 I'm Angela Brockway. Hi, it's my daughter. I'm Madison Bartlett. Do you want me to start? Okay, so the program is the outdoor education program and it's for the grade five students on the west coast of Newfoundland right now. I'm sure there are other outdoor education programs but the one we're talking about is based out of Kill Devil Camp in Grossmorn and what it is is a two and a half day kind of gathering for the kids to be there with their teachers and they learn on the land and it's a beautiful program. So my daughter Madison was there this year with her grade five class and I went as a chaperone and we had a great time. So Madison, what would you think about it? Well, it was really fun. It was better than having to do work in a classroom because you've got to do it outside and just be free, stretch, do whatever. And I got to hang out with my friends that weren't in my class so yeah. There were a lot. I'll help you with this. So it's okay for us to banter a little bit here because yeah. So think about the first day when we got there. You guys just got all set up and we had a meal and stuff so what did we do? Everybody just kind of congregated and we ate and went right to free time but then went right to activities. But I can't remember what first day. So we you did a little bit of science, a little bit of English, a little bit of math, a little bit of everything. You were walking through the trees. Remember doing the tree talk and all that stuff? Okay. So we're walking through the trees and the teacher is asking you to listen and write something about the things that you hear, the things that you see. Yeah. So that was poetry, right? Yeah, it was really beautiful. Oh, this guy taught us how to tell, I think it was like how to tell the difference between moose poop and rabbit poop. Yeah. So yeah. I think the success can be measured by the kids, the reaction to it and what they've learned from it. It's palpable to be in there and just feel their energy and how excited they are to be outside and fresh air just brings a whole new life to them. And the measurement of success is right there in their faces and then their reactions to it afterwards and the things that the way they carry that back with them and the memories that they make, it's just awesome. Yeah. He learned a lot of stuff but that was a few months ago as well. Okay, how about if I just jag in memory a little bit because maybe something that you didn't know before you went there was about the medicines, the medicines that make my people would have used years and years ago. Did you learn anything about that? Did that make sense to you? It did and I didn't know anything about that kind of medicine before I went there and like. Did you enjoy that? Yeah. That was in a TPE, right? That was my favorite one. Yeah, it felt like it was, you know, we were doing something from many, many years ago sitting in a TPE with a fire in the middle and Nicole Travers taught us that day and I say us because I felt like I was a student there and she just showed the kids about the medicines and talked a little bit about the directions and their meanings and make my culture and it was, I think it's probably the first introduction for a lot of those kids to that type of culture and heritage which is unfortunate because a lot of them actually are from that culture and this might be the first time they've ever learned something like that. So, yeah. And what else did, what about the music? Do you remember the songs? Yeah, and it was like, it sounds like it was like in a different kind of language or something. It wasn't a different language. Yeah, language was it. It was the big my language but it's really difficult to pronounce if you don't know how to, if you've never heard it before. That's how people learned. They would pass it on from, you know, pass it down generation to generation and I mean they learned the language the same way we learn English, right? Well, my favorite part was there was this activity where we got to swing on a rope. We, we had to like hold something and then swing over a rope and like put it down or something or we'd have to like throw it back to the other person or we'd have to like tie it to the rope and then swing the rope back to give it to the other person. It was like a bag or something. Yeah, so and some other really good parts of the camp was, well, I shared a cabin with some of my close friends and my best friend. I just think that I learned a little bit more of my culture so I knew what it was all about but I didn't like, it didn't really change me. I just, I was happy that I learned more. I didn't have this program as I've said in grade five so I did get to attend the program twice. I was there with my son in 2016 and again with my daughter this year in 2018 in the fall. Last year. Yeah, last year and it was life altering for me as an adult. I'm not sure that we'll see that in the kids just yet. Maybe in years to come they can recognize that certain things came from that experience but as an adult I can remember leaving there with just a sense of like a powerful feeling that our kids just learned something amazing. They just had a beautiful experience that they're not going to have anywhere else. It was something that sat with me for a long time and when my son went there in 2016, I can just remember leaving there and saying I need to be there for when my daughter goes and the very first day of school this year. I sent in my form to become a volunteer. It was like first day of school. I need to be there for this and that was before I was involved in my current work which is with the Halliboo First Nations office and being there at the program again was just it's life altering. It's a life altering experience to be there as an adult and I spoke with some of the girls that worked there at the time and I had said to them as if we were leaving you know just thank you so much and you guys you have my dream job. I could only wish to be doing that and little did I know three months later that would be my job so yeah yeah it's very very exciting and I mean for me it's just been a profound experience and I can only hope that our kids are able to build up at you know with the same kind of feelings and the same kind of experiences yeah yeah um we had a smudging. Do you remember that? Yeah yeah smudging was a really beautiful ceremony and and I love the reaction of the kids because the kids for the most part it's the first time they've done that and and the feeling is kind of like embarrassment it's like what do I do? I don't I don't understand this this is new to me and and they're looking around and they're watching other people as they begin to smudge and it looks like you know they're doing different movements they're pulling the the smoke towards them and this is a cleansing ritual and they're learning by watching other people do it and as it comes to them it's like you know why you you did it I'm going to do it so that this person can do it and you see that embarrassment kind of just melt away and they become a group of people that's doing something together for the first time so smudging ceremony was absolutely beautiful um before every meal we had a little sing-along so we're um at for example like a church camp type of thing you would do a prayer before you would eat um there were prayers said in a little bit of a different perspective um but we would always sing before we ate and the songs were traditional magma songs and by the end of camp which was only a couple of days the kids were singing right along with the songs yeah and we had several people the kids were up drumming did you get up drumming? No no but there were of course there were so many kids there was only a few drums but some of your friends were up drumming and stuff and yeah yeah so those were the traditional parts but besides some of the learnings that we got while we were there and again I say we because I felt like a student I did raise my hand to go to go drumming but they chose somebody else yeah because there weren't really enough drums for everybody yeah right yeah it'd be nice if if that was something that we could put off it can't making drums right yeah that'd be wonderful but anyhow we'll see how it goes in the future this is when they get their introduction to it first uh at camp although sometimes not first at camp they do a fall camp and a spring camp and it alternates by year so this year was the fall camp so that was their first experience this year and now coming into February March we've got a couple of visits to most of the schools in the area the ones that we work with that we do school outreach with we'll have a mini powwow and we'll have some other sessions there with some local groups and and get together for like some of the ceremonies they'll get another taste of it they'll make rattles so that's another part of our school outreach that we do other than the outdoor education program but yeah this is where they first start with out is in grade five and i think it's a good place to start because they've got they're just starting to get some of those social connections this is something that's starting to be important to them so yeah building on those groups and stuff at that age yeah really important i think uh from my perspective indigenous education is something that's for everybody number one not just indigenous people it's about respect it's about um being simple it's about living off the land it's about being one with nature and being respectful of the things that we have around us and our resources and not taking things for granted and a big part of that is taking what we know and passing that knowledge on to the people that are small to us and we have to teach them how to do those things so indigenous education to me is everything that we pass on to our kids that is of real importance oh my goodness uh i think everything is important to pass on to the next generation one thing that really comes to mind when i think about this program is i do a bit of comparison to what life was like when i was that age and i can remember being 10 years old and living in a very different social climate where to be in newfoundlander was to be a part of a culture where the cod fishery was dying out um we heard about the the cod moratorium that was the big news that was something that was you know it was a big deal it was a loss of jobs for a lot of people it meant an exodus of families from the province and there was so much uncertainty it was really a hard time to kind of grow up and and feel like you were part of something good i feel like if we had had something that had brought us a little closer to our culture as people as newfoundlanders as maybe you were a part of the migma culture which of course at that time we knew nothing about um i feel like if we had made some of those connections we would have had a better understanding of the positive side of being a newfoundlander and maybe it would have kept us a little closer to our home where i saw you know when i graduated high school so many people moved away and it was just that's what you did you just moved away if you want a life if you want something good if you want to strive for something you have to go away to do that and i feel like that's just it's not right and if we had had more of a connection to our own land our own history we would have been more likely to stay here and to you know make our own opportunities here and to pride ourselves in the things that we did here yeah i think we need to pass that on to the kids and outdoor education to me is the starting point of that bringing them back to the land getting them back to basics teaching them that what we have here is something to be proud of and they need to take that and and build it into their own lives and hopefully they can take that and use it as a source of pride and something that they can build on for the future well i feel like right now we're in the infancy of what we can do with indigenous education we're just beginning to see some of these things actually come to the table in our school system and before now it was more of a bit of a fight to try to get our culture and our background as a piece of knowledge that we have in the mainstream every day now we're seeing of course across canada with the reconciliation of you know indigenous peoples with the the schools oh my goodness edit this part please the residential schools and the horrors of those times and the reconciliation that's coming from that you can feel that all across canada so there there is more focus on that right now which is wonderful i think indigenous education in our province um eventually we'll have to go a little more in the direction of looking at what our culture is and the history of our people so if we are able to go in the direction of making indigenous education really important we'll be able to get back to the basics of our own history so we can look back at the migma people who lived here and the biopic people who lived here and so on i mean that we've got six first nations groups here in newfoundland and labrador so it's really important to include that as a part of our history and a part of our education uh so that we can identify a little bit more with who we are where we came from instead of looking at our history books and our social studies books and seeing history of europeans and you know canada when it started 150 years ago i mean that's important history but it's not everything and it doesn't bring us very far back i think when we look at indigenous education we're looking at building on roots and that's so important for for everybody and that's for indigenous people people who identify as indigenous and people who don't at all everybody can learn something from that i i feel so fortunate that i live in a time where i can watch my kids grow up and feel this culture in their own lives i wish i had had a piece of that as a 10 year old i feel like um i i moved here uh my family's from here and we were born my sister and i'm a twin sister and we were born in edmonton we didn't move back here until we were eight and i can remember moving here into a just such a negative space everybody was worried everybody was scared they were gonna lose their jobs everybody was thinking about moving away like i said earlier and it was it was a hard way to try to um what's the word i'm looking for try to be happy well yeah to try to be happier and to try to feel pride and where you're from and to really like put down your roots into the ground you didn't know if that was the thing to do because newfoundland seemed like a a maybe place maybe we shouldn't be here maybe this isn't the right thing you know maybe maybe if we're here we're going to be poor maybe by being at an island we're going to run out of resources because we have no connections to our own land we rely on the mainland maybe there's a lot of things we need to worry about so i think yeah we need we need to bring our own selves back to the land back to being more self-sufficient um you know working at our own resources without depending on mainland and uh yeah i think i think indigenous everything brings us back there we have a lot to learn we have a long way to go