 My name is Liana Marshall and I'm one of the Indigenous counselors here at Confederation College. Can you tell us about the program that you run? Yes, so I am part of, well, two teams. I'm part of the mental health counselor team and I'm also part of the APUIN team. So in APUIN, that's the Indigenous student lounge here at the Confederation College and so there's me and Joe Work who's also the other Indigenous counselor and we work with the three Indigenous student navigators. We just started work here last week and so we work together and just bring different program to the students and so my role it's really it's really casual so I offer things like ribbon script making workshops or tote making. I also do beading and so with my work with walking with our sisters, if there's any events in the community that are happening regarding murdered or missing Indigenous women, whether it's like with Sharon Johnson's film and memory walk or her Valentine's Day walk, last year and this year we made skirts with students that they could ribbon skirts that they could wear to those walks and then with the beadwork I've done beaded hearts with students and to talk to them about walking with our sisters and what's happening in the community and just across the nation around issues related to murdered and missing Indigenous women and so it's been really wonderful because with the beading it creates well with anything I think when you're making anything it creates community and I think my role here as a mental health counselor and specifically with like looking through life through an Aishinaabe lens being in an office like this has its benefits but also being out in the community also has its benefits and so for me when I'm out in the community making things with the students to me that's also mental health and spiritual health and emotional health and social health and just really trying to model that with the students so there's a whole program name it's just kind of whatever you know if the students have a need that they want to learn something it's like okay let's let's make it happen so either I'm doing it or I'll connect with somebody in the community who can help facilitate that so for the ribbon skirts we brought in Ryan and Shannon Gustafson and who are just like two of the most talented people in Thunder Bay in terms of how they make their like their textiles and their beadwork and so I really like to make the connections with the students and with community members who wouldn't normally be in an educational setting and then same with Sharon with Sharon Johnson like we'll bring her in and she can talk about her sister and her walks and just educate students in a different way versus you know us just talking at them like they're actually hearing things from yeah just from our community I feel like our community here in Thunder Bay is really there's a lot of really good things that are happening that are that don't you don't necessarily hear about that don't get a lot of media attention or and I really like to bring those people in and just again to make those connections and to have the students understand there's other things happening in the community and that the community is actually really thriving I see our community thriving and at very different levels but you don't really hear that with the media and so the students here they like some of them are from Thunder Bay but most of them aren't like they're from like up north or from even down south and then also international students as well and so it's when you bring people from the community into the institution it's really helpful for the students to get a different perspective on what actually is happening versus what you see right you know yeah so it sounds like a pretty like overarching programs yeah and you're kind of involved in a lot of like liaisoning and bringing people together and bringing people into the institution yes absolutely and trying to make like I feel like my role here it's really unique because like the students who live in Thunder Bay like last week with everything that happened last week with the with the violence and with the deaths and the community like it's like anything that happens in the community it's going to impact our students there's always someone or a group of people that are directly affected by the acts of violence that are happening and so I feel so I'll hear how they've been impacted in a counseling session and because it's confidential that information doesn't go anywhere but a part of I think what makes my role unique is I can hear the stories but then I can also directly ask the students like okay what what is it that you need say on the campus to make you feel safe or who do you need to connect to and so that's also driving how the programming that gets offered in appy win or that I'm doing on my own happens as well so so it's really coming from from their own like their stories and what they need yeah but you take it and do and do that info with that information what you can yeah create something out of it exactly that's beautiful yeah that's really cool yeah thanks so I guess the target audience can you speak to that um the target audience here well or the students so um I primarily work with indigenous students here but it's not just indigenous students um so in terms of the age range as a community college so I say students who are as young as believe it or not 17 years old all the way up to like 65 plus um so that but typically and I'm really horrible with statistics and demographics but it's usually like between like early 20s to like 30 as like probably the highest number in terms of age and mostly women mostly women what is the aim of the program so the aim of the program is to create community um is to create uh like for me like being on campus is to create a campus where there's indigenous presence like within an institution as big as confederation college um things can get lost and so I really believe in um having events out in the student commons area right next to where api win is and to kind of create that community that indigenous presence yeah what was the what was the aim of the program yeah so there's that there's that part but then to create the connections with um with the students and yeah to make them feel home and to make them feel comfortable here I think this is like the biggest aim again you kind of already answered this one uh please describe some of the different activities in the program that participants are involved in yeah so again like ribbon skirts um a lot of just making things um we do speak like um t-shirt making the students uh and that's that's really neat too like we have we host an orange the orange shirt day event here at the college where we invite survivors of residential school to come and speak directly to the students and then we do a t-shirt uh yeah a t-shirt build and so we have a logo that was created by gather westley he's since graduated but he designed a really beautiful logo and so we still screen t-shirts and and again like a lot of the people who come to the event isn't just students that's also we're also educating faculty and support staff and international students and so that's a really neat event to to be a part of there's also feasts that happen we do a spring a spring and a fall feast um elders come into the student lounge and and do beating and gauntlet making and pretty much you name it we try to make it happen um we also host paloes um craft sales and both sorts of things as well how would you or how do you measure the success of the work that you're doing in the programs that you run well formally i don't do anything i know that it's working when i don't know if this is just like i mean i'm not a researcher and unless i get told that i need to do that then i will but for me personally um i know that it's working when i can go on to api win and i know people's names and they know me and there is fresh smiley faces or when like even like there was a student that was here she was a student here for two years she graduated she now goes to l.u. and two weeks ago i happened to be in the hallway and she's like i need to talk to you and so we had like she never came to me for counseling when she was a student here like but i would always see her in api win and just say hi whatever and make small talk and but we had like this really great conversation she had to debrief something in her life that was currently going on at that time and so that's how i know that what we're doing here is working is that when people even when their students here and then when they graduate and they can still come back to the college and it's considered a place that is um comfortable for them and that they're they know the people it's familiar i don't necessarily want to say the word safe there's that's to me that's a really loaded question but at least it's a space that they can come and they're they're gonna know the people they know that they're gonna that that we're gonna respond to them and respond to their needs the best way that we can so that's how i know that things are working is that the students are coming and and talking and yeah just making those connections okay yeah that's great yeah from your perspective what is indigenous education doing doing stuff in community to me that's indigenous education it's being it's making connections like with one another but it's also making connections with being outside with being on the land that's also making connections with ourselves and what that looks like whether that's through ceremony or through other practices that people choose for themselves but whatever that relationship is with yourself and that spiritual component you know what i think of indigenous education i just think of our community is i think of our gatherings and i think of all the beautiful people and all the gifts that we bring and all that we can learn from each other so it's not a formal to me it's not a formal definition even though i work within an educational institution um that's my personal perspective you know um in terms of what i view indigenous education as being what do you envision indigenous education looking like in the next 10 years then language i envision what i would love to see um particularly confederation college leading in thunder bay is like a language immersion program i would love to have i would love to have people becoming fluent in this area there's we have so many strong speaker like strong speakers here in the community but there seems to be a disconnect in terms of the younger generations learning how to speak in ishnaabi moan and i think um there's an opportunity for that to be filled by the college hopefully hopefully um but that's what i would love to see is um like full immersion speakers like imagine that like in ishnaabi moan classroom within an institution like this that that would like blow my mind that'd be awesome right yeah okay so i'm going to bounce back then because you're talking about language because there's another question here that is specific to this so what is your perspective on the importance of language and language revitalization in indigenous education like my first language is english i've listened to in ishnaabi moan to ojokri uh my whole life because my mom is a language speaker and now that i'm older i know that that is a huge part um that i feel like that's a huge loss for me because in our language that carries our teachings our language is i carry so much about who we are as an ishnaabi people and so to me to see the revitalization like the work that's happening like for instance san angola university um the work that patricia nico once is doing and laura calmwind like and more and more of an informal sense when you listen to those teachers talk about the language you really start to understand and i feel like i'm just like scraping the surface here with my own understanding but you really start understanding like how much the language is connected to the land to how we view the world to ceremony to everything like every facet that goes beyond like like the like what's happening in front of us it's like the language is is everything it's everything so i feel like yeah like it makes me excited to see and hear people learn the language