 The second online discussion form with NCCIE National Center for Collaboration in Indigenous Education. You can find our website at nccie.ca. During this online discussion forum, we're going to talk about approaches to teaching math and sciences. I want to thank the IKS media and technology for their strict protocols and ensuring their safety during these times. I also want to thank Jennifer Dockstader, our national lead, for the continued work that she does in making sure this project happens. Currently, we are in our third year of this project, and we are just bringing a wrap to what we've been working on over the past year. In the first two years, we went out to communities, Indigenous communities, and we asked them what our Indigenous knowledge is that they wanted to ensure that they brought forth, that they were shared, that we use an ethical way of sharing the knowledge that we're in the community, and we put that forth. After the second year, we started to focus on lesson plans, and during the times that we're facing in this world today, that is a great resource that will be available throughout the summer. Each region is developing and creating their own lesson plans that are connecting to the knowledges that are wanting to be shared by the Indigenous communities that surround that region. As I said earlier, my name is Dustin Brass. I get to teach in the Faculty of Indigenous Education at the First Nations University of Canada. I want all people who are watching this today that if you have people in your life or in your family who are interested in education that they seek out First Nations University as a wonderful opportunity to get their degree and take these things that we're going to be talking about into further spaces in educational environments. We have three guests with us today, and we will talk to the panelists throughout the show, and then at about the 45-minute mark, we'll go in for a final talk and final words from one of my mentors and guides, Willie Irmine. NCCIE, as I said earlier, is a website at nccie.ca. If you could, please go to that website over the next little bit and start to see the resources that are available throughout this country. We have a couple ways in which you can connect and you can submit questions. Please send your comments and questions throughout the show, and we will ensure that we can get to as many as that we can. Also, our direct text line, if you prefer to text, is 306-552-4357. That's 306-552-4357, and we will get to them as many as we can. As you see, I have the cell phone here to collect all the texts that come in. I will be looking at that. Math and science is such an interesting topic, and I think about all the ways in which in our regular, everyday lives that we face and we see and we interact with arts, I mean with math and science. I even thought about the simplistic mathematics of verifying my equation this morning. As I was getting dressed and I had two socks and two feet, and at the conclusion, I had balanced my equation with two and two. I also think about all the things that we, even just coming to the studio today, all the things that we encounter that impart in the sciences. But, of course, I want to carry that over to the panelists and hear what they have to say, and I hope that we can engage in a wonderful discussion that brings apart a lot of knowledge and a lot of sharing, but to know that it doesn't end here today, that this has continued to be lived, continued to be utilized within in the societies and the places in which you encounter. So our first panelist that I want to go to for the first question is Dr. Edward Doolittle. Edward Doolittle is a Mohawk from Six Nations in Southern Ontario. He earned his PhD in pure mathematics at the University of Toronto in 1997, and later studied the Mohawk language for a year in the Onguayan Kentoyakwa Immersion Program in Six Nations. I apologize for my Mohawk pronunciations. He has taught mathematics, math education, and indigenous studies at the University of Toronto, York University, Six Nations Polytech, Queens University, Confederation College, the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, and the University of Regina. He is currently Associate Professor of Mathematics at the First Nations University, where his research interests are indigenous mathematics, including indigenous statistics and math, indigenous mathematics education, and pure mathematics. He lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, with his wife. He is also the creator of Cree Scrabble, and is also one of my wonderful colleagues at the First Nations University of Canada. Good afternoon, Edward. Thank you. It's pronounced Onguayan Kentoyakwa, which means our language group in Mohawk. Thank you very much for that. So I would like to go to you with the first question, and as we had mentioned in your introduction, I know you have created Cree Scrabble, so for those people who are new and familiar to hearing that, I know it's something we'll talk about later on today in today's panel. But at this moment, my first question for you is, I go back to a comment that you had made in mathematics, and maybe first, could you introduce yourself, Ed, before we go any further? And anything that I've missed? Well, you gave a good introduction. I'll just say that I've been interested in Indigenous mathematics for my entire career as a university student. So since I was about 18, I went to the University of Toronto, and I became interested in how I can serve my community. So not just about learning pure mathematics, which is my passion, but about how I can apply it to serving Indigenous people. So the first question for the panel is for Dr. Edward Doolittle. What are the challenges in teaching science and math from your perspective, from an Indigenous perspective? So what are the challenges in teaching math from an Indigenous perspective? Well, there are many challenges. Let me focus on one in particular that I've been spending some time thinking about lately, and that's that there seems to be a disconnect and just a general kind of philosophy of knowledge in Indigenous, the world, Indigenous world, and non-Indigenous. And it has to do with the way the two cultures see how knowledge is divided up into smaller pieces. So in Western culture, we have science, and then among sciences we have physical sciences, and then among, we also have mathematics and computer science. And then mathematics is subdivided into smaller disciplines. I mean, I studied some called analysis, partial differential equations, and so on when I went to university. And it just became narrower as I went along, until finally my PhD is just about a tiny, tiny little chunk of mathematics. And so that kind of division, that narrowing is the way Western science works. And Indigenous knowledge is very different. It's holistic. I think we all have a sense of that. And it's also practical and applied. And so these are some philosophical differences. And I think we have to find ways to overcome those differences or to cope with them in order for our science education to work better for Indigenous students. Thank you, Ed. I want to acknowledge some of the people that we have tuning in today. I see Julie Moffitt from Quebec City. Rachel White from Treaty 3 Territory. Leanne Smith-Kristolowicz. Bonjour from Treaty 1. And of course, Twilight Dawn Marie McWally from Four Coupel Area, the Treaty Four Grounds. And Christine Schoenroth. Hello, it's wonderful for educators to be joining us as well as everyone who is tuned in at this moment. For the next question, I'd like to go to Rockford McKay. Before I go to Rockford, I'd like to introduce you a bit to him. He's a member of the Barrens River First Nation. Rockford has his Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Education from the University of Manitoba. He's a co-author of the Manitoba Pearson Grade 7 Science Textbook and Educational Advisor to the Grade 10 McGraw-Hale Science Textbooks used in Manitoba classrooms. He also served as a school trustee for the St. James School Division in Winnipeg. He majored in chemistry and microbiology but has a lifelong interest in astronomy. He enjoys sharing his knowledge of Ojibwe increased stories of the stars. So hello, Rockford McKay. Welcome to the panel today. So my question is the same as I had asked Ed. What are some of the challenges in teaching science from an Indigenous perspective? Good afternoon. Yes, to be here. There's been a lot of challenges to educating our youth, ranging from lack of equipment in our schools. A lot of our teachers are not very comfortable with teaching science and I think there's a lot of reasons for that. Although I'm a member of the Barrens River First Nation. Can you hear me still? We can hear you. I grew up in Winnipeg and so I was educated a bit differently. I was fortunate to get a lot more science in my schooling. Just today, I was thinking about a lot about this and of course we have the COVID-19 epidemic now. This science education is thinking about science literacy. I think we needed a lot more, not just in First Nations, but in Canadian society as well. I think as a nation we struggle with this. Thank you very much for that, Rockford. It's wonderful to hear that as an educator myself, I think about how we take what we've learned from our growing up, from our learning of life and we implement that into our teaching and the way that we educate learners. If I can just add as well, there is certainly a different perspective. When I thought about this again, when we think about the Christian Euro perspective on worldview, it's much different than First Nations. For instance, our place in the universe is different. Of course, growing up and going to Sunday school and stuff like that, I was taught initially that man was closest to God. And from there we had, you know, there's God, there's man, there's the animals, plants, and the rocks or earth. Whereas, for instance, it's quite different. There's a different perspective. You have the Creator, then you have the rocks, grandfather, then the plants, then the animals, and then at the very bottom is man. So a man is pretty humble. He relies on everything to survive. And to me, that's a big difference in how you view the world. Thank you, Rockford. I have another question that I want to ask you. And the next question is, how does traditional knowledge affect modern teaching? As you think about that for a second, how traditional knowledge affects modern teaching, I also want to say hello to Lorianne Daniels tuning in and Marjorie Dumont from Squamish and Territory, aka Vancouver, BC. And I also see Polly Ann McBain from Fort McMurray Public School. This is wonderful to have people tuning in from across the country. So Rockford, I'd ask you this question for responses. How does traditional knowledge affect modern teaching? I think we've got to be like our ancestors, we're much more practical in how we teach our students, much more hands-on. We've got to get away from just teaching out of a textbook. It has to be really hands-on learning, relevant to where they live. And that way, it becomes much more interesting. Our students are very curious about the world. It's in the modern world. So they want to learn about robotics and coding, physics and chemistry. So it's not just land-based education, it's a wide variety of things they want to learn. Excellent, that ties into something I'm so passionate about. And that is land-based education, utilizing the environments around us to look at biology. Just the other day, I was sitting with my friend who teaches science at Tom Collegiate in Regina, Saskatchewan. And I was notifying him about why don't our students know some of these things about evergreen trees, about pine trees, the biological understanding of trees that Willie Irmine talks so very much about in our first online discussion forum. Rockford, if I could ask you one more question, is how does language affect modern teaching? Well, language in our communities, it depends, of course, where the communities are. If it's a remote community, they have their first language much more closer to them than communities that have road access. I find even communities that have the road access, English may not be well-developed. So there could be issues to learning. But if students have an understanding of their language, they have an opportunity to learn much more. And in a world view, that's quite different. Thank you very much, Rockford. Our third panelist is Badabin. I know language is something that is very, a passion of yours, something that is influential in the way you educate and the way you teach. I know that you've created indigenous.ca. Please share a little bit more about some of your work. And I know you're the co-founder of indigenous.ca, you educator of knowledge and plant-based medicines. So please share with us a little bit about that. And then I'd like to ask you the same question that I just asked Rockford about how does language impact teaching? Well, I'd like to start. I guess where it all came from is the family and the community that I grew up in. And there's quite a few stories that I think about where, my family, they always said, you got to think about the holistic of things, you know, the whole things and the repercussions of things and think about the future for yourself, but also the impact of your decisions. And so I, you know, some of what has already been said from Rockford and from Edward, I think, you know, I could parallel or mirror some of those rational ways of thinking, holistic ways of thinking, right? And yeah, so one thing that I saw where I am at down in Nogodjonang or Peterborough was sometimes the lack of access to our language or to our sciences. You know, even to sometimes community-based and the community way of teaching, you know, where that love, kindness, care, and gentle approach is important as well. And sometimes within Western education, you know, there's a lack of that connection or that humaneness, right? When a lot of times we talk about it, we raise it up where we will describe even my, you know, some of my participation within colleges and universities has higher education and we're already disconnecting it from a human level, right? And so one rationale why me and my partner wanted to start indigenize.ca is to reach our own family members and community members and build some of that access for the ones who we're really working for as well or working to, you know, connect. And so I think that's some of the rationale behind indigenize.ca. And as well as some of the work at the colleges and university level for us is to, you know, reach indigenous students within those institutions but as well as the students who will be working with our future use or our communities as well. And so I wanted to try and have a reach, you know, as far as possible because what I've been given in terms of knowledge and what I've been exposed to in my own networks, I want to enhance that other work that people have to offer as well. I'll leave it there. Jimmy Wetsch. I thank you very much for that response. Also in your background, in your setting today, you know, the forefront is these medicines that are very important during this time. You know, I was even thinking about that understanding as I was driving here about, you know, when we're thinking about math and science, is the medicines incorporates that as well at such a deep level. So I also want to encourage people who are listening today to put questions into the comments and to also text, I'm sorry, this is a new time, the first time I've used, I won't say who makes this phone but please send in your text so I can ensure that I get them for the next question. So for the next question, I'd like to go to Ed. And I'd like to ask you about a question I heard from a, and I might misquote you, so please adjust my quote. You had talked about how pure math has taken over mathematics and I wanted to know what you meant a little bit by that and could you please share that a little bit deeper? Yeah, sure. You know, I look at math education at the university level is what I'm most familiar with and I see that it's just sort of a giant stream that goes toward multivariable calculus. It's the kind of calculus that we might use as mathematicians, as physicists, as engineers. And then the rest of the math curriculum is just really about, well, where do you fall off? You know, you can't make it to multivariable calculus, so you're going to fall off at some point. That seems to be the way that the whole thing is structured. And I think that that's not appropriate for most people. Most students, maybe 2% of our students, of students in general, want to become engineers, physicists, or mathematicians. And so we're only really serving 2% of our students. So I think we need to look at reconstructing our entire mathematics program. So let me pick an example for you, long division. So we teach students in long division in school. I learned that in grade four or grade five, grade four. And then I ask myself, why do we learn that? Well, it's because we want to learn division of polynomials when we do algebra in high school. Well, why do we want to learn division of polynomials when we do division of high school? Well, it's because we need to do something called partial fractions in university calculus. But I think that if we dispense with that endpoint, then we can really ask ourselves these questions about this process all the way through. Why on earth are we learning this when there are so many other really, truly useful things interesting things, practical things to learn? And so I would like to see us re-evaluate the entire math program from the point of view of applications of what we might call applied math, although that too is a Western concept. But how do we apply mathematical knowledge to practical situations of interest to Indigenous people? And then we might even leave it up to the students. What do you want to learn? What is going to help you with the problems that are important to you? Thank you for sharing that, Ed. It's very insightful, you know, as this terminology that you're using with mathematics and when you say things like pure math, you know, it always brings me back to a conversation when I was teaching high school at Belfort Collegiate. I sat with the late George Fable and he talked to me about how his teacher had many times talked to him about variables in mathematics. And he said it took me a week to figure out what variables were and it wasn't until she said, can you stay after class on Friday? And she gave him some money to go buy bread at the store and said, now let's talk about the variables that will come into play as you go buy this bread at the store. So very real-life examples of that. If we could go back to a bit of and talk about how do Indigenous knowledges, how do Indigenous medicines, how would you incorporate knowledge of traditional medicines in science? I'd love to hear some more about that, Benjamin. So I'll just say it one more time. How would you incorporate Indigenous knowledge of traditional medicines in science? Yeah, I would like to. And I'll help you with my pronunciation. Thank you very much. Say it one more time. Yeah, that's okay. Bidawin. Bidawin. Yes, right on. Perfect. Thank you. So there's a lot here back to that holistic science. So I think about one little story that my grandpa used to say is he gave me this one random question. He said, you know why I am the way I am? And he said, you know why sometimes people are described as lazy, he would say. And I didn't know why. I was a little kid and I said, I don't know. He said, well, it's because the activities that I do and the things that I work with are high energy. The food that I eat, I have to outsmart. I have to be quick. I have to be diligent. I have to calculate how I'm going to harvest that. He says, that's really, truly fast food, right? And so it reminds me of this about plant-based medicine or foods that it's all an equation as well. So what you see behind here, there's a calculated thing that we have to do for the sustainability to harvest and access these. You know, I wouldn't feel comfortable showing everyone this if I didn't know that I've done as much possible that I could in environmental sustainability, environmental ecological restoration to enhance the life or the nationhood of these plants. Right? And so anything that I take, I ensure that the next time I go visit, it's going to be tenfold. So I have to really take into account all of the environmental impacts or the environmental communication, the governing systems of an ecosystem. And then so that's one part of how all the science could be broken down into informing an environmental relationship, responsibility, reciprocity or, you know, an active sustainability piece. There's one other little piece I want to say is also interacting with the landscape, what I also see there, what we see as, you know, many people who interact with the landscape or medicines and plants is they see the impact of the calculation of former generations and what they have done to the environment. You see that tickling or that impact of sustainability and responsibility to the environment. So it's like another communication or another science communication that the ancestors have left their impact there, right? And then my other favorite thing, I like to imagine this and really try to see the unseen aspects of the chemicals and the formulas of all these volatile oils that are going into different recipes. And then we're applying sometimes heat, we're applying variations of types of heat that were gaining access to specific volatile oil compounds. And then we're metabolizing those things, right? So I think part of Indigenous or Nishnabe science takes into account what might be deemed as life knowledge or life science. Someone had said about science literacy, you know, Indigenous languages not just put into a certain Nishnabe literacy of identity and worldview and health determinants and family and responsibility, but also everything in terms of a calculated health literacy as well. So yeah, if you can kind of dissect all of those pieces, there's so much science and interpretation that could fill in all of those blanks. And we have different individuals who kind of take that understanding and say, we're going to look and dissect and look further into medicine or volatile oils and all that. Anyways, I'll leave it there. I could go on and on. It is a passion of mine. Thank you for sharing that with us. One of the joys of being on a panel is we have multiple intellectual people thinking about the same things and I think sometimes similar, but also there's pieces to add. So I'd like to go to Rockford with the same question. Rockford, how would you incorporate knowledge of traditional medicines in science and math? I'd love to hear some more from your perspective. Well, traditional medicines, I'm really reminded of when we did the textbook and of course we had a section on Ask an Expert and that was all as a professor at a university and we had Ask an Elder on the opposite side of the page. And I can specifically remember one section that was on traditional medicines and the other side was a medical doctor. And when I talked to the publishers about this, I said, when I look at this and I read between the lines here, I'm saying, well, what we're saying here is we're actually saying the elder is not an expert. He's something else. So if I'm a student, that's what this textbook is showing. Why say ask the expert and the other side asks the elder? And I really pushed them to try to change that and it depends on the question, on who the expert is. So if it was on medicines, of course you have the modern pharmacology side and you have the traditional medicine side, but it depended on what the question was. So for instance, if the question is about, let's say about curing a, let's say the stomach ache. Well, if the question is, where do you get your medicine? If you're up north somewhere, you may not have access to the local pharmacy. So who's the expert in this situation? It would be somebody with that traditional knowledge of traditional medicines. So they're the expert in that case. So here's the question. If we asked a pharmacist where I could get a medicine to cure that stomach ache and save a remote community at Red Sucker Lake and if there's no pharmacy store, what can that person do? In this case, that pharmacy guy is not an expert. He can help, whereas an elder can. So I would consider that person an expert then. So that was a real issue in that publication. Thank you, Rockford. You know, Kameo Kaapo, I see earlier in the comments made a wonderful comment about getting the opportunity to sit down and listen to people leading Indigenous academia in math and science. I also want to acknowledge that as the individuals who sit here, we sit with all the people that we've sat with, the elders, the knowledge keepers, life, the interaction with the four-legged, crawling and winged ones. You know, we carry, we sit with that knowledge. You know, such an interesting conversation that you have going forward, Rockford. I'd like to turn my attention over to Dr. Edward Doolittle. Now, Edward, I know that your wife is a teacher. She, in fact, just finished recently through the Indigenous Education at First Nations University. So I'm sure that teaching in mathematics in high school is a quintessential question, discussion in the household. So Wendy Lee Morrison-Pimm asked the question, what about current trends in math towards problem-solving mathematics that in some classrooms is failing students, especially Indigenous ones, who are absorbing information rather than testing it? Well, well, just to talk a little bit about my wife, she's actually teaching grade one. So she went through your program to learn to teach high school English, but the job that she got on her reserve was teaching grade one students. And so that's how she figured she could serve her community. And now she's working in Saskatoon teaching Cree immersion there. So language is very important to her, to both of us. But it's a little different math at the high school level than it is at the grade school level. But I think there are some developments in modern education, modern mathematics education, that I see as positive. And what I really think about this, maybe, I don't know, you'll have to, professional educators will have to evaluate the statement. But my belief is that, in many cases, they are taking up methods that have been used by Indigenous people for a long time. And that is becoming more used in modern education. And so looking at project problems and group work, working together, those are examples of ways that education in mathematics is changing, the ways that it's looking more like traditional education. I see those as positives. In some cases, it hasn't worked out very well, I'll admit. And that, I think, is because teachers are not given proper training, education, in these new methods. They've just been introduced by governments, but not being supported by governments. So I really, I call on our governments to alter, to improve the way that mathematics teachers are trained and educated. Thank you for that, Ed. I also want to point out Clarice DeLorm from Chief Kakawish to Howell Community School. I thank you for your continued support, as always, in education. I'm going to go back to you, Ed, and I'm going to pull up my eight fingers here, because I have a question. Why are there eight aspects to Indigenous mathematics? And I will slowly count them down on my fingers as you go through each one of the eight. Oh, well, gosh, yeah. Now you're going to put me on the spot here. I did give a talk. It's online through the University of Winnipeg. And I chose eight just because it fits around the circle very nicely. That's all. I mean, you can invent more. You can say that there are fewer. I tried to interleave kind of practical with theoretical ideas, and so that divides it into, so eight is nice, because it divides by two, and then divides by two again, and divides by two again. So you have dichotomies, which are very common in Mohawk culture. You think of, you know, the two sides of a coin. So there's a lot of twos, and then two twos makes four, and then two fours makes eight. So that's why I chose eight. I think it's a good number for us to help us remember, although I'm short circuiting on all the memory stuff right now, but you know, it's in some sense is arbitrary, but in another sense, it's very helpful. And this is an aspect of Indigenous education that, you know, Indigenous thought has been orally transmitted for millennia, for some time in memorial. And so we have ways of organizing knowledge in oral ways. So, you know, for example, a lot of our knowledge, Mohawk knowledge, is stored in the O'Hundungalewa Dekwan, which is the words that come before all else. It's sort of like an opening address, a Thanksgiving address is sometimes called. And it's structured. It's ordered. It's ordered from the ground up. So we talk about our mother, the earth, and the waters, and the earth, and the fish, and the waters, and so on. And this helps us to remember it when we deliver it, to remember, you know, that we go through the sequence, and then we don't forget things. We don't leave things out. And so, you know, when knowledge is structured that way, when we have to carry it around in our minds, we have to put structures on it, like here's eight, here's four. And I try to follow that. I try to follow that method. I try to work without notes. When I teach, I don't use notes. I just use what's in my mind. And I encourage, you know, our Indigenous educators to do the same. That way will bring us back to our traditions, I think. Thank you for that response, Ed. You know, I like your advice there at the end to take forth the knowledges that's within us already, not to make any notes. Although I think some of my students would be worried about me. I'm such a wildcard at times of what I could say or go with. But I want to finish up with Bedabin and ask him, what is a success for you as an educator? So, you know, how would you determine that? How would you define that? What is success for you as an educator? Well, I would think one of the things I think about is the try to really envision ahead and trying to look at what our ancestors kind of envisioned for us, but what they also envisioned for ahead. And so I think about our current state in our generation, even though I'm a little bit on the older side of this generation, not the very old side, but you know that on everyone's mind, on a lot of the youth's heart is climate crisis. So one of my successes that I think is to try and inspire some critical thinking on the solutions that can go into a climate crisis, right? And trying to challenge this idea that as humans, we are the problem, right? And that's sort of a fantasy that Western science kind of promotes this idea of a, you know, a self maximizing a little bit human as the weak link within the web. But when you look at a term like a ke or a kana o de, you know, it places this intrinsic web of responsibility and governing system. So I like to tell young people and students to say, we have an important responsibility to be healthy, to survive, that we're in an intrinsic web of relationship and responsibility, that traditional knowledge can be a supporting factor to working towards beginning to balance our impact on creation. That we aren't truly self maximizing by nature, but rather that we could, you know, see some hope within our impact on the environment, on species, on creation and say, we can do a lot as individuals or as collectives, as families, as communities when we begin to activate our responsibility to creation, right? And so that's what I like to inspire and what I would consider what I start to see some of the success of what students are beginning to develop and plan for action in their own lives. And, you know, sometimes it might be plant-based medicine and the other work that other plant knowledge holders are doing, like the example, Malosh Kato Tujorka-Pekwanika and Creator's Garden and some of his passion for plant-based medicine and exercising that responsibility to creation. I'll leave it there. Jimmy Gwich. I thank you for bringing that forward. You know, it's so wonderful to talk about how what are the determining factors of success? You know, how do we determine how do we look at that? What does it include? And I like how you talk about, you know, essential pieces of their life moving forward outside of just seeing education as a moment in our lives, but it's ongoing. So thank you very much. I'd now like to go to Rockford with the same question to wrap up with him. Rockford, what is success for you as an educator? I think when we impact a student's life and change their life, I can remember having a group of young guys at the school, they were kind of identified as the bad guys of the school, and a lot of teachers didn't want too much to do with them. And when I came along as a consultant for our school division, I thought about one of the things that I really enjoyed about learning. And I saw that there was this competition about building an RC hovercraft, and I thought, you know what, I'm going to get these guys to learn how to make this RC hovercraft, and they had to learn about electronics, batteries, radio, soldering, and design. And not only that, but it had to be a business plan too. And I spent time with them about teaching about RC equipment and robotics. And there was a school competition taking place. It was a volleyball tournament. And these guys had pretty much finished their hovercraft, and it was coming close to the competition time. And unfortunately, one of the visiting teams had broken into the science area. And they ripped apart this hovercraft. And I got a call late one night, just the following night, and the teacher was in a real panic. And she said that what had happened that this hovercraft was destroyed. And I looked at my calendar and I said, well, I can only come out. The only opening I have is next week and would be the earliest. And so we made plans for me to visit again. And the next day, I got another phone call. And she told me that the boys had repaired the hovercraft and made it even better. So I knew at that point that I had made an impact on their lives and ignited a passion in them. And that's what really defined success to me in education is igniting a passion in our students. Thank you, Rockford. I'd like to thank our first two calling guests on the panel, Badaban and also Rockford. I appreciate the sharing that you gave for us, that's such a wide variety of knowledge throughout the questions that we have. We're going to take a quick break here. If you could please click the like and share button to help our community grow. Keep hitting that like button, keep hitting that share button. We would greatly appreciate it. Stay tuned and we'll be right back with final comments and final words from Dr. Willie Irmine. Thank you very much. I see some comments coming up online. And don't worry, Willie Irmine is coming up. We want to ask Ed a couple of questions quickly before we have Willie on the line. So please stay tuned for Willie Irmine. But before we go there, I'd like to ask Ed the following question. What has the experience been like for you going through the stories and finding mathematics in them? Where is the culture of Indigenous mathematics at? Well, that's a great question. It's a lifelong journey for me. It's something I started when I was 18 and now I'm in my 50s and I'm still working on it. I'm very anxious to find Indigenous mathematics and the harder I look, the more I find. So for example, creation stories. We look for things, try to find where they're placed in Mohawk culture, things, knowledge that's fundamental and unchanging. You'll often find in the creation story, knowledge that's gained and acquired over time. You'll find in our Thanksgiving address just two examples of where knowledge is stored. But we look at the creation story. You'll find that introductory mathematics is in the creation story. There's number words and number ideas encoded in the story. In fact, they work back and forth. So the numbering helps us to remember the order of the story and the order of the story helps us to teach numbering to children. So that's just one example. I mean, there must be hundreds. I could go on and on, but I would just encourage everyone to look for these things. And the more of us that look for them, the more we'll find them. The one thing that I caution about is that these things are not considered a separate form of knowledge in Indigenous culture that they're integrated with everything. So we didn't have mathematics in the sense of being distinct from science, distinct from cosmology and so on. These were all integrated together. So it is a bit, you know, we are imposing a bit of a Western lens when we start to pull them apart. But on the other hand, we have to work with the world as it is. And to me, success in education is about giving students options. You know, we don't know what kind of world that they're going to live in in the future. We don't know what the climate's going to be like. We don't know what our diseases are going to be like. And we don't know what economics is going to be like. So we I think are succeeding and we are being responsible educators if we are giving options to students and not telling them that we know what's best for them. So one more question, Ed, because I know you've been doing a lot of research. One of the wonderful things about our occupation is we get to teach, but then we get to go and work with communities and engage with research. How is your research on mathematics and residential schools going? That's just at its beginning stage, but I think it's going to be a fruitful endeavor. So I just wrote an article for the Canadian Math Society notes, CMS notes. It's online. It's talking about mathematics and reconciliation. And one of the issues that I pointed out is that something that hasn't been studied very much or at all, even that I know of, is mathematics and residential school. So very few things were taught in residential school. We know students who went through it learned manual labor. They learned the language. And we know what language is for languages to replace their indigenous language. We also learned about religious studies, and that was to replace indigenous spirituality. And finally, they learned mathematics. And that's just about it. What was the purpose of teaching mathematics in residential school? What mathematics was taught? I think there's some major questions there. I'm raising the question. I'm not necessarily the best equipped. My education is a pure mathematician, but I am interested in collaborating with math educators, researchers in math education to take a hard look at mathematics and residential school. I'm also collaborating with an elder, Linda Young in Saskatoon, who's talking to me about her experiences. And so I think together we're going to write a paper about that. So that's where I'm at with that. Thank you. Before I switch over to Willie here, though, I know we're staying home and we're playing a lot of board games. And so quickly, in a short description, can you tell us a little bit about Cree Scrabble that you've created? Yeah, sure. Happy to. It's called Screeble. And I had the idea, what would Cree games look like? Cree puzzles, Cree word puzzles look like. And I'm working on a whole bunch of them. I'm working on word searches. I'm working on crossword puzzles. But there's also games, which are not just single person puzzles, but where two people play against each other, which could be potentially more fun. Scrabble is one I'm familiar with in English. I thought, what is it going to take to translate this into Cree? And so I've been working with Eric Wolvingray to get the frequencies of letters, to get the scoring. We're using a big super Scrabble set, which is 21 wide, because Cree words are much longer than English words. And we're changing the rules. We're still tinkering with it, but very soon I'll be ready to publish this thing on my website. Everyone will be able to download it. And what I've done right now is to do a trial run. I got the tiles laser cut and laser burned. So it's a simple manufacturing process. I got bags of tiles and we play tested them. So Eric Wolvingray has played with his wife, a genocomassus. They're both very fluent and literate in Cree. And they had a great time playing. In fact, it was hard for me to get the tiles back from Eric. Excellent. And I look forward. Maybe I might have to come time to dust off some of my Cree skills, some of my Cree wording. There we go. So I know there's been some comments about how do I get a hold of some of these panelists. I want you to know that every one of these panelists are contributors on the NCCIE website and their contact information is also available there. So please go to the NCCIE.ca website and look for their contact information. And all the panelists today can be contacted through those sites. I'd now like to take our time to go towards Willie Irmine. Willie Irmine is a close friend of mine. He's a mentor. He's a guide. I met him about four years ago and I had said to him, Willie, we're not done yet at the conclusion of our culture camp. He's continually influencing such an influential person in education, in life, in indigeneity. It's so wonderful whenever I get to see your face. I know you were unable to come down from Sturgeon Lake today to be with us in the studio. I miss you dearly, but I am happy to see that you are doing wonderful. So Willie Irmine has been an integral part to NCCIE and both the guidance and the information that he provides for us. I could go on for another hour about how wonderful this man is. So thank you very much for joining us today, Willie. Tanse, I guess I should say Anine. And I'd like to open it up with final thoughts. I know you've been listening. I have some questions for you, but maybe some initial final thoughts as you've been listening to our discussion. So we're having a little bit of connection issues right now with Willie. This is one of the things that we face when we're trying to do in studio. Willie is residing right now on Sturgeon Lake First Nations, about 20 miles northwest of Prince Albert. And we're trying to make do with the things that we have at this moment. So I apologize. We went away from Willie there at this time because we need to ensure that you can hear. I know that the feed was distorted, so such an knowledgeable man. I know we will lose that benefit of hearing what he has to say. So we're just going to try to queue it up one last time here and see if we can get back on to our time with Willie. So as they're trying to get that going up, Ed, I'm sure you heard in the background, we want to hear more about this scrabble that's going on. We want to hear about the syllabics. We want to hear about all the aspects of it. We want to know the highs and the lows of it all. So please share with us. Yeah, sure. Well, what we're using is the standard Roman orthography, SRO, instead of syllabics. I thought about syllabics. There are some issues though. There are so many syllabic characters that it would be hard to make a reasonable distribution. If we included at least one, then we'd use up half of our 200 scrabble tiles. So we decided to go with standard Roman orthography. And what is in the background here is that we're looking at a kind of a unified spelling system for Cree. So Eric Wolvengrey has produced dictionaries which have a consistent spelling system. And that's one of the things about scrabble is that you're kind of bound to a specific dictionary if you're really going to play it. So there's a few issues. Now we went through lists of words to get frequencies. How often does each letter appear? And this is one of the big problems in the design of it. So in English version of scrabble, the people who invented scrabble actually took the letter frequencies from the front page of the New York Times. And they got natural frequencies of letters. We don't have a corpus like that of written Cree or not at least a readily available one, not a digital one. So instead of using a digital corpus, we use the dictionary. And the distribution of letters in the dictionary is going to be different from the distribution of letters in a straight ordinary written language. And poetry might be different from prose. And reporting might be different from fiction and so on. So one thing I would really like to do is to get my hands on a body, a significant body of written Cree. And maybe we'll get a more natural distribution. But in the meantime, we're making do with what we've got. And you know, we've got to play test it. So once I, you know, I've got a few things I've got to tune up. I'm going to put this thing and make it available. Some people I see are asking about the website. I am not sure which website I don't have one, but certainly there'll be a link through the First Nations University site. So I have a page on First Nations University. I'll link to wherever I put the scrabble sets. Thank you for sharing a little bit more about that. Rachel White, you bring up an important point that connectivity on many reserves is very slow. You know, it takes me back to remind, it reminds me about my nephew, Ferenc Francis, as he was telling me about how, how was life when he had moved back to the reserve? And he said, it's a little tough. The internet connection is slow. And it affects my gaming. And I said, well, life is pretty good if we just have to worry about internet connection. My boy. So we're still trying to get Willie included into this call. Camille, Capo, you bring up another great resource, Audrey Driever. We're ready for Willie to come in. So, Willie, hello. Welcome back. And it is quite an experience, the technology and all that. But greetings to you, Dustin, Edward, Ida, Bun and Rockford and all your listeners as well. So greetings to all of you. Can you hear me, Willie? Yes. Yes. So can I get you to give you some final thoughts, some thoughts around today's discussion around math and science, indigenous perspectives and ways of looking at math and science? Unfortunately, I didn't catch very much of the discussion I had. I was going in and out and trying to resolve this technical thing. But what I did catch, you know, we're trying to reconcile two worldviews. It's my initial thought about it all. It's trying to reconcile how do we bring in both perspectives into this idea. And there are different approaches, of course. The worldview and the forums are approach how we're going to understand mathematics, science and everything like that. It's not as if that math and science have been captured by the Western world that they are the only ones with these disciplines and understandings. And again, I think Rockford mentioned it. It depends how, what perspective, what lenses we use to try to understand these. I can look from my own perspective and talk about the science that we have. And I think Western scientists would have a hard time understanding that as well. So the other thing I just wanted to mention, and I caught glimpses of it in the discussion in some ways was this idea that science is strictly a very mathematical, Western-oriented way of reading the world. That science is the only, the scientific, Western scientific methodology is the only way that, you know, the whole process can unfold in terms of understanding science. But I think what is missing, and when we talk about our worldview, one thing that is essential in that worldview to use as a lens is this idea of our own metaphysical reality, our spiritual reality. And so spirituality does not become removed in particular subjects or any ideas that we talk about. Science, spirituality is not removable. We'll put it that way. So no matter what the topic is, no matter what we're talking about, it has elements of spirituality to it. And that's the element that when we think about math, and we think about science, that how do we include spirituality into these disciplines and our understandings. And if I can be so bold to say as well that there is a science to spirituality, there's a certain process that we follow to understand spirituality. It's got its own data, it's got its own methodology to understand it. There is a science to it. And we should be able to replicate certain processes or findings in spirituality as well. So there is a science to it. There's a way we do it. And it's this understanding that does not enter the discourse in this western perspective. So just those two points for now, Dustin. Okay, thank you very much. Willie, can I get you to, is it possible to turn down your computer volume or mutual computer volume? I feel like I should pick up the phone like we're having a phone conversation here. I really like this. I am so glad that you could join us into this discussion. So I'd like to ask you one more question here for sure, Willie. Such, you know, like you said, spirituality and science, that connection that is there. But also, how does language affect teaching? How does language affect teaching when we're thinking about math and science? Well, it's the same idea. How language is infused with spirituality, the spiritual language, the understandings that go with sound, for example. I guess we can study sound. If we study sound, we would find that, you know, there is a science to it. But it also from our indigenous perspective, sound has also is a way to not only understand the world, but also to make sound to the world. If I can give you an example, when we say the kri word for prayer is kakishimo. That's the kri word for prayer, kakishimo. What that word, the root words of that word, of that word, kisik, is in there, which is the universe. It's the whole universe, however you perceive the universe. And the M-O at the end is the sound. So we make a sound to the universe when we do our prayers. So there is, you know, language has an impact in the world, the sound of language. I asked an elder one time, you know, where do we get our language? And the response was, and I didn't understand it at that time, and I'm not saying I understand it now. But here's the response that he gave me. You know, he said, our language comes from nature. It comes from the wind blowing. It comes from the birds chirping. It comes from the grass, you know, flowing in the breeze. It comes from different animals, the growl of a bear or the snort of a buffalo. Basically, he said, our sound comes from nature. We studied that sound. We studied the behavior of how that sound was used in that behavior. For example, he said, we learned prayer from watching birds in the early in the morning. They get up real early in the morning, and they talk to their young ones that very early period in the morning. And that's where we took language from, and that's where we learn how to associate language and behavior that these two things are inseparable. So sound is, you know, it might not be in itself a discipline in the academic circles, but if we were to create our own disciplines from the indigenous perspective, we would have, I think, a sound discipline. That sound and language is a part of that. Languages, you know, is a part of that. Drumming is a part of that. Singing is a part of that. Walking on the land is a part of that. You know, we're thumping our feet on the ground. Sound just pervades our whole existence. And these are the things that culturalists or spiritualists or people studying culture will delve into. You know, they're led into these areas to study these areas of sound and you could include the mathematics of sound. For example, we did a booklet, a pre-booklet, translating all these words like addition, subtraction, multiplication and all that. And I'm sure Edward will be aware of that book, where we translate it, the English words for addition, for example, into Cree. And it's not only a translation, but we also look at what action and what behavior or what sound is associated with that. So you can actually perform a maneuver or behavior or sound in real life, you know, to do addition, you know, to demonstrate addition. And so that switched over mathematics from a purely academic point to one where we actually can perform these actions in our behaviors. You know, we do additions every day in our behaviors and the way we move around. Are you still there? Yes, I am. So there, a blurb on that. Go ahead. Thank you, Willy. You know, you panelists are reminding me of stories in my life, you know, I had once heard from one of the elders that I go see often about how the raven had brought us our language. And I was telling my brother Joe Petra about that when we were out hunting. And he sometimes thinks I'm often a far off land. And I said that a raven has the opportunity to mimic sounds of those things that are around and to share those sounds. And as we were walking through the bush, he was certain that he heard an elk. And he said that's just over there. And I could see that raven in the distance making the call itself. So yes, these, these animals too, we do get our language from the environment from the animals from those. And my brother ended up looking like Elmer Fudd looking for Bugs Bunny as the raven was calling like an elk from the top of the trees. So I thank you for sharing that, Willy. And I'd like to just ask in any final thoughts before, before we conclude this from you, Willy. Doesn't have many thoughts. It's, I think we're just entering this world of starting to not necessarily penetrate the western world of science and mathematics. That's not, I don't think it's really our intent to, you know, to elbow our way in there and then expose our, expose our, our views and perspectives. But the point I think I want to make is that we have our own perspectives, our own ways of understanding. And our teachers are not necessarily visible like you would in academia, you know, giving us their knowledge, feeding us their knowledge. If we want to really study our perspectives, our knowledge of science and mathematics, we have to go back to the land and start listening to those trees, or listening to that wind and listening to the birds. And we, we need, we need, we need to develop our own understandings. And our teachers is out on the land like that elder had reminded me of. Our teachers are much, you know, they're, they're very, they have a lot to, to teach us. But it's us that we have to realign our learning, learning processes. We have to realign our thinking, you know, to be able to pick up this knowledge that is, it's everywhere. It's out on the land. And that's my belief. And I think I see not, it's not only a belief in my head, but it's, it's, it's things that, you know, the things I talk about, I want to make sure that these things are happening and that I'm not deceiving people to, you know, by telling, go on that land, if you want to learn about mathematics or science, you know, I have to, in my own way, also be sure that what I say is how it is, you know, I am, it's this old scientific method again, how we experiment, how, you know, what, what kind of data we collect and how, how we can replicate certain processes, you know, it, a lot of our knowledge follows the same principles, maybe more rigorously, you know, with more rigor. And, and, and certainly with more to them, you know, if you add a spiritual dimension to everything. So it's, it's a lot of work and, and, and, and we need people out here that are going to do this work because, you know, it's a richness that we have. I always say our people are so rich, we have not even really, you know, sunk our fingers into this, the treasures that we have about our, our people and what we have in our language, in our, in our science, in our understanding of land, understanding of nature and all that, everything, we are so rich yet in what that, that's what we have to build up and not try to fit our concepts into western mathematical models or scientific models. We have to, you know, assert our own, we have to assert our own, study our own, assert our own, because that's what's required now and not, not another tinkering of western mathematics so that we can understand it. No, that's, that's not what, what is your call required. Thank you so much, Willie. I always appreciate whenever I get the opportunity to, to talk with you. And as I always tell you, we're not done yet. You and I, we got many more things that we have to complete in this world. And it's wonderful that we spoke in January trying to set up some dates that we could connect. And every, every date that we put out there, you and I were busy for something. So I know we're, we're both busy people doing great work. And I look forward to the next opportunity that we get to share and continue doing the great work that we are doing. So thank you so much, Willie, for joining us today. I'm so glad technology worked to bring you in. I also want to, I know that Willie talked about a mathematics book and our national lead, Jennifer Dockstader, had posted on the, the comments that Dr. Arzu and she had presented his email address, contact him through that email address if you were interested in that mathematics book that Willie Irmine, Dr. Arzu and Dr. Addis Wan created. So I want to thank everybody who joined our online discussion forum today. If you could please hit the like button and share to help the conversation grow. Please send us your comments through and your thoughts for future episodes and future online discussion forums. I want to send out my deepest thank you to Benjamin Palsche, Rockford McKay, Edward Doolittle and Willie Irmine, also to Terry Massey for making this a brainchild of his and seeing this through. Thank you to all the people who text. I just got another text. So thank you to all those people who sent in their texts and comments. Thank you to the IKS Media and Technology Studio for their wonderful handling of this online discussion forum. And of course, thank you to my bosses, interim president Dr. Bob Caseyus and vice president Dr. Bettina Schneider. And thank you very much for the opportunity, Bonnie Rock Thunder, for allowing me to be the regional lead for Saskatchewan for NCCIE. So I thank you for everything that has transpired as of this moment during the project. I also am happy to do our second online discussion forum. And please send us your comments and thoughts about future episodes of the show and we will look forward to doing them next time. During this time, I'd ask you to stay safe, stay well. And we look forward to the next time that we're collecting and gathering in spaces that we can be with each other again. Thank you very much, McGwitch.