 So the first questions are some of the details about the curriculum at the Northern Manitoba Mining Academy. What is it about that organization that makes it appropriate to Indigenous students? Well, at least once a year, if not more than once a year, they have an overall, they invite the public for feedback on what courses they feel should be taught in the academy or at UCN, period. The one for the Mining Academy is usually identified, and usually the last time courses were identified there were roughly 40 of them, and those were community identified, and the reason being was that we were trying to get more young Aboriginal people involved in the Mining Academy and into the, I guess you would call them sub-courses of the academy that are not mining related, but that would like, say for example, nursing. You need nursing when there's a mine. You need, you know, all those type of courses, eh? You need exploration courses. You need all kinds of short courses like WIMAS, First Aid, CPR. We're trying to get the EMTs. The other one we do is the Prospector Training, and the reason for the Prospector Training is because most of our Northern communities have a lot of potential mining to be happening, and we want to involve the Aboriginal people as much as possible, wherever, right from the beginning, like right from prospecting, right through to the beginning of the mine, like right through to the actual mining and closure of mines. We want to make sure that there's feedback. We want to make sure there's consultation, all that type of stuff. So that's why I think it's important that whenever there's a course identified that the people identifying it are, you know, local people from the communities and from the North. We represent 31 First Nations in Northern Manitoba, and basically it's from, I guess, Grand Rapids North, and then sort of to the East side, which is the Island Lake area, and to the West side would be, like, Lac-Brochet-Brochet, and coming down like Oceane, and right through to the territories, so it's a big area. It's sort of the upper half of Manitoba. Now, do you invite people to come, or do you actually go to some of these communities and hold workshops or consultations there? Do you usually have the consultations in the PAW or in Thompson? It's not really con—they have regional centers in some of those communities where there's ongoing information, but the Mining Academy itself is in Flinflon. So that's where those type of courses—but any of these courses that are identified, like in the Mining Academy can also be taught either in a regional center or at UCN the PAW or UCN Thompson or wherever, or some right in the community, like the Prospector Training or Women's First Aid, Basic Life Support, Wilderness Survival, yeah, Basic Life Support, Human Resource Prospector Training, all those type of things. They can be taught in the community as well as a—but you just need a certain number of students, eh? So how long has the program been involved in the Mining Academy? It seems to me it's about six years now. I think it's been around for six years. I've been on the board for roughly four years, I think. So what sort of changes have you noticed in the last four years? We're doing a lot more community-based stuff. I guess basically that's it, is like there is community-based training as well as the—at the Mining Academy itself. The only reason that—like the Mining Academy, one of the issues we do have there is the residents. Like there's hard—it's hard to find places for the students to stay when they come from the remote communities. So that is one of the difficulties we have. So how many residents do you have? Well it varies, like right now, like some of the students that are in the nursing program, they have to live either in the city of Flintland. There's no dormitory at the Mining Academy. So they either stay in a hotel or find local rooms, like board and room or whatever, while they're taking their course. So what do you see as being the differences between mainstream education and indigenous education? I think with indigenous education we have more—like we have the land-based type connection to the land and connection to our languages, connection to our culture and values. And I think we have to put that first before we can continue on to the bigger picture. You know, it's got to be included. Because like if you're going to be learning about mining, mining is part of the land. And like our—and especially the Mining Academy where there's—like it's ideal for learning for the trainees because of the rock is right on the surface there. In fact it's ideal globally, you know, because people can come there and learn about the rocks and the rock formation and what not. And it's right there. So we can invite people like—invite people from other countries even to come and study there. It's a small college. Right. But become a world-centered. Oh yes, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So they say that in Thompson or Flintloin where they do the cold weather testing? That's here, yeah. Thompson. So it's becoming a world-centered. Yeah. And then like I always say that because the valet is closing down, why aren't they looking at other things like that, like, you know, doing the exploration and studying and that type of stuff. Do you think that there's something in the—I'm thinking specifically of the prospecting course, the life survival course that is really drawing from traditional indigenous values? Yeah, because we had a little—a course called Ranger Program and it was a summer student course that was six weeks long and it was 24-7 and those kids learned how to do cut lines during that six weeks. They learned how to set up prospectors tents. They learned how to do first-aid CPR in a bush like, you know, make do with a couple logs instead of a stretcher, that type of thing, you know, all those type of things. So like making use of what we have and then adapting that to the college itself. I know it's not the same thing like the Ranger Program was funded by various mining companies and stuff but then it got dropped because the price of NICO went down. And that was an MKO program. But with the Mining Academy, one of the local communities close to Flinflon, Cranberry Portage, has that sort of the continuation of that. They called them—I forget what they're called—lifelong learners or something. I'm not really sure the name of the program but it's basically the same as the way we ran the Ranger Program. The other thing too, like the Mining Academy, you know, there's people that need blasting certificates, stuff like that. And that could be used even on highways or roads being built in the north. So those, you know, we adapt to those type of training courses as they're requested. Like when you're building roads in the north, you have to blast the rock out of the way or whatever and you need, in order to do that, you need a blasting certificate. So we've had requests from as far away as the Island Lake area, which is sort of the Ontario site, for those type of courses, you know, and those are the type of things we try to accommodate. Is there's always a concern that you're training your young people who then have to go away? Yeah, well, yeah, so like that gives them a good basic base learning. Like if they want to become a geologist or whatever, they have no choice but to leave home, you know, and so there's a lot of mentoring and counselling, that type of thing. That is required for, especially for Aboriginal students that come from other communities, because, well, I'll give you just one quick example, when an Aboriginal student is coming from say, Shimadawa, I'm going to go to school in, even Thompson or Flintstown or wherever it may be, they're asked and they need a place to stay. First question they're asked is, can we have a referral from your last place you stayed? Well, they can't have a referral because they came from their home or they lived with an aunt or they lived with family, and so they don't have referrals, so they have difficulty finding a place to stay. So that's one of the big blocks, you know, when we're trying to find a place for them to stay. So that's why it's good to have the residents, you know, like UCN here and that type of, and the POP, they have a residence where people can stay. What do you see happening in the future? What do you see happening? What are the potential bad things that could happen and the potential good things that could happen? How do we make the good things happen and prevent the bad things? I think the first good thing that can happen is that we get a residence for the students that, you know, come from communities. We definitely, that is such a high need in order to attract more students to come take courses there. The positive side is that I'd like to, well, we're expanding, hopefully we're expanding it not only to, like I said, more community-based, even though we need a bigger center, Influenced on itself, we want to expand some of those same courses to the communities. And like I said, attract people not only from our own, from the North, but from the whole province, from Canada, from internationally. I always like to see more emphasis on our Aboriginal students, but it's, like I said, that's the block is there's no place for them to stay. And the other block is funding. The other block is the geographic area of the North is so huge that, you know, just to bring somebody to come from Island Lake area to come to school there, they have to go to Winnipeg first and fly up North, which is probably $1,500 if not more to fly. And then on top of that, find their board and room, their tuition, you know. So it becomes very expensive for them to try and take courses, even just a small course. Like if it's a week, that means a week. That's the same travel, you know what I mean? Those are the, I find those are the blocks. Speaking of funding, you mentioned earlier that one of the programs got dropped because the price of nickel fell. Do you notice that as commodities, as the price of material, commodities rise and falls? Well, you're into so many things now other than just the mining. Yeah, it's, yeah, like there's, there's other, like there's the nursing and then there's all these other heavy, like construction type training. So like it's not just mining. The Ranger program is the one that got dropped. That was the summer program. It was a six week program. That one really wasn't. Well, I can't say it didn't have anything to do with the mining academy because it did. Out of those six weeks, the students that were in that training went to Flint Flawn and had safety course of how to, you know, just even to tour the mine. They toured the mine, they did some rock sampling. They toured the mining academy. They did some hands-on type things there with the simulator. Then they went out onto the rocks, you know, to identify the various rock formations and stuff like that. So they, they had one week of working with the mine. Then one week working with forestry. One week working with, you know, actually tree planting and stuff like that. So that, that course was, the mining part was one week. So I guess it did have something to do with the academy. So from your experience, what would you want to tell other educators across Canada? I mean, how do you, there's one of the things you said, the distances are so vast. So do you see yourself because of the, or just because of the reality of how the airplanes flow as north-south, or do you see that there's connections that can be made across the north and from here into Northern Saskatchewan or Northern area? Well, we've, that's the other thing we've looked at. Like how can we get, transport our people from point A to point B to get, even for employment, like we, if they can do commuter, commuter programming in other cities and whatnot and bring people from wherever, like the East Coast to go work in Alberta and fly them home, why can't we be doing that in our Northern communities and being, let the people stay home, come out for a couple of weeks, go back home to their home communities with, instead of the plane going straight Winnipeg, it can go this way. You know what I mean? At least once every two weeks or whatever, like scheduling because there are no, there's not even any bus services. So if somebody flies from Island Lake area to Thompson to try to get to the PAW, unless they have a ride or unless they have a vehicle here, that's the only way they're going to get to the PAW, they have to go all the way to Winnipeg on a bus and then up, back up north to the PAW if they have to use a bus, in another bus. And it's only three hours this way? Exactly, yeah. But all the bus services have been, goes down, so that's what I mean. Like it's very difficult with people that have to come from the remote communities and come, even for training, well, coming for training in Thompson is not as bad because like we have the perimeter that flies and calm air that flies to the remote communities. But there is still no flight that goes like, you know, across like just direct to Flynn Flon or whatever, eh? There are some from like the east side, like Puckett-A-Wagen, they can fly to Flynn Flon. But not from our side, like from the Thompson side, they can't. I guess you'd call it, in a nutshell, it would be transportation in the north is, it's because of the geographic and because of the services that we have, or limited services. Well, what is there in northern Saskatchewan? I'm not sure. Like who would you like to talk to in northern Ontario? Is there anyone that you've been? Northern Ontario, yeah, they have their own airline, flies all over the place. Yeah, northern Ontario, they're well connected, I think, because they have their own airline, they can fly. Whereas we have a partnership with perimeter, I know, but like right now that I know we were looking into it for long term for like because valets closing down. We're trying to see if there was any way we could maybe make arrangements with Comair to fly some of those miners that are losing their jobs to other mining companies so they don't lose their homes here in Thompson. And rather than them losing their homes here in Thompson, they can fly commute, sort of. But the same thing could happen out of Flynn Flon or, you know, those type of services, but it's hard trying to get that. So it might be easier to make a connection with a community in northern Ontario. It's easier to make a connection with a community in northern Ontario than it is to make a connection to Flynn Flon. I think so, yeah, especially Flynn Flon, because Flynn Flon, like the pause, a little bit easier. Flynn Flon is a little bit further north, like it's only that two hours and further north, but I don't know how many. I think they don't know if they get daily service to Flynn Flon. And their airport is a good, well, so is the pause. The airport is quite a ways out of the town. So it's an additional $50. I don't know what about Flynn Flon to get from the airport to the town. So for people coming from our remote communities, it's always these different costs involved. And each one of them's a few bucks here, a few bucks there. Well, yeah, it makes a big difference because like I said, there's only a certain pot of money that's allotted to training in our remote communities. And once that pot is gone, that's it. So there's all these other students waiting for the next pot of money to come in. There's always a waiting list, because there's not enough. And a lot of it is taken up with the travel back and forth and whatnot, once they're, say, if you're approved to go take a course somewhere. A lot of that money is taken up on travel. Is there anything else you want to say? Is there a chance to, would you like to talk to specifically? Would I like to talk to specifically our community young people to encourage them to take courses wherever they can, especially in the Mining Academy, and apply for the courses that are being offered in the Mining Academy. Because the more students that apply, the more likely we can be able to do it right in the community. And then like the other thing is that students that are looking at potential mining in their area, they should be looking at courses like the geology courses and things like that right now. Because that way they're ready once a mine does open in their area, or they can go to any other mine. Yeah. Long term vision is going to require one way of getting more funding is to attract more students from outside of the area so that you can become a source of, or a place of excellence. How do you think that would go about and what are the problems with that? I think in order for it to be a place of excellence, any researcher or exploration or anything that type of thing should include our community students, like the community students, so that they start learning about research, not only in Flint Flawn itself, but that they take part in the research that's happening, say, comparing Flint Flawn to like what's happening down in South America or in the UK or whatever in those mines. How do we promote our mining academy to the world? Because it is a very unique center. And I think it's not, it doesn't, we need to be more inclusive of our Aboriginal students, not only at the center itself, but in any train researchers that are coming up to take on like almost like an apprentice from the north and teach them the research portion of it and teach them how to promote their local, well, say their own area once things start happening. So you can see students from the academy, students from Chile coming here and doing some of that? Learning, yeah, like almost like an exchange, but also almost, I don't know how you would say it, maybe an apprenticeship for, say you're a researcher and you're coming up here from the UK. If you're coming up here that you will take on one of our local community students and teach them what you're learning here, because that way it helps our students develop and it's almost like a mentorship or apprenticeship or whatever you want to call it. And that's how I'd like to see more involvement happening. Take advantage of everybody that's coming up here to take resources out of the north that they should be giving back by teaching some of our students and taking them on as apprentices or whatever you want to call it, mentorship or whatever.