 Thank you very much. So I would like to introduce our next keynote speaker, and it's great with great pleasure that I introduce Kayla Larson. She's of Metis and Ukrainian settler ancestry, and originally hails from Treaty 6 territory, specifically Tofield, Alberta. So she's very familiar with this area. Currently, she resides in the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Slewata nations in British Columbia. In her current capacity, Kayla serves as a program manager librarian for the Indigitization Program and is the Indigenous Programs and Services Librarian at the Wewata Library at the University of British Columbia. She has a very interesting anecdote about the name of that library. Her professional journey and academic background, encompassing a BA in Native Studies and an MLIS degree from the University of Alberta, reflects a deep-rooted dedication to Indigenous librarianship. Central to Kayla's ethos is the concept of Indigenous data sovereignty, affirming the right of Indigenous nations to govern and own data about themselves in harmony with their community protocols and laws. Notably, at the 2021 Indigenous Knowledge and Open Education Symposium at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Kayla Larson introduced the SIXRs of Indigenous OER, a profoundly influential framework that guides authors interested in incorporating Indigenous knowledge into openly licensed teaching and learning materials. These SIXRs, encapsulating respect, relationships, responsibility, reverence, relevance, and reciprocity, emphasize critical ethical considerations and practices when integrating Indigenous knowledge into educational resources. Kayla has made a significant contribution to creating an inclusive, culturally-informed academic library landscape at the University of British Columbia. Please join me in extending a warm welcome to Kayla, who will greatly support and enrich our understanding of this year's conference themes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Tonsay, it's great to be home and back here on Treaty Six territory. I'm just going to figure out if I can use this. There you go. So today I'll be talking a little bit about the SIXRs of Indigenous OERs, but also some of the reflecting that I've been doing and the rethinking of what the SIXRs are and how they interact with an open educational field. So first of all, I always like to start off by positioning myself and locating. We've heard a little bit about that. So when we position and locate ourselves, it connects us to our people, our stories, as powerful forms of cultural resurgence and the basic building blocks of building relationships with one another. Many communities have a way to describe this. We've heard terms like Wukotun, Miowisitun, so the way that we build kin are kin relations and the way that we act in good faith or in good relation with one another. So when I come up here and I locate myself, I ask, who are your kin? Who are your kin that claim you as people? What lands are you connected to? Where are you from? But it goes beyond the lands. The lands are important to me. Being from Treaty 6 territory, a Métis woman from Treaty 6, the North Saskatchewan River runs deeply through me, even though I'm not on my own territory. When I ask you where you're from, I also ask, who is your umbilical cord attached to? So going beyond the lands, thinking, who are your matriarchs? Who are your ancestors that are with you at all times? And have built you to who you are to this day? Additionally, we ask, who are you accountable to? Right now we're all accountable to each other at this conference, but we're also accountable to the people from Treaty 6 territory. We will be accountable next year to the Aboriginal and Tory Strait Islanders that we are coming to their lands. So who are you accountable to? Who are you accountable to when you go home and you're on someone's traditional territory or you're back home on your own traditional territory with your folks? And then we ask you to think about how the lands impact you. The lands that you are residing on now. How are you taking a bit of a Miskwache or the Beaver Hills home with you? And so when we do this, it helps us to connect with each other, identify our biases, our positions, and our deep connections that we have that inform us in the moment and in the future. So I want to talk a little bit today. I think the last couple of keynotes that we've had, my new friends Darren who gifted me with tobacco, which I actually have in my pocket right now, I wanted to really thank them for their keynotes and the foundation that they've given me to come up here and talk a little bit more deeply about the impacts of Western knowledge and how us as Indigenous people, we protect our knowledges in different ways. So when we think about what Western knowledge has done to Indigenous knowledges guided by educational systems, so post-secondary, K to 12, Western knowledge has really set up knowledge in a hierarchy and transformed knowledge into hierarchical systems where often we see humans at the top of this system. Other forms of knowledge outside of Western knowledge such as Indigenous knowledges were deemed to be inferior compared to Western traditions of knowledge sharing, knowledge transformation. Western research set out practices and privileges that are bedded within imperial expansion and colonization. These ideas, practices, and privileges later become institutionalized within academic institutions and K to 12 institutions. Additionally, when we think about the colonial influence of intellectual heritage, non-Western thought was devalued and often misinterpreted. So my own stories from my community was devalued and misinterpreted by Western understandings of these knowledges. Researchers were often put into an arbitrary position of power and given authority over the discipline and subject that they specialize in. However, when we're looking at Indigenous knowledges, Indigenous peoples do not focus their knowledges within the same binaries that we see within Western understandings of knowledge. The world is very subjective and often we think about Indigenous knowledges within five different ways of transfer. So often Indigenous knowledges are very personal. They're personal to the person, the personal to their experience. They're orally transmitted with exception. We do have communities that have not necessarily written, but ways of expressing themselves. And now with written text. So we can even see on the OE Global sign right here, the syllabics for a miscucious guy again. It's experiential. So to share a story. I was talking to Robert this morning about Huixua Library, the library that I work at. Huixua is a Squamish-Snitchum word or a Hukminum word, which is the word that's spoken at Musquim or is the language spoken at Musquim. And what it means loosely translated is to echo. But it's not to echo like we think about an echo going throughout a room and that sound. There's an experiential aspect to it that unless you've been there, you don't know what it's like. So I'm going to encourage all of you today to close your eyes and I'm going to try and show you or you can imagine what Huixua is. So if everyone can close their eyes. So pretend you're standing on a beach or in the forest and you're the only one there and it's foggy or even think about yesterday, the fog rolling across the Norse Saskatchewan River and you're standing there and it's silent and you look out and you say something to the fog and you say a word, a phrase to the fog and then the fog echoes it back to you or the forest echoes it back to you. So that is Huixua and that's the deep understanding of what our name of our branch means is to echo. But in a different understanding of a Western thought of what echoing is. Additionally, indigenous knowledges are very holistic. They go across what we would think of as academic disciplines and narrative as well. So additionally, we've heard from other speakers, indigenous knowledges are intergenerationally transmitted. We learn from our ancestors. We learn from our cookums, our mushums, our chapeans and then we also teach the future. Often this is done through community and ceremony. So when we're thinking about knowledges and we've been hearing a lot about indigenous knowledges, indigenous knowledges and OERs, what exactly are indigenous knowledges? So when we're thinking about breaking them down, I break them down into three different types of kind of knowledge. So the first type of knowledge that we have is traditional knowledges. So traditional knowledges are knowledges, know-how, skills and practices that are developed, sustained and passed on intergenerationally within a community. And these knowledges form an integral part of the cultural and spiritual identity of their community. However, there is no universally accepted definition of traditional knowledges. So this gets very complicated when we're talking about traditional knowledges. When I think about traditional knowledges, these are often seen additionally as being sacred knowledges, knowledges that we are trying to protect under our laws and follow our governance structures. And then we have things like cultural expressions. So the cultural expression in this photo is going to be this individual with the salish weaving here. So the cultural expression that we can see is the headband and the robe that she's wearing as well. The patterns, the robe, the headband are protected under things like Canadian copyright law as they're more of a tangible item. However, the traditional knowledge into why communities wear those, the spiritual understanding behind this regalia is not necessarily protected under Canadian copyright law. And then we have biocultural and genetic resources. There's a lot of work coming out of Maori folks in Aotearoa around the protection of biocultural resources. So these are things like plant varieties, genetics, things like that, so which are very important to these communities. And there's more of an expanse on what this means for folks here in Canada or what's now known as Canada on how we can begin to follow their lead in protecting our own biocultural and genetic resources. Additionally, these knowledges form data. And so data really is for me a large blanket term for kind of everything that has to do about Indigenous folks. This can be our stories, our very hard demographic data, so legal data, health data, educational data, things about our land, our water. And then also we have data that comes from the community. So again, like stories, traditional cultural data, archives, oral traditions. So really when I talk about blanket, or when I talk about blanket, sorry, it's still early for me. When I talk about data, it is this huge blanket thing of what exactly is data. And data takes on many different forms when it comes to Indigenous data. So Indigenous research and education. So I have very much so a very hard background in academic libraries and working within large academic institutions. However, I see a lot of parallels between research and the formation of education curriculums. Research goes into informing curriculums. So often when I'm thinking about how do I present to folks that are involved more with education than with libraries, with research, research data management, I like to kind of say that they're fairly similar. And we can pull in our own parallels about how these fit into our daily practices when we're talking about research versus education. And it all kind of wraps in because it's part of the larger educational system. So there are lots of barriers to Indigenous education. And so when I'm thinking about Indigenous education within this context, it's within a Canadian context. However, I'm sure if you ask any of my cousins, friends from other Indigenous communities, there's still barriers faced within their communities. So when I'm thinking about Indigenous education in this sense, it's K to 12 and post-secondary education for Indigenous folks. So when we're thinking about this, there's a lack of funding. We all struggle with funding no matter what we're doing. Cultural competency. So is the curriculum correctly identifying Indigenous cultural competencies within it? And then distrust. There's lots of distrust amongst Indigenous peoples when it comes to educational systems. Language barriers. And then for some folks, it's a lack of transportation. There's many children who are living in Northern or rural communities that have to travel large distances to go to school. But when I look at the barriers to Indigenous education, I can see a lot of parallels with Indigenous research and research that I'm working with at the University of British Columbia at Huikwa and beyond. We have a lack of funding when it comes to research or there's barriers for Indigenous scholars to accessing this funding. Grants are hard to get. Granting systems are competitive. It takes a lot of time to write grants, time that you could be spending with your own community in ceremony that now we're having to spend time doing administrative work. There's a lack of sometimes cultural competency within post-secondary education. There's a lack of cultural competency when it comes to researchers coming into communities. There's lots of distrust with Indigenous communities and research still to this day and rightfully so. Language barriers when we are unable for research purposes to get researchers to be able to transcribe into Indigenous languages or translate research projects into Indigenous languages. And then a lack of support. So this could be researcher support for the communities, especially if we're talking about traumatic research. So the continuing problems that we see to this day with Indigenous research is that often the majority of Indigenous focus research projects are being conducted by non-Indigenous people. There's many different reasons for this within Canada. And mostly it's because, as we've heard, we had systems that were enacted that until 1951 people would lose their status as a First Nations person if they went to university. This was under the Enfranchisement Act here in Canada. Indigenous people were not allowed to vote until about the 1970s here in Canada. So there's many reasons why we're just at the residential school system, left a lack of folks who have an interest in going to university to becoming professors, researchers. Researchers tend to select subjects or projects based on their own personal interest. This leads to communities being inundated with research requests that do not benefit the community in any direct way or leads to irrelevant data outputs. Additionally, there's a lack of informed consent, research not being returned to community or disseminated in a language of the community. And additionally, we still find that often there's an utmost disrespect and disregard for Indigenous, sorry, I'm going to restart that. I'm getting my own echo back and it's throwing me off right now. So the continued utmost disrespect and disregard by non-Indigenous researchers that they can have for Indigenous traditional knowledges, stories, ceremonies, and ancestral remains to this day. However, we're seeing this huge shift and especially at this time, we're seeing a huge shift with the influx of Indigenous-led research. So this is whether it's Indigenous researchers leading projects or Indigenous communities leading projects. And so when I say Indigenous in this context, I'm also talking about our three Indigenous groups that we have here in Canada under the Constitution and that's First Nations, Métis, and Inuit folks. So Indigenous-led and Indigenous research in general emerges from the incorporation of Indigenous lived experiences, languages, and worldviews into the research process. It centers Indigenous peoples and communities as the researcher and the primary authority on the subject or the topic. Indigenous research is accountable, reciprocal, and is an integral to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of Indigenous knowledge gathering and sharing. As well, Indigenous research methodologies follow the same trajectory as Indigenous research and dismisses the colonial understandings of the research process and incorporates the use of techniques and methods drawn from the traditions and knowledges of those people. So this is slightly what Indigenous research methodologies look like. So Indigenous research methodologies have a recognition of the colonial past of Indigenous peoples on that land. They resist colonial narratives of Indigenous peoples' knowledges. There's a resurgence of Indigenous ways of knowing and being. It rejects the insider-outsider research, prevents research extraction, promotes and embraces self-determination of Indigenous people, and combats the power dynamics that we see within traditional research. And as focused in relationality, we've heard a lot about relationality this week. Relationality is how we connect to our human and more-than-human relationships. And this is an Indigenous worldview and understanding. It's embedded within our laws and our governance systems. Relationality goes beyond just the lands, the waters, the ones that walk on all fours, the ones who fly, and is incorporated also with a spiritual. We think about our ancestors, the ones who are not born yet. These are all of our relations. And relationality is highly important to Indigenous research and even data. I talk about data as a relation when I go into the archives at my work and I'm interacting with archival documents about peoples, about lived experience of peoples. Those pieces of paper are a relation and should be treated with the same respect as I would if that person or if I'm working within that community or on that land. So how does all of this fit into OERs since we're here talking about OERs today? So most of us, we don't need to break down what exactly is an OER. I would hope most people by the end of this conference knows what an OER is. However, I am very much so learning that there's many different definitions of OERs and people have many opinions on this. But the five Rs of OERs. So this is something that I was looking at and looking at very critically when developing the six Rs. So as I was invited to present at the conference, I was thinking to myself, okay, so what are some of the basic principles, tenets of OERs? And then we have the five Rs from David Wiley, which are retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute. So the five Rs that we have. But when thinking about Indigenous content and Indigenous knowledges within OERs, the five Rs don't necessarily work. So if we're thinking back to what I've talked about, about extractive research, about traditional knowledges, sacred knowledges, relationality, how does that fit or not fit in into the five Rs? So when thinking about this, knowledge is power. And those who possess that knowledge are in that position of power. So when we're thinking about researchers, researchers are in a position of power. Academics are in a position of power. Even when talking about open education, the word open to communities can put that resource in a position of power if not controlled by the community. So at its foundation, sovereignty is at the utmost importance. And when I talk about sovereignty in this context, it's within a Canadian context and what I know. Other folks from different Indigenous communities work with their own governance and have their own traditional laws and understandings and ways of describing what exactly sovereignty is. So when I talk about sovereignty within the Canadian context, the government of Canada recognizes that Indigenous peoples have the inherent right to self-government and self-determination. And this is guaranteed in section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982. So I'll give you some context. That's fairly new. I was born in 88. So 82 is fairly new to be ratifying our Constitution. And in the Constitution, not only did it recognize who is Indigenous in Canada, which is problematic in many different senses, but it also gave the recognition of the inherent right of Indigenous peoples to govern themselves in relations to matters that are internal within their own communities. So this is things that are integral to their unique cultures, identities, traditions, and languages. And also to respect their special relationship to the land and to resources. So this can be things like developing business practices on your own land, resource extraction on your own land, which means many different things to Indigenous people. Having the ability to harvest on our own land, harvest our own medicines, and practice educational practices in a way that makes sense. Govern our communities in a way that makes sense to us based on our own governance traditions, practices, and languages. However, when we're thinking about the fact that Indigenous peoples, we live within a colonized country. We follow Western laws here in Canada. And Western laws violate Indigenous sovereignty quite often. So when we do things like compare Canadian laws that dictate ownership and knowledge rights, such as the Canadian Copyright Act, it's clear that Indigenous aspirations of self-governance under these laws directly compete with one another. So the government of Canada is telling us, yes, you have the right to govern your own culture. You have the right to govern your own language and be self-determining. But then when it comes to copyright law, they're saying, no, because this person wrote this thesis, they have the copyright on it, even though your community stories are in it. So it's very complicated. It's very complicated to break these down. So issues, when we're talking about copyright specifically, and I'm not a copyright lawyer, but I hang out with lots of lawyers. Most of the people in my class went on to be lawyers, not librarians. So when we're thinking about the protection of Indigenous knowledges and issues within these protections that arise due to things like traditional knowledges do not necessarily qualify in Canadian copyright law for protection because they're too old and therefore supposedly within the public domain. The author of the material is not always identifiable. Thus, there's no rights holder within the traditional sense of the term of a rights holder. And traditional knowledges are collectively owned, and we'll talk about this word ownership and owned by Indigenous communities for cultural claims. They are integral to our traditions, our culture, and our being. We do not claim them based off of what corporations do. There is no necessarily monetary aspect to me claiming my traditional knowledge. So we do not claim our knowledges based off of economic claims. This might change, who knows? We are sovereign people. We're allowed to exist in this century. We move into the future too, but hopefully not. I like to think of it that we're gonna keep our traditions for our own sovereignty. So the Canadian Copyright Act has allowed in more than one case for the legalized theft of Indigenous knowledges through the guise of Western understandings of ownership and intellectual property. So when I say ownership, it's a very Western understanding of ownership Indigenous people do not think of ownership in this term. When you look at our own languages, they don't translate directly for what ownership is. Ownership can be collective. Ownership can be based off of kin. Ownership can be based for everybody. And additionally, when we're looking at Indigenous knowledges and knowledge transfer, it does not follow our traditional protocols for knowledge transfer under Western academic institutions, Western knowledges do not fill these specific criteria for knowledge transmission and protocol. So Indigenous peoples traditionally, knowledge is not freely given, it's earned. Transmission of knowledge between one another is informed by legal traditions and protocols. These protocols vary from community to community, from treaty to treaty, from North to South, East to West, as all of us are distinct Indigenous peoples. Often these protocols are informed by the following factors. So this can be based off of clans. Clans have the right to keep knowledge within them. Kin systems have the right to transfer knowledge only within them or to other kin systems. Gender specific. There are knowledges that are only for men, only for women and for two-spirit folks. And there's specific protocols that have to be followed for those knowledge transfers. Age specific, geographically, knowledge is tied to the land. Knowledge is tied to the land and the waters that it comes from, bringing in that relational sense. And additionally, seasonally, we are coming into the storytelling times. The winter in my community is when we tell stories. The winter time on the coast is when we tell stories. A lot of our stories don't get told until the snow hits the ground. So Western knowledges do not necessarily follow protocols like this. So when our knowledges are coming into Western circles, it's important that we insert sovereignty so that we can be able to adhere to our own protocols. And so what I like to do as an Indigenous researcher, librarian, advocate, activist, I like to talk to people about data sovereignty and this is something that I've become very passionate about over the last couple years. So data sovereignty is a very new concept. It comes out of the 21st century. The increase or the kind of conception of data sovereignty comes due to the fact that we had this wonderful thing like the internet. Everything, mostly everything, is available online. Even if you think you got rid of it online, it can reappear. So data sovereignty comes out of this. And of course for Indigenous folks, we take this kind of understanding of sovereignty when it comes to data and we make it our own. So Indigenous data sovereignty centers Indigenous people's collective rights to data about people, territories, lifeways, cultural heritage, and natural resources and is supported by Indigenous peoples' inherent right to self-determination and governance. Indigenous data sovereignty puts forward the following principles. Indigenous nations have the right to ownership about governance and data about them, regardless of where it is held and who holds that data. Indigenous nations have the right to govern data in a way that aligns with their own data protocols and laws and Indigenous peoples also have the right to access data that supports nation rebuilding. This often includes government documents, both historic, contemporary documents, and archival documents. And in addition, Indigenous data sovereignty also seeks to protect the cultural sovereignty of communities. Cultural sovereignty is essential to the survival of Indigenous peoples' cultures, languages, oral histories, ceremonies, as well as the land and community, which is the core of those Indigenous identities and ways of life. And this is a quote from Marley. Indigenous sovereignty is threatened when cultural sovereignty is violated through exploitation, theft, and misrepresentation of culture, especially through qualitative data. Okay, so considerations for Indigenous OERs. There are lots of benefits to OERs for Indigenous communities, about Indigenous communities. We have a push under things like truth and reconciliation to for not only supporting Indigenous education on reserve for Indigenous people, but also through supporting the education about what has happened to Indigenous people, how to become better relations with Indigenous communities for settlers. However, in thinking the last couple of days when I've been here, I've been talking to other folks, I don't know if open is the right term. Given what we've been talking about, open might not be the right term for an educational resource. In addition, when we're thinking about open in this context, I looked in the Hiawayan or in the Kree language, we don't have a word for interpreting open in this way. In hankminum, which they speak in Musqueam, they don't have a way to interpret open in this case for education. So maybe open is not the right way for us to be thinking about this. There has to be something else. Another way of describing this, that we can also create these resources, but they work for communities in a way that better aligns with our understandings and worldviews. In addition, when we create these, we have to think about the five Rs of OERs and challenge them. We have to ask ourselves from very critical questions when making these educational resources. Are the educational resources being created by an indigenous community? Is this a First Nation? May it be Inuit creating a language revitalization educational resource? Because those will follow the protocol of that community. They will follow the traditional governance structures of that community, and that community is in the place of power, where they can say, yes, we want this open. We want this open for language revitalization. Or is it an OER or educational resource with indigenous content in it? Because this is very different. With indigenous content, should have more consultation with communities, so that we know what can be shared and not shared within this educational resource. And always should we be compensating indigenous people for their time in a way that they say is appropriate. So who is the audience? Who's driving the creation of the OER? What is the age range? Who is this being created for? The education level. Is this a local, localized context? Are we moving into national, international? And this makes sense for people like our Blackfoot relatives, who also share relatives in Montana. So they do not follow international borders. Same with the Salish relatives. They do not follow international borders either, because they are relatives with one another and international lines are arbitrary. What is the context and the content? This is highly important as well. What kinds of knowledges are being shared? If it's a sacred knowledge, it probably should not be in there. Is there any protocol that needs to be adhered to? Are we telling stories? I can't even say it because I don't think there's any snow on the ground. But are we telling like trickster stories that can only be told in the wintertime? How do we accommodate that within our OER or educational resources infrastructure so that we can have those stories only shared in the wintertime? What does the consent look like? Is this primary or secondary information? Are we interviewing elders? And how can we better support this? How can we better support this in this room? How can we support indigenous peoples? So also we need to let indigenous people take the lead. Consult with community. Build capacity and build relationships. I'm always happy to come to conferences like this because I get to see my friends from Hawaii, from other countries, and we talk about the problems that we're having or how we are fixing those problems. So the six Rs. This is what we're here about today. The six Rs and beyond because there's a beyond part about this now. So the six Rs of indigenous OERs are a combination of two different things. The four Rs of indigenous education by Kirkness and Barnhart, which are respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility. And then we have the four Rs of the Longhouse. I have the privilege to work at Huikwa Library, which is part of the First Nations House of Learning at UBC. The Longhouse is our big sister. We are the little sister. We're the Cakuli, the winter dwelling, which is the place where stories were told in the winter. So that's why we are the steward of stories and the Longhouse is the place where students come together. The UBC Longhouse follows the following four R tenants, which are respect, relationships, responsibility, and reverence. Given that I'm living on Salish territory now, I have a good relationship with Verna Kirkness. I see her occasionally. And I'm in the Longhouse just about every day when I'm at work. I decided to bring these together in a way that I could understand OERs a little bit better. So from this I created the six Rs of indigenous OERs, which are respect, so respect for indigenous cultural identity, communities, and topics within educational resources, relationships. So connecting the concept of all of our relations and relationship building within educational resources, responsibility, responsibility to share only when we are allowed to publish in an ethical way while considering ownership, protocol, and community practices. Reverence, respect for the sacred, not sharing the sacred. Relevance, legitimizing indigenous knowledges, indigenizing the curriculum when it makes sense, holding our knowledges in the same prestige as we hold Western knowledges. And reciprocity, giving back, giving back to community. However, I have some new reflections. I did this in 2021. I've talked a lot about this, but I'm always learning. We are all learners. We are learners in this space. We are on a lifelong learning journey together. So I had a lot to think about. One of the things that I wanted to think more about is how do we incorporate indigenous pedagogies into the development of OER practices? So thinking about things like potluck as pedagogy, heart berry, so strawberries, I have a heart berry on today. Heart berry as a pedagogy when creating indigenous OERs, et cetera. What is the role that education and open education plays within indigenous education? Are there more ours? Should reflection be an R? I've done a lot of reflecting and I think most people in this room have been doing a lot of reflecting this week. So is reflection a big part of this? And then how do we adapt OER technologies to adhere to those very important protocol needs that indigenous communities have? Or are we able to adapt OER technologies to do this? And then how do we advocate better for indigenous controlled OERs and funding? There's a lot of folks in this room that have been doing very critical research to advocate for funding, especially for indigenous folks on a national level, international level, et cetera. However, it's slow. Funding is a slow process. Getting our voices out there is a slow process. And additionally, as indigenous folks with the AFN, the Inuit organizations, Métis organizations, I don't think we've talked to them. We haven't talked to our leaders. We haven't talked to indigenous community members. We are working to doing this, but we're not there yet when it comes to indigenous-based educational resources. Now that we know where OER Global is next year, I'm going to encourage the conference members that maybe we have Indigioe. So Indigioe Open Ed as one of the tenants of this. Or is it something else? Do we call it something else? Indigenous education. And we bring together indigenous minds that are working in this so that we can collaborate with one another to talk about this topic. Additionally, thinking about methods really grounding ourselves. And I learned so much when I come home. I've been away from home, I come back and forth, but I've been away from home for three years. And if anyone was hearing me talk the other day, they heard me talk about how I had the opportunity to go back to the University of Alberta and to visit some friends. There was a big Métis conference going on that day. So I went back and I was able to chat about some of the work that I'm doing, listen to the work that they're doing, and listen to some of the methods that they're doing within their work. So I had the opportunity to sit down with a good friend of mine, Dr. Kesha Supernat. Dr. Kesha Supernat is an archaeologist and has a really important role for indigenous folks here in Canada. She's one of the lead archaeologists for finding bodies at residential schools of missing children that are there. So she runs a lot of the projects to find the unmarked graves of children. This is very, very hard work for her to do. And it's something that she's taken on for our communities. So when she goes to these sites, when she's practicing her work, she has to do so in a way that she's centered within her own protocol and ceremony. And she practices heart-based archaeology. This is her heart-based method. Her method is care, emotion, rigor, and reflection. And she brings these into her work when she's working with communities. She also told me now she put sage in her shoes and smudges her feet because elders have instructed her to do so because she's walking on graves on a daily basis. So in talking with Kesha, she also shared a really good teaching with me, which I was telling to a few people the other day. She told me she was traveling up north with an elder and the elder pointed. And I think this is a good teaching moment for everyone here. The elder pointed to a flower that was growing on the side of the road and said, that's what that flower is called. And Kesha being the learner, we're all curious, people said, oh, okay, so what do you use that flower for? And the elder looked at her and said, I am telling you, I'm not teaching you right now. And that shows how the elder is telling her something. Knowledge can take a while. They are not in a place where they can practice protocol to learn about that medicine, to learn about its uses and its importance to the community. She is being told not being taught in that moment. And there's many moments where we're being told by people and we're not being taught by people. And I think we forget that sometimes. So I know I told some people I had something up my sleeve for today, not dancing, singing, I'm not good, I'm not a good storyteller either. So this is what I had up my sleeve that I've been thinking about, especially now that I'm at home. So when I was thinking about the six Rs and how do I represent this in a way that aligns with my own protocols and practices as a Metis woman and fits into my own understanding of the world around me, thought of the wild rose model. Additionally, or the wild rose method, I guess. Additionally, I was doing some research. Roses, wild roses grow almost across Canada, including into the subalpine. So for me, they made sense. They're resilient. They're beautiful. They form part of our culture, our ceremony. And they grow across what in our community we call Turtle Island, but not all communities call this land Turtle Island. They grow across. They are also integral to part of my community. Metis people are known as the flower beadwork people because we are always adorning ourselves with beautiful beadwork patterns that look like the one beside it. So when I was thinking about how do we fit into the six Rs into a flower model? And it could be any flower too. I put reverence at the center. The sacred is the center core. Our ceremony is the center of us. And then we have relationships, respect, reciprocity, responsibility and relevance all around on the petals. If one of those petals falls, I don't like to think of the flower as being broken. It's still there. It just means it's not whole anymore. And that's okay. We shouldn't throw it away. We can always do better. It's still something meaningful to us. So it's resistant. It's a part of our cultural revitalization to be able to take these flowers and practice our ceremonies. So I need to do a little bit more work based on this model and this method, but this is what I've been thinking about. How do I tie my own teachings back to the land? And now every time you see maybe a wild rose when you're out, they're not out right now, but a wild rose bush, you'll think about this. You'll remember at the core of it is our sacred. So I have a couple minutes left, but I wanted to leave everyone with a consideration for the future. And I'm always tying in what I'm learning at Musqueam, what I'm learning here. And at Musqueam compared to on Treaty Six territory, the Coast Salish people are way more guarded in sharing their traditions and their practices. You're very fortunate to be here on Treaty Six where we are very welcoming. We'll tell you about our traditions when appropriate. We'll tell you about our worldviews and beliefs. It's not the same in Musqueam. It's very different. And I'm learning from them when I'm allowed to be involved and when I'm not allowed to be involved. And we need to be okay with that. So this is a sharing and a teaching that has been shared and is allowed to be shared to the public. And it's the hands forward, hands back approach. And this is from Elder Shimlamu, who is Vince Stogan from Musqueam. And he's also one of the folks that helped to develop the Longhouse at UBC. And it's the hands forward, hands back approach. This also makes sense for me because if anyone's seen a round dance or being to a round dance, we hold one hand and one hand. So almost like a hands forward, hands back. So our hands back are thinking towards the past, our ancestors and what they've done for us, our traditions, our culture. The hands forward is thinking about the future, thinking about future generations, thinking about what we will do better in the future, where we are going on our life path. And when we're in a hands forward, hands back, Elder Vince also invites us to join together in a circle so that we're together building relationships in the present with one another, working together as community, building community. So that's for me. What I wanted to say, as we've been saying all week, hi, hi, so thank you in the Hewayan. And because I'm gonna honor my Salish relatives today, also Haichka, which is another one that's thank you in hankminam. So you say hoichka, it's very guttural. It's in your throat. I was saying to people before, it's like getting a popcorn kernel out, hoichka. Or they have a little bit more eloquently, it's river rocks rolling in your throat. So that's what they say, I say popcorn kernel. So they say hoichka, thank you. And also in the tradition of the Salish. And something that you'll see me do if you see me doing it around here today. I also thank you for listening. I raise my hands to all of you in gratitude today. Thank you very much. Hi, hi, hoichka. Yeah, I think we have some time for some questions. I'm not too sure, I thought I brought my cell phone up here and I did not. So I'm like, I don't know what time it is right now. Thank you very much, Kayla. We do have time for some questions if anybody has any. Thank you so much for sharing what you shared today. I appreciated what you shared about situating ourselves and kind of thinking about our own kinship. Did you have any thoughts around how when we're creating OERs in general, even if it's not related to Indigenous knowledge, about perhaps what we might want to share in that regard? Yeah, so even if it's not involving Indigenous knowledges, anything like that, it's important even for the authors, if there's identifiable authors, to acknowledge where they're from, what their biases are, and then also acknowledge the land that the OER is being created on. As we've heard from so many folks, the land ties us together and we all have a connection to the land. Even if you're Indigenous or not, many people have strong connections to the lands that they're on. So identifying yourself, identifying where you're from, and then also the land, that would be my way of locating and tying yourself. I think there might be a session this afternoon that's talking a little bit more about locating, but I could be wrong. I did see something along those lines, but that would be my suggestion for you. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, first I want to say whoever chose the keynotes, wonderful job. That was so powerful and really mind-expanding, and I commend you for being bold and really sharing what you're thinking about, what you're working on. So my question is, I think if we're focused on openness and inclusion, someone view this as a tension. It is. Right? And so I just want to hear you respond to that tension and I'm thinking also of Darian's two-eyed seeing and how do we balance that? Yeah, I think that's one of the things that we've been talking about or kind of being challenged with is how do we balance this? And I definitely think, this is when we need more indigenous voices in the room talking about this, how do we create this balance? Because I don't think it's like not all knowledges are sacred, but there definitely are knowledges that are sacred. And open educational resources, especially for K to 12 curriculum, have a benefit, but we're more talking about those knowledges when indigenous people are not being consulted, not being brought into the conversation. We think we're doing good, but we're sharing things that we're not supposed to be sharing. That's more when we see that tension or when outdated resources are being used to talk about indigenous people, outdated language, terminology, misunderstandings about community culture, even calling things like, as Metis, we are resistant. It was not a rebellion. It might have been a rebellion, but we say it's a resistance, not a rebellion, but that's old terminology when we're talking about folks. So having people in the room asking those questions to indigenous communities, to indigenous leaders, how can resources support your community like this or what should we not be doing with your community? I don't think we should be left out of the conversation and their important critical conversations to have. I just don't know if we're 100% at the place to be having them without more conversation with folks. And I think next year in Australia will be a great place to bring together the meeting of the indigie minds, I always call it, First Nations, Metis, Inuit, our other relatives, Aotearoa, Australia, Hawaii, our folks here that I've got to learn from, almost made me cry in your session yesterday. So yeah, from Taiwan all over the place. Bring us together to have those conversations as kin, as distant cousins from different lands to kind of talk about this and come up with solutions. Let us lead the way. Let's talk. I don't know who's next. So. Yeah. Okay. I really enjoyed very much the presentation and I have learned a lot. I wonder if you consider learning and education based on these principles, a form of critical pedagogy. Yeah. And also if we should consider these as a type of critical pedagogy to learn from because many of us work in critical pedagogy and we look at these principles and we think about the principles that inform our teaching and our education. And there are a lot of concepts and words there that do not really match with what we do. Right. Reverence and what do we mean by reverence in critical pedagogy in the UK or in Spain and what do we mean by reverence in other contexts? What structures are we rebelling against and being critical about? I think it's always important to be critical about what we're teaching, what we're understanding. And I think that's why the organizers got me to come up here today and to talk to you because it's important to have that critical lens. If we aren't critical about what we're doing at some point, are we ever gonna move forward? If we continue to practice, problematic practices, we will never move forward in our disciplines. So I think having a critical lens, a critical understanding is really important to moving our, you know, to moving OE forward, to moving education forward, to moving research forward. If we don't do that, we're at a standstill. So even with the 6Rs are having pedagogies like these, we can incorporate them. The 6Rs also translate for other communities, not just indigenous communities. The 6Rs work for queer communities, for other religious minorities, for sex workers, for unhoused people. We have to treat people in an ethical way. And many communities have their own protocols for sharing knowledge and different understandings of the world. So I think the 6Rs, yes, they are a critical pedagogy and that they can be adapted in many ways. And I'm always adapting them. They're one of those things where they transform as my worldview and my understandings transform as well. And that's why I've been trying to shape them more into something that means a little bit more to me, like the land. They're not just the Rs and not just this solid English thing. They are the wild rose. It's a flower to me. It's resilience. It's resurgence. And it is, flowers bloom. They change. Roses change. They become rose hips. So it's always transforming. That's kind of what I was in the moment thinking about when I was doing that. Hi, thank you so much, Kayla. I really appreciated the distinctions you started to make in the in-between spaces between open and Indigenous OER. And I can appreciate that there are many people in the room who are very much immersed in the original versions of the 4Rs to be quite confronted by this type of challenge to our epistemology. It is a big evolution of ideas that is necessary to continue growing the open practices and more knowledge sovereignty for people that we have an opportunity to learn from and to adjust. What would you say or how might you describe that in-between place and how might that be something that we can embrace as a community here? So like the in-between place of like Indigenous knowledges and open and kind of how they can mold or don't? Mold? Sorry. Yeah, I wanna lean into that kind of encouraging space of understanding how we can keep evolving our understanding of what open can look like in this community because it's a wonderful group of people and we wanna bring everyone along. Well, I think what folks also need to do is when we're talking about critical pedagogies changing and criticizing what we've done before, a lot of that and a lot of the learning that we do comes from the heart in those moments and I encourage everyone to read up on heart learning or practices and so heart learning happens in a very emotional state and I know, because I've heard stories of people having a heart learning moment while they've been at this conference, a moment where something just clicks for you in your brain and your whole life can be transformed by it. Whether you're sitting around the fire for a first time practicing ceremony with people or you're hearing something you've never heard before and it just makes sense. It transforms your understanding and your worldview in a different way and for us to be able to understand that kind of middle ground and how open fits or doesn't fit with other communities, we need to kind of transform ourselves. We need to practice that heart learning and to open ourselves up to other people, to other people's ideas, to other people's communities and to just change ourselves foundationally and I get that all the time. We have heart learning moments even if we don't know that we're having a heart learning moment. So I think that's what we need to do is even think not necessarily as the organization at a whole sometimes, but at the self and how we transform our self in the moment to be able to better the future of education. One more. One more. Okay, perfect. Thank you. So I am putting together a linguistics OER and one of the tensions I'm experiencing in this work and in others is that on the one hand I wanna do your six Rs which involves relationship and reciprocity and reverence but on the other hand I want to get as much diversity of examples as possible from different peoples, language families from all over the world. And so there's this tension where it would be great if I had 100 languages represented but I can't do 100 relationships with reverence and reciprocity. So do you have any thoughts about how to do that tension between diversity and the six Rs? Yeah, so I mean one of my big tenants is always think local and move out which isn't always able for people to do. Like I completely understand that and I think when it comes to contacting everybody, yeah, that's definitely a thing. We can't talk to everybody. We can't build relationships with everybody but there are tools that sometimes that we can have. So for example, they're not here today and I didn't fully talk about them because I don't represent that organization. We have organizations like local context which has created traditional knowledge labels which communities can use kind of like a Creative Commons license or label and then they also have now items like CI notices which are cultural institution notices. So it's something that you could use on your OER if you don't have the capacity to contact communities. It's something that you can use on your OER to say, hey, I wasn't able to contact all the communities in this but if you're from this community and you're reading about this and you want to contact me and work together this is how you do that. It's an acknowledgement of the fact that you're using someone else's language and knowledges but also it's that extension, it's that hands forward. I would like to talk to you eventually one day. I just don't have the capacity right now to do it. What was that called again? So it's part of local context and it's the cultural institution labels or notices that they have. So the TK labels are for communities to use and then the CI notices are for organizations, cultural institutions, things like that. So local context. They also are along the lines with Mercadoo which is a digital repository that they use as well. Yeah. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for enlightening us today. Much appreciated. Your knowledge has been transformative for me and on behalf of Northwest College and OE Global I'd like to present you with this gift for sharing your knowledge. Oh hi, hi, thank you. Thank you.