 My name is Jessica Hadley. I am the program manager of a program called White Butterfly for Nichihuam, Inc. I'm a graduate from Red River College's Child and Youth Care program, and I currently live in Winnipeg, Manitoba. White Butterfly is a four-bed treatment program for girls between the ages of nine and 12 that are of Indigenous heritage who, for a variety of reasons, have come into the CFS system as we know it and have broken down either kinship care or foster placements and require group living to best meet their needs currently. Our goals are to work with the girls so that they don't end up returning to a group care setting. The older you get, the more intensive group care tends to be, and the more risks are incorporated. So our purpose is to take girls that are on the cusp of having that become their life within the system and work with them on some of their concerns and their trauma and issues so that they can be returned to either foster care or family placement. We're actually quite successful, so most of our girls when they are done at our program either return to family or return to a foster family. A lot of the foster families are actually families that they've had contact with previously that have had some challenges or broken down because of some of the behaviors that we're presenting at the time and we've worked with them and they're able to return. Our ones that we really enjoy are the ones that end up going back to family, maybe not the originating family member that they had before they came to us, but home to family after return to their communities. I see it as excellence because our staff are representative of all four quadrants of the medicine wheel, but all see the value of land-based sacred spiritual teachings when it comes to the nurturing and loving of children. And when you come from it from that standpoint, a child's behavior is just another language that you have to learn. So there's less fear driven by what can be seen as troublesome or extreme behavior. There is a greater sense of healing and hope. There's also the belief that much like the butterfly effect, we don't need to change the entire world. All we need to change are the four girls in front of us right now because they will go on to have families and if they learn to move a different way through their life, then they will be able to take those teachings and what they've learned from us and spread them on to the next generation and the generation after that. Our name is actually the spirit name of a little girl who lived with us at the time and she went through some circumstances and ended up exploited and abused by the people who were supposed to care for her, which was her family. And she ended her life while she was living at our program, not within our program, but during her stay there. There was an inquiry in our province based on her death and out of that stemmed Tracy's trust, which is our sexual exploitation program within the province of Manitoba. White butterfly was Tracy's spirit name and we do it as a reminder because in Tracy's, some of Tracy's final writings, the staff of the girls house that I run was one of the few staff and few programs that actually she ever felt cared and loved at. So to honor that memory and honor the dedication of the team that worked with her that were devastated by her loss, we renamed the program. For our girls, a lot of what we do is nurturing. So they come to us. Our girls are all in school. We encourage individual activities. Ironically, the system is set up now to ask for culturally appropriate resources. We are a culturally responsive resource. So what we tend to do that's a little bit different is our girls have the opportunity to learn from elders, to learn about where they came from, to learn the teachings, but it goes beyond that within our programs. So our support goals for the girls are based on the seven sacred teachings. The way that we respond to our children is from a nurturing healing perspective. It is getting across to our girls that creator has made them beautiful and blessed and yes, their road has been hard. But the to become a butterfly, the harder the transformation, the greater the change, the more beautiful the butterfly when it's finished. We talk about butterflies being symbols of change in the world and and what comes with that and it empowers our girls in a way that even from a small child's perspective, they can understand. We are also not afraid of the trauma that they've experienced. And a lot of times, I think what is different is that to really heal someone has to be prepared to not push away your pain. So our program looks at healing from a we can live in this moment and then we need to figure out how to move forward. But moving forward doesn't have to be a long journey. It can be a single step. And maybe we have to stay in that single step for a little while. So part of what we do as a program is look holistically at the whole child. It goes beyond strength based because often the strength based approach that is used within most programs identifies the strength of a child and utilizes that to move it forward. One of the strengths that often goes overlooked is the core and the spirit of the child. Whereas in our program, because of their philosophy, because our agency starts with the first teaching of love, we look at what the spirit of the child is and maybe that child's strengths are hidden and it's a spiritual strength. And we look to nurture that as opposed to just the child that is visible to the naked eye. Actually, if you look up Tracy's trust online, you can see the whole inquest. It made real change in the province. Tracy Owen was the reason that we have the child exploitation measures in this province that a lot of our other provinces don't have. She really did change the world. It was tragically through her death, but we often tell the children that we work with about Tracy. There's a picture of her on my office wall actually standing in front of a blue eagle that she painted on the building that we're sitting in right now. So we talk about the fact that Tracy changed the world by a tragic circumstance. But if a small, tiny, cute little girl who is in her early teens can change so much of the world in far-reaching provinces, then what are they capable of with all of the love and support that they have? I think that Indigenous education is certainly something that comes with a lot of preconceived ideology. Indigenous education, in my opinion, is based on understanding that the human being is a whole. And I think when we look back at traditional teachings and traditional ways of teaching, it addressed the human being as a whole, the mental, the physical, the spiritual, the psychological. So I think that when we talk about Indigenous education, it goes beyond just the spiritual path and the understanding of the land based in the gathering. When you look at traditional Indigenous culture, it in itself evolved and changed. And there were trade routes, and most people who aren't familiar with it, there were cities and education. So I often look at Indigenous education in the modern context, which is why all of the girls in my program attend Western schools and are expected to get an education, because in my opinion, Indigenous education is about being the best being that the Creator wants you to be. And part of that is educating your mind in our current Western standards. And part of it is learning to respect the land and to respect the teachings because they actually work quite well in tandem. Because if you use your Western education and your land based knowledge and your understanding of the seven sacred teachings, you can actually make the world a better place as a human being. I would like to see us begin to address the way that we learn and within our institutions in a much more holistic way. I think that Indigenous education is actually something to be valued and understood and utilized in everyday life, from how we move through environmental concerns to how we move through spiritual and philosophical differences. I think that it's one of those things where when you look at university level education, being able to apply that type of thinking because what Indigenous education is really about is learning to respect yourself, respect the environment, and learning how to think about what you are doing. Which when you think about it is what a university and high school and junior high and elementary school are supposed to be doing anyway. So I would like to see in the next 10 years our way of thinking about education as changing to not be just Indigenous education, but just in how we think. I think that what would help is better programming for young people that is what I would call alternatively education-based. Programs that go beyond the leisure guide activities of hockey, karate, and swimming, not that those are not of value, but being able to teach children modern-day concepts through traditional ways. Building a canoe is a traditional pastime. Building a canoe requires math and science and an understanding of nature and resources. I think that what I would like to see as an opportunity for children, not just the white butterfly children, but especially for those who need so much healing, is a way to reconnect with their heritage and learn skills that will help them move forward in life. And I think that that's actually what is lacking is the ability to take. We often talk in jobs as adults about transferable skills and I think often what is lacking is programs and places that allow children, Indigenous and non-children, to learn real transferable skills and to develop knowledge in a way that is retainable and understandable for them where they are at developmentally. I think when it comes to Indigenous education, I look at what has been lost and I think we have the possibility to find it. I think that in that finding that's really how we move forward, which sounds, I realize, very utopian. But I think that there was teachings that were taught through Indigenous people beyond the sacred teachings, but how you move through life that would have significant value if relied on today in some of our bigger, larger Western structures, places, environment, philosophies. So one of those reasons why I think it's so key to promote that beyond the Indigenous population is because for real change to happen, it has to happen for everyone, not just one particular population. So while I am thrilled that as Indigenous people we are finding our way back again, I think that we need to do more than find our way back. We need to become leaders and we need to learn to walk beside people and help them see life the way that we see it.