connect with my kids on that level as well. Traditionally in other courses here in the school I mean kids are usually assessed based on pencil and paper tests. In this course there's a lot of hands-on you know activities so we, well myself, I went through whether they participated and how well they participated in everything and for a lot of it like they had they actually had like finished products you know they had after the rabbit and everything we had the actual rabbit and partridge stew the moccasins we had the moccasins so it wasn't even based on completion of the moccasins say but it's the actual involvement their willingness to learn and one of the major things about this course is that a lot of the kids who struggle with reading or writing they have a chance to see success because this is not the reading and the writing is not the major component or you know like the major form of assessment for this it's their assessment is based on their traditional learning and their traditional ways of showing what they learned so it's really based on the process of learning rather than the one final pencil and paper test so you see a lot more success now come from students you know who normally would struggle with the reading and writing say of science social studies you see a lot of those kids who are now like in the top of the class with 90s so it's it's a very important course indigenous education is there's a lot it it's bringing the indigenous knowledge into the school but not only into the school you know outside of the school whether we have elders come in and talk about what it was like traveling in the country years ago we had them come in and you know talk about what their life was like and how life has changed I mean for example we had Elizabeth Nashway come in and she talked about when she was a little girl I mean they would walk far into the country and she said that since the community has settled I mean you have a lot more issues now with like heart disease cancer things that you didn't see before and the reasoning is because I mean the innu were nomadic people and now when they're placed in one area where they're not moving around and everything so much you're starting to see health issues so indigenous education involves learning about your own culture your own ways of life your own traditions you know your own way of learning and like I said it's gaining a lot of the knowledge from the community members themselves well this is a very very major step here now by having this new course brought into the school I'm hoping that when other schools get to see what this course is like and success this course is had that maybe these courses will be offered in other schools as well but I what I'd like to see here in the school now is for this kind of learning to not just be in this course you know for you to see this type of learning from K to 12 instead of just this innu studies course and we have we have changed in that direction I mean we have little kids brought out with elders telling them stories we have the kids who go out fishing we take the kids out every year fishing out onto the land but not only just in those areas but I mean to also be able to take indigenous knowledge and put it into the actual curriculum itself and it's possible because I teach the environmental studies course and I've used a lot of what I learned in my innu studies course and placed it into my environmental science course so it would be really nice to see indigenous education being brought into all the classrooms all the grades