 My name is Alina Rasmus and I work at Kaleime Dene School. This year I am the culture coordinator. I'm working with two cultural instructors from our community to implement all the cultural programming in our school. Can you please describe your program, what it's called and what are the age groups? So I work at Kaleime Dene School in Dilo. It's the community school of Dilo. We go from junior kindergarten to grade 12. We have about 120 students any given day. And we, in our program, we run a language program. It's Willa De Yati. And so all of our students have language classes two days a week. And then on top of that we run culture camps, we call them. So for example, at the beginning of the year, we harvested cranberries in the fall and then we made cranberry jam with our students. And then we harvested medicines. We harvested spruce gum, rose hips, and Labrador tea. And then we made a spruce gum salve for all of our sores and ailments. And we also made Labrador tea rose hip cream for our lotion. And now our next camp that's coming up is rabbit snaring. So we've made our rabbit snares in class. And next week, everyone from junior kindergarten to high school will be out on the land setting rabbit snares. A part of it is always the language. So we infuse Willa De Yati in everything we do. With our older students, we've started having our language classes in the language only. But we find that our grade five students, some of our students have anxiety and it's too stressful for them. And we don't want it to be stressful. So we just have small periods of time where we're speaking only Willa De Yati. What do you hope to accomplish through the program? And how do you measure the success of the program? So first of all, we're an Indigenous school and we need to honor that in everything that we do. So a large part of what we're doing is helping teachers to incorporate Dene ways throughout their daily class routines and infuse language into the daily classroom routines. We start every morning by praying in the language and then we use the language for our greetings and our basic commands throughout the school day. We're also trying to encourage our students to speak Willa De Yati at home as much as they can and outside of the classroom because we know that our languages are at a critical state and the more we can do to keep them living and breathing, the better it is. So in addition to in the school, we're also hoping to bring it into our homes too. So how do you measure the success of the program? Having students speaking Willa De Yati in our school were successful and you can really see so many students shine when we're on the land and participating in the activity and it inspires them to write stories and make all these connections in their life are two cultural instructors that we have right now. Some of our best classes have been when we just talk with students about who they are, who their people are, how they're connected, the different ancestors and things like that and then it gets kids talking and thinking and then they come back to school while I talk to my mom and my great-grandfather was a reindeer herder and it's really cool and it's getting kids excited about their own history and who they are as a people. It's lots of fun. From your perspective, what is Indigenous education? I think Indigenous education has a lot of layers because a lot of Indigenous students are learning about their history and their culture which is a part of Indigenous education and they're gaining pride and self-esteem in that knowing all the phenomenal things that their ancestors did and were a part of because so much of our history is from a Eurocentric point of view so it's really important to bring that out not only for the Indigenous students but for the non-Indigenous students also. However, that being said, at our school all of our students are Indigenous. But I know a lot of our teachers are really learning and they're really learning so much that they didn't know which is really important because we have to make sure to get that history out and then not only that but moving forward all the amazing things that Indigenous people are doing and the trails that they're blazing it's super exciting and I think we have to really celebrate that because our mainstream society often celebrates other things and our students are often idolizing other people that aren't necessarily always positive moving forward so in that way it's really important too. From your perspective, what knowledge is important that you would like to pass on to the next generation? I think sometimes the word respect is used too often and not understood and I think that for kids to learn a healthy respect of who they are and where they came from it will really help them moving forward in their lives. To be able to reach their own potential. What is your vision for Indigenous education over the next 10 years? From a language perspective, it would be it's critical for us to look to immersion programs that not only immerse kids in school but have a role for families too because if it's just spoken at school we're not gonna be able to do enough. We have to get language in our homes we have to have our young parents encouraged to speak the language and really we have to have a movement up front that works with the schools in getting the language out there and everywhere. We're immersed in English. The music we listen to, the TV shows, the radio everything we're immersed in English all the time we have to find a way to shift that paradigm and make ourselves immersed in the language and the language of the land that we're on. You know, we're on Yellowknives Denny First Nation territory so that's the language that we look to for this area if it's another area it might be Cree if it's another area, whatever. Whatever the language you are on we need to be immersed in it and in Dilo it's nice because we have our street signs are in Willi Deiati but why not Yellowknife? Why not Sombake? Why is Yellowknife not called Sombake? You know, why? Like we have to start putting it out there everywhere all the time for people to start becoming accustomed to it and using it and making it a regular part of everyday life.