 My name is Max Feinde. I come from the Sweetgrass First Nation in Treaty 6 territory in Saskatchewan. I'm the co-executive director of Canadian Roots Exchange. The Target age group is young people generally. We work with folks in the elementary school system and folks as old as 29. The end of the program is to advance reconciliation broadly. Now generally we do that through building relationships and giving young people the opportunity to engage with indigenous people, give indigenous young people the opportunity to engage with non-indigenous communities, including newcomer communities, including the first settler descendants, all that sort of stuff. So it's really about bringing people together and exposing them to the idea of reconciliation on top of that, exposing them to elders, to ceremonies, to land-based activities and programs as a way to view reconciliation. Something that we often hear from our participants, whether they are in elementary school, high school, university, whether they're doing their master's degree, is that they often haven't had the opportunity to engage with indigenous people before. Even though it's 2018, even though we live in Canada, a lot of people think Canada is a great place of justice, equality and all that sort of stuff. We still live in a very segregated society and Canadians often only have the stereotypes of indigenous people to fall back on because they don't have the opportunity to engage with us on more than a surface level, on more than a getting asked for money by one of our relatives on the street. That's their only point of engagement with indigenous people. So what we try to do is show that indigenous people are just that people and that does wonders for relationship building. We're not then only stories on the news or stereotypes we are, where they're friends, where they're classmates, where they're neighbors, all these sorts of things for indigenous people. I think it's very powerful because we have been legislated out of society for a long time. We have been segregated from the rest of society for a long time. There's a lot of folks who are first generation urban dwellers or second generation urban dwellers who haven't had exposure to the rest of Canadian society. Right now we're in Toronto. People from 120 countries live in this city. There's 120 different nationalities that have all come together here. I think it's good for our people to learn about those different cultures, those different communities and build solidarity amongst one another to show that my well-being is connected to those of my neighbors. My well-being is connected to the folks who are organizing in the multicultural community, who are organizing with Black Lives Matter, who are organizing with other social justice movements and in other communities. And it's good for our people to be exposed to the world. So I think that's the reciprocal nature of our programming. It's a give and take. It's a learn and receive model. So for us, I mean, this is certainly about Indigenous education, but more than that, it's about exposing again those settler friends and relatives to our education. So anything, any of our programming, isn't just framed within Indigenous education, but it's framed with a holistic sort of reconciliation model in mind. I think it's so powerful when we get knowledge keepers to come into our programs, which is something that we are committed to doing. And allowing for those folks who have grown up without their traditions, without their ceremonies, without their languages, to be exposed to those ceremonies, to those words, to those songs, to those practices for Indigenous people that's so powerful, we've heard from our participants that that's a way to access ceremony for the first time or have a reliable or begin a reliable relationship with that knowledge keeper, with that elder. So that's something that I'm committed to incorporating, not only the sort of relationship building piece, which is of course important, but diving a little deeper and incorporating the ceremony, the knowledge, the worldviews, the stories, the language and the songs, not only for Indigenous people, but for non-Indigenous people as well, to show that we actually, we have a worldview, we have a culture, and we had before colonization distinct and complex societies with rules and laws and protocols that were well established and clearly defined, that our knowledge keepers can come in and explain and talk to the young people about. So then we're not just, we're not words of the state, we're not savages, we're not people who are terra nullius, who are empty in nature, but we are proud, complex people who are descendants from proud complex nations. Talking with our participants, we have a strong national network of volunteers who we've engaged for the last nine years, who are very very loyal to us, who talk about the uniqueness of CRE programming. We have close relationships with them, the more formal ways I think, like a lot of nonprofits, we struggle with the right way to thoughtfully evaluate our programs and adding on the component of working with Indigenous communities, finding the right way to evaluate land-based programming or evaluating, you know, it's, for me, I struggle with how do you evaluate an elder, right? How do you evaluate a knowledge keeper, right? So we, we, it's an interesting question because we are unique in that, you know, I'm going to keep getting this particular elder because I know that they're very knowledgeable, I know that they're very well respected and they sit within a certain position within, within knowledge societies, right? Having said that, we, of course, this past year, we engaged a, an evaluation company to come in and talk with us about what evaluation for intercultural programming looks like, to sort of brainstorm ideas about what is unique, what are the unique needs of CRE is trying to evaluate, and how do you make sure that you're getting it right in a culturally responsive sort of way? So we've, we've begun that work and we are, we are currently formulating a new way to evaluate with all of those, those trainings, those conversations and those ideas from that, from that company in mind. So stay tuned, as a country run a journey of reconciliation, these past, the past, you know, two years that the, that the TRC final report has been out, people still do not understand by and large what it means to work with Indigenous organizations. They think that, that it should be as easy as working with a, working with a non-Indigenous organization and without recognizing that we do things a little differently and we have different rules that we follow and, and we have more sort of accountabilities, certainly I do, than just my board of directors, right. So, so, you know, on top of being held accountable by my board of directors are sort of my family, my community, our participants, all this sort of stuff, which hold me accountable to a different standard than a non-Indigenous organization would. People are slowly learning what it means to work with an Indigenous organization and that it takes more patience. It takes a different worldview, it takes a different understanding and it requires some serious self-reflection on our, on our partners, our non-Indigenous partners that we work with in figuring out what their, what their motive is, what their, what their role is and what an opportunity exists for them to help advance reconciliation for young people across the country. You know, for me, Indigenous education, I was lucky to be raised with, with my teachers, my knowledge keepers, my ceremonies, my songs, all that, all that sort of stuff. And, and it often, I often have to remind myself that not everyone was as lucky as I was and not everyone has the clear understanding that not only were we, yes, a hunter-gatherer society that, that had, you know, roles and responsibilities for each community member, including leadership and including elders, including male, female and the transgender to spirit community within our societies. We had roles for young people. We had roles for, for, you know, adolescents. We had roles for everybody, healers and all this sort of stuff. But we were also engineers, you know, we were also doctors. We were also, we also had, you know, for lack of a better word, we had lawyers, right? We had a legal system. We had all these sorts of things. When we talk about what Indigenous education is, for me, it's about, it's about being able to learn those things and be able to transfer the knowledge that I have to other young people to show that, yeah, you know, we, we made teepees or we made longhouses. And yeah, we participated in powwows, you know, on ceremonies and dances and all this sort of stuff. But it's so much deeper than that. It's so much more than that, that Indigenous education is so, is so, is so complex, is so, is so deep that, that in a lot of our programming, a lot of the conversations we're having, even as an Indigenous community, we're only beginning to scratch the surface on all that exists and all that was and all that still is there. But, you know, I, to, to your, to your, to your question, I think Indigenous education is, is reconciling all of that and being able to have those conversations and being able to expose our children to those conversations at a pre-K, you know, primary, middle, high school and university context so that they can learn about all, all that we used to be, all that we continue to be and go as far as to figure out what comes next and how do we, how do we decolonize ourselves to get back to those perspectives and then advance for beyond that. That is something that we hear a lot about young people feeling like they are walking in both worlds, having to, you know, navigate both of those things, walking the tightrope, all that sort of stuff. If you go too far to one side then, then you'll fall off and, and your community will hate you and they'll become too Canadian, too white. If you go to the other side, you've come to India and then you won't be able to hold a job, the rest of society will hate you, all that sort of stuff. It's, it's really difficult to, to navigate for young people. I'd say it's one of the, one of the top struggles that Indigenous, Indigenous young people face today. For me, you know, we, we recognize the struggle that exists. All that I can do is provide, provide information, provide opportunity to learn about these sorts of things, but also provide that, that normalization of our, of our culture, that normalization of, of the pride that we all should have, right. A lot of other cultural communities, you know, I'm from Saskatchewan, Ukrainian people make up a large percentage of the population. They're very proud of people as they should be, as a beautiful culture. We should be just as proud and not ashamed of ourselves. We should be able to, you know, go and speak our languages to, to our peers, to our friends without any sort of hesitation. We should be able to, to carry ourselves very, very with, with ease within, you know, an urban context and, and, and celebrate who we are. I think we're lacking that as a community, we're lacking that. And certainly in past generations, I think this generation is becoming increasingly more proud of being Indigenous. There's still a lot of work to do. And, you know, I think until we can, we see more people who are, who are expressing their indigeneity in, in everyday contexts and constructs. We'll have, we'll have a ways to go towards normalizing, towards normalizing the ability to feel that sense of pride, that understanding of who we are and celebrate, again, all that we, all that we were, all that we are and all that we have yet to be. There's so much opportunity that exists. You know, if I think about, if I think about the last 10 years, you know, where we were in, in 2007, that was before, I don't know, more, that was before, you know, this big awakening, that was before we started talking about reconciliation as, as a country, you know, we're going to, we're going to be telling our children's stories of, of what we grew up hearing. And again, you know, when I, when I was growing up in Saskatchewan, I heard the names Neil Stonesheld a lot and Daryl Knight and Rodney Nastas and these men who were, who were dropped outside of Saskatoon in minus 30 temperatures. These Indian men and they were left to die. The Starlight tours. Yeah, the Starlight tours. And, and, you know, I, when I think about in where we're going to be as communities and as a society and where Indigenous education is going to be in 10 years, I want those, I want those, I want those stories recognized, right? I want, I want, I want folks to remember those names. I want, I want Canadians to, to really sit with the, the horizontal injustices that have happened, not historically, but in our lifetimes. And I, and we're young guys, we're in our 20s here, you know, and, and recognize, before we can reconcile, we have to, we have to recognize all that, all that has been done in the recent past, you know, even, you know, last summer we saw what happened in Saskatchewan with Colton Bushy, right? And recognizing that there's still this deep, deep racism that exists. So when we, when we talk about the, the future of Indigenous education in the next 10 years of Indigenous education, you know, I would love to see more, more curriculum being developed in, in science and math and English and, you know, gym and, you know, all this sort of stuff for, for the, for the kids in, in primary schools to be able to engage with Indigenous society, because we have contributions to make in every subject, every subject, we have contributions to make, and they should be included in the curriculum. But we also have to, have to recognize and have to remember that while we're advancing and doing our nation-building work that's so, so crucial, and a lot of young people are, are, are focused on, which is great, there's those of us who, who are, who are able to, again, walk that tightrope, who are able to participate in both sections of society, who have to work on this reconciliation piece here and, and make sure that Canadians are held accountable to, to their history, that Canadians are held accountable to the calls to action. Canadians are held accountable to that, that treaty relationship that we first envisioned, that our ancestors first envisioned when settlers came here of peace, prosperity and mutual benefit, right? And I think that's, that's something that I'm committed to doing. That's something that I'm, I'm working on, that's something that hopefully we'll, we'll see a great deal of progress on in the next 10 years. So I grew up, I'm, I'm half Norwegian. My mother is, my mother is a very proud Norwegian descendant from rural Saskatchewan, grew up on, on the farm of my grandparents. You know, a lot of time around that, that side of my family also grew up on Syracuse First Nation with, with my father's side of the family. I realized that that was a unique position growing up in the, in the 90s to have connections on both sides of those families that were very, very strong. I realized, I think, before a lot of other people in Saskatchewan, Canada, that we are more alike than we are different. And that, you know, we have these, we have these divisions set up to, to, to trick us into hating one another, right? And, and that was the point. That was the point of what the government tried to do, tried to get people to not like Indians, try to get Indians to, to stay, to stay within the reserve boundaries and not be able to succeed and then eventually they just die out and go away. So, when I would go and visit my, my father's family and I go visit my mother's family, I'd realize that these people laugh at the same sort of jokes. These people love me in the same way. These people work in the same way. They want to provide for their families. They want the same things to come out of their life. I'm in a, I'm in a unique position that I understand, that I understand those people. I understand both sides of the treaty relationship. I can see a clear path to how we get back to that because it happened at my birthday parties. It happened at my Thanksgiving dinners. It happened at my, at my family celebrations where Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people came together with, you know, I wished each other prosperity, mutual respect and, and, and wanted each other to, to benefit from the prosperity of this land. I've seen the ability for us to do that in a, in a very micro, in a very micro way with my family. I think that, that through telling those stories and bringing young people together, we can begin to see, we can begin to see that at the macro level across this country. So, we've been in 15 different communities across the country from coast to coast to coast. We have participants every year from every province and territory through our different programs and we've engaged, you know, all for, you know, First Nations, Métis, Inuit, First Generation Canadian to, you know, the descendant of, of the First Settlers. So, we get a great perspective of the Canadian project thus far and we get to bring in those voices to figure out what comes next. Now, I'm a, I'm a big believer in the idea that, you know, we're hosting a conference in a couple weeks, a national conference, 250 young people, half indigenous, half non-indigenous are going to be there. I really believe that, you know, the next Supreme Court justice is in that room. I really believe that the next grand chief from the Yukon is in that room. I really believe that the next members of parliament or city councilors or mayors or, or CEOs, you know, or, or, you know, whatever are in that room. Those are the folks who are going to be making key decisions for our country in the next 10 to 20 to 30 years and beyond that. We need to invest in, in the, the education of young people that they're not getting from the provincial system as it is to really dive deep and explain the importance of remembering our history, explain the importance of, of including partnership as a crucial element of the Canada that we want to build as, as, as millennials, as young people. There's a study done by the Environmental Institute about a year and a half ago that said that 79% of young people age 18 to 29 believe that meaningful reconciliation can occur in their lifetime, 79% higher than any other demographic in Canada. So when we talk about reconciliation, yes, you can sort of triage the pain and the suffering that's happening now and try to talk to the boomers about, you know, making more thoughtful decisions, making more decisions that include Indigenous people as partners, all that sort of stuff, but you can only triage it. If you want to begin to change and heal the damage that has been done to our communities or people in this country, then you have to invest in the long-term development of this next generation of leaders and that's what Canadian Merit Exchange believes in doing. You know, we need the ability for, for adults, for our parents, for our aunties and uncles to, to trust us. We need adults to, to realize that young people not only have the passion for reconciliation, not only have, have, have a vision for this country, but we also have the ability to see it through and that is shown by the last nine years of programming that we've done. We really need young people to be able to lead, to be given real decision-making powers and thoughtful engagement in, in decision-making bodies. We also need the opportunities to, to broaden our coalition of young people. We need school boards. We need individual classroom teachers. We need principals to, to recognize that they weren't trained in how to do reconciliation work. They weren't trained in Indigenous education and that they need to let organizations like Canadian Merit Exchange come in and, and expose young people to this work, to these thoughts, to these ideas, to these, to these truths, to these histories and, and, and to help, to help guide their education so that they can, they are not robbed of the opportunity to learn about the beauty of the strength and the, the partnership that they can have with Indigenous people as every other past generation has been. It's something, you know, that people don't think about, you know, people don't know anything about Indians or Indigenous peoples and that was purposeful, right? I remember my mother telling me very clearly that when she was in, you know, the one-room schoolhouse in Saskatchewan growing up that her teacher told them that all the Indians were dead, that there was no, no Native people and that's why they got to live here, right? So it was, it was purposeful that, that these people were in these decision making, decision making powers, decision making positions today, don't know anything about our people and aren't thinking about the rights of Indigenous people, aren't thinking about how this impacts the treaty relationship, aren't thinking about what, what partnerships can, can exist within their, within their sphere of influence because they weren't given the ideas or the opportunities to learn about it. I'm a big believer in meeting people where they're at. We've, we've, we've started to have conversations with Canada now and a lot of Canadians are horrified to learn what their country did in the name of settlement, what their country continues to do in the name of, you know, keeping the wealthy wealthy and keeping the power where the power is. You know, we have, we have Canadians who have always thought of themselves as, as very patriotic, very, very proud to be from Canada because they are from this great, this great country that is seen as the human rights defender on the global stage while Indigenous communities sit without water, sit without access to mental health supports and young people are killing themselves, sit without the ability to get an education, all these sorts of things. Canada isn't the, the, you know, the good guy that a lot of Canadians think it is. When I have those conversations with Canada, you know, with Canadians, I make a lot of time to listen to, to, to their revelation that Canada isn't the great, the great country they thought it was. And then, you know, as they sit there in sort of a stupefied reflection, that's when we, that's when we call them to action, that's when we tell them that they, they have work to do, that they are the vice president of a bank or they are a faculty member in, in English or they are, you know, they are this, that or the other thing in the world. Everybody has the ability to impact the advancement of reconciliation. Everybody has a role to play and everybody has a job to do. I think it's, it's incumbent upon us, those of us who have, who have decided to, to participate in, in reconciliation on the Indigenous side to help guide them and show them the way and show them the past and show them the path forward. I mean, the problem that I see with reconciliation today is it's focused so much on our government, which is, you know, it's important. They, they have a role to play in reconciliation, absolutely. They are the, the representative of the crownless country. Focus is on our universities, again, very, very important. I want universities to focus heavily on reconciliation. That's where, again, a lot of these, a lot of these leaders are going to, are going to come from is, is post-secondary landscape. But also focus is in cities, which, you know, makes sense. The high population come from their more, more Indigenous people than ever live in cities. The thing that frustrates me is that we don't see a lot of, a lot of time or attention or, or column inches spent on, you know, what's happening in, in rural Alberta, right? What's happening in the high school in Kelowna, you know, what's happening with young people in, in Gimli, Manitoba, you know, there's, as, you know, as I just said, there's a role for everyone to play in reconciliation. But too often, we're focused on our governments, our cities and our universities. It doesn't matter where you live in this country, you should have the opportunity to be able to thoughtfully engage and contribute to the movement of reconciliation. You know, I know that we work a lot with young people in, in Happy Valley Youth Bay. We've worked with young people on Rankin' Inlet, you know, in, in the far north of Nunavut. And those young people, those teenagers who are sitting there in their high schools or in their, in their elementary school, they may not make it to university. Some may, some may choose to stay within their community. There are a lot of folks in downtown Toronto who may not make it to university. You know, that's just statistically speaking, that's both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. If we focus just on university, then we create this, this, this power hierarchy where reconciliation is only accessible to those who have the ability to participate within, within the academy. And I think if we, if we've learned anything from our history as Indigenous people, you know, that, that exclusion, that, that creating, that creating, you know, different, different hierarchies of, of knowledge, creating, you know, systems that, that privilege some folks based on their, their abilities or what have you, that, that isn't helpful. That, that doesn't serve our interests. That's actually what has been used to, to keep us, keep us oppressed for the last, you know, few hundred years. I think it's important that the young people are exposed to the ideas of reconciliation as early on in their educational careers. They can be including, you know, grade one, grade three, grade five, grade seven, whatever it is. And that's why we work with, that's why we work with young people as young as grade seven. So I work in high schools to, to make sure that at, at a few different points within their education, they have the opportunity to engage with, with someone who's of their generation. So they can thoughtfully think about what their role is and normalize the ability to treat Indigenous people with compassion. I think that's what's going to change the country in this next generation. You know, I think we're going to see a big shift in the next, in the next few years in, in how the movement is progressing. I think reconciliation, if you, if you look back to, to when the Truth and TRC started, and you look to now, you'll see just how much the movement has changed. I think reconciliation is going to be known as one of the, the reconciliation movement is going to be known as one of the fastest adapting, quickly changing and, and agile social movements in the history of, of this country, possibly even the world, because we are more connected than ever, because we have young people who are willing to, to shift their thinking around what they, what they've been taught in schools and, and have a real passion for seeing results. We're not, we certainly are and have, and you've seen that through, through I don't know more, we've been taking to the streets, we've been protesting, engaging in sort of traditional behaviors that social movements do, and I think that's really powerful that sends a strong message to the public that we're out there, we're organizing, but we're also permeating the, the system. We have people working within systems of power who are making the, the day-to-day change or doing that sort of work. I think, you know, going back, going back to your question, we are an organization who, who has been trying to react to this change, who has been re-examining our programs, who has been responding to the needs of young people to engage in reconciliation. I'm, you know, I'm one of the few people, you know, who's, who's trying to work himself out of a job. You know, I don't want to be doing this forever. I want reconciliation to be achieved. You know, I don't think, I don't think we want to see a Canadian roots exchange forever, right? Because we want to see these, these problems, these disparities, these gaps closed. We want to be on par with, with the rest of Canada. We want to be respected. We want, you know, we want equity from this country. And I think, you know, we would, we would love to have young people who believe the same. We would love to have their vision, their voice, their experience, their passion, their dedication, and their ability to contribute in that way. And we'd love for them to be part of, of series programs so we can get there together.