 We acknowledge that we are on traditional territories of many First Nations, Métis and Inuit whose footsteps have marked Alberta's lands for centuries. Welcome Athena. Hi, can you hear me? Hello. You've been here. Yep, loud and clear. Okay, good. Well, welcome to Wow as we say in Cree. I'm very happy to be here this evening talking about connecting with First Nations, Métis and Inuit families. So I work, as you know, I work for Edmonton Public Schools. I am Métis, connected to the Lac-Saint-Anne-Métis. I'm Mohawk, Cree, first Scottish and French. And I have probably, I tell my girls, 50,000 relatives in Alberta. I'm related to Cunningham's, Bellcourt's, Dion's, LaTan's. And so I have tons of family around this area. So we'll go to the first slide, which is the treaty acknowledgement that Celeste read out at the beginning. And so I'd like to start with asking the participants what you hope to get, or if you have any questions right now, what you hope to get out of this webinar. I find that it will help me to be more interactive with you. And so maybe just a few comments on what you'd like to know is how I'd like to start tonight. They're typing down in the chat window there for you, Athena. I know for myself, I can let you know, I believe that even as educators, that it's part of honoring and learning about the different FNMI cultures and sharing that knowledge as well. I know our kids are starting to learn about it in school. So it's nice as parents to be able to know what's happening as well. Thank you. Okay, so Dawn has said, Dawn would like to know how to make her school, Alberta School, more welcoming. That's great because we address some of that so that parents can be engaged. And I welcome questions, comments throughout. If you have as an EA, she'd like to know how to do better welcoming and acknowledging students' culture. That's great. Okay, well, I'd like to start with talking about the treaties because that's one way to welcome families of First Nations and Métis culture. And so does anybody know how many treaties there are in Alberta? I'm going to talk about Alberta because that's where I'm from and that's where we are. So can anybody make a guess how many treaties are in Alberta? There are three treaties that are acknowledged. There's two that cross over a little bit from Saskatchewan, but because there are no First Nations communities there, we recognize the three treaties, 6, 7, and 8. And so treaty number 8 is up north, northern Alberta, and treaty number 6 is more central admittance in treaty 6, and then treaty 7 is down south where Calgary is. And so does anybody know why the treaties are numbered the way they are in Alberta? They go 8, 6, and 7. Anybody guess? I can see people are typing. The 3 in Alberta is what I like to focus on. So they're number 8s up north, number 6 is in the middle, and number 7 is down south. And so the reason that the treaties are numbered the way they are is because of the date that they were signed. So the one around Edmonton was signed first in Alberta, so that was treaty number 6. The treaties do go across the country, up to number 11, I think. And so depending on the date that they were signed, that's what the treaty area is numbered. And so on the PowerPoint right now, you can see that we have a poster, the artwork was done by a student from Queen Elizabeth High School here in Edmonton. And we chose her artwork last year to be on our posters. She won our contest with it, so we were pretty happy with that. And so this is an acknowledgement that we encourage our schools here in Edmonton public to use, perhaps to use it with in their morning announcements or at the beginning of an assembly. We provide these posters for our schools, one for every classroom if they want. And so we would say we acknowledge that we are on treaty 6 territory, because we're in Edmonton, a traditional meeting grounds, gathering place and traveling route to the Cree, Soto, Blackfoot, Métis, Métis, Dene, and Dakota Sioux. And we acknowledge all the many First Nations Métis and Inuit whose footsteps have marked these lands for centuries. So I have found that when schools read this treaty acknowledgement that the students then start to get to know the different groups of First Nations and Métis who are in their area. So sometimes when I go into a school now and I ask them who are the First Nations, they recite from the poster. They start saying the Cree, the Soto, the Blackfoot. And so I was thrilled the first time it happened. I was like, this is great. The kids are learning who are the First Nations in their area from this poster. So it really works. And I would encourage you, like if you're in a different treaty area, to make up your own poster with the groups that are in your area. If you are in my husband's out there visiting, and so I feel like I should go tell him to be quiet. So if you're in Alberta and you want to use our poster as your own, as an acknowledgement in your schools, please feel free. We share everything that we have. And so I will show you on our website where everything is. Can you just give me a minute? I've got to go tell them to be quiet. Just fellow Dina's away. I'll let everyone know as well that these resources that she's talking about are available for everyone, not just for people in the Edmonton area. So those of you joining us down in Laduke in Nova Scotia, although you're in Fort Saskatchewan, these resources will all be available for you. I'm really sorry about that. No problem, Dina. Yeah, they're getting a bit excited. My brother's visiting. And so, yeah, I'm going to show you on our website where you can find this poster and print it. And since most of you are in Alberta and on Treaty 6 territory, please feel free to use this poster. Because when I was seeing where you guys were all from, I was thinking, oh, they're all Treaty 6, except for Saskatchewan. So... Athena, do you have posters? Oh, sorry. Athena? Go ahead. Yep. Do they have posters for the different Treaty areas, too, like for Treaty 7 territory or Treaty 8? Well, you could contact the school districts there, like maybe Cal Republic or Grand Prairie Public. I'm not sure whether the other school districts have them, but that would be a good place to start. Perfect. Thank you. And so another way to connect with families is through a sharing circle. And so, perhaps in a family meeting or at your school council meeting, you could start open with the Treaty acknowledgement and use the sharing circle, the Seven Sacred Teachings. And as was pointed out this morning, the seventh one, which is bravery, probably is behind the picture. So it didn't come through. They are love, courage, humility, truth, wisdom, respect, and bravery. And so we use these teachings in a sharing circle where we respect ourselves and others and what's said in the circle, stays in the circle. I think it would be really neat to use this in a school council meeting or if you're meeting with a family or in your classroom. You can use it with your students to talk about, discuss things that maybe they're learning. You would use something to pass around. And so like a talking stick or a favorite stuffed animal, maybe if you're working with kids, who's ever holding the talking stick gets to speak and what's said in the circle stays in the circle. And it is about respect. And so it is one way of incorporating some of the culture into your classroom or into your school council meetings. So does anybody have any questions or comments? Yes. I encourage you to ask me questions, ask me any of your wondering. That would be great. And so I would like to share with you a technique or a strategy that I learned when I was working in our communities on the Mitchiff Language Project that when I meet with the families or the elders or the people, I would introduce myself in the way that I did at the beginning of this webinar. And so I asked around to the Cree speakers and they call it Utsitansi. So who's your belly button connected to is what it means. Who are you connected to? So in our communities, one of the first things people will ask me is where I'm from. And so it's just, it's a cultural thing. We're very used to it. And I find that it helps families to be more comfortable with teachers and principals and to come into a school council. So this morning we, some of the people typed it in the chat and those who have audio told us. So if we could, we'll have a sharing circle now. And if somebody would like to start, as you see on the screen, you can start with your name, where your family's from, your roots are, your culture, whatever you want to share with us would be great. So I'd like to invite the participants to do that. Whoever would like to go first, that would be great. Hi everybody. Hi. Hi. My name is Bev Thompson. My family is from Southern Ontario. My roots are Scottish and English. My parents are from Hamilton, but live in Nova Scotia. And my grandparents are from Hamilton, Ontario. And my great grandparents are all from England and Scotland. Thank you very much. And I would like to invite Brenda or Celeste as well if you'd like to share that would be great. Sure. I'll go next. My name is Brenda. My family is from Edmonton, but my roots are from England, Scotland and Ireland. My parents are English and Scottish. And my grandparents were, hmm, I know my grandma, my grandparents were from Ireland, but I'm not sure about the other side of the family. So that's me in a nutshell. Thank you. And I see Dawn that you've got your, you're in the chat. So thank you very much for sharing that with us. Hi, I'm Jen. And my family is from the Edmonton area. And my roots are Irish and English. And my parents are kind of a mix. And I don't know too much about my family and my grandparents actually. So it's kind of a mystery to me. Thanks. Thank you very much. Did we get everybody? I'll throw my hat in the ring. My name is Celeste Brodinski. And my family is from Alberta. We're kind of all over the place. My roots are from England and Wales and Ireland. My parents are surely in Jack Langford. And my grandparents were Lila and John Langford and Rita and Duncan Plain. Thank you very much. And so when I'm in a circle with the participants, I like to ask them how that felt for them to share that with us, with people you've just met. Maybe we could have a few comments about how that felt. It's exciting to hear everybody's roots and where everybody's from. Yeah, great. And Deb said she feels like we are more equal. And that definitely is part of the strategies to help parents feel more comfortable, more on a, you know, level. Because as we know, especially young students, they tell the teachers or whatever everything, you know, teachers know a lot about families. Yet families, all they know sometimes is that you're an EA or grade five teacher or you're on school council. So this is just one way to help connect with the families. Any other comments or any questions? I just find it really interesting to hear where we're all from. And yeah, it puts a whole different slant on the sharing circle side of it. I think Deb's right. It puts you kind of on equal footing and it's just really interesting and exciting. Great, thank you. Don? Is this a formal way of introducing yourself when meeting with elders or anybody else? Yeah, yeah, definitely. This is something that I would do when I meet a new, an elder who I don't know who they, you know, the first time meeting them, I guess what I'm trying to say, or when I meet with a family for the first time, who are, you know, when the family is First Nations made here in the U.S. this is something that we're used to in our culture that, you know, we just regularly tell each other where we're from, who we're connected to, who's our family. I don't know if you've heard the saying, all my relations. And so, you know, we talk about who we're related to. And some of the time you find out that you're related, this person's probably your cousin. They're probably on your family tree. So that's even more exciting when you need a cousin. Anything else before we move on? So I thought I'd tell you a bit about where I work and what we do to help our teachers, principals, school councils. Everybody is working in education at Edmonton Public Schools to connect with our culture, with our families. So our unit is made up of consultants. And we work in leadership groups under four assistance superintendents. So there's two consultants per leadership group. And we work in catchments. So the schools that we work in go from kindergarten to grade 12 so we can support students in transitions and work with entire families because their students are going to the schools within our catchments. And so this is a new model that we've just started working under the last couple years and seems to be working quite well for us. We also have a cultural consultant who is amazing with connecting arts through cultural identity. She's from Saskatchewan. She is Lakota Sioux and has incredible knowledge around how to make do beading and make different things with the students' painting. The students really come away with a positive sense of their cultural identity after they've worked with Holly Zichpie as her name. We also have a mental health consultant who does a lot of work organizing things like the Jack Summit. She does mental health first aid and she's involved in many other programs and projects related to mental health, physical health, spiritual health, all of the health that our students and families need support with. Recently, we hired a research consultant, which I'm pretty thrilled about because she can help us with our statistics and so that we can learn from it and learn what's working and what's not and what we can do better by looking at our stats. And she's amazing. She knows all the programs and so we're very lucky to have her as well. And we have a supervisor, wonderful supervisor, Melissa Purcell, who supports us in our work and moves the work forward with the leadership teams that we work with. We also have liaisons mostly in our high schools. We are working to get more in our junior highs. And so all to get all of us together, we plan and host an annual grad, which we call an honoring celebration, which is a barrier-free grad for First Nations Métis and Inuit students and their families to come to the dinner and the students walk across the stage, the superintendent comes, we invite chiefs, we invite the mayor, all kinds of people come and bring greetings to the students and congratulate them on graduating. And we also organize and support summer school courses such as CALM with First Nations Métis and Inuit cultural theme. And so students can get three credits or five credits through summer courses as well as spring courses that we're doing now. So that was a lot of information. So I would like to open the floor if you have any comments or questions about what I've just discussed about what our unit does. And we are always available to support through email in particular. If you have questions or you want to know who to talk to about different things, we will always try to help. I know, so there's a question from Bev, do all school divisions have a similar support? I know Calgary Public does because we've been down there and visited with their unit. Here in Edmonton, Edmonton, Catholic they have a unit that we work closely with. They're called Aboriginal Learning Services and so we partner with them and the city so we all work together to provide experiences for our students. I'm not sure about smaller school jurisdictions. I used to work up in Grand Prairie and I know that Grand Prairie Public has a small unit, mostly made up of liaisons in their schools but they do have a supervisor who works out of head office in Grand Prairie. And so we have many consultants so if you have questions, you want to know who to reach in your area, we can definitely help you figure out who that would be or where it would be. So we can go to our website now. Brenda has over in the chat area. So if you click on that link I will show you a few things on our website. You can go through it at your leisure but I'll just point out some things that might pique your interest. So over on the left hand side we have our First Nations Native Inuit Family Guide. This is a really good resource when you're meeting with families or inviting families into your school council or into your school. In it, we have teased out different cultural programs that we have at Edmonton Public like Cree Language, our Aboriginal Head Start and the schools that offer Cree and offer cultural teachings like Amaskoochee, one of our high school junior high high schools. And so it's just information like that that we felt that families of First Nations Native Inuit students would be interested in. And while we were making the guide we also took it out to Family Nights and to our partners in the community to ask if they, you know, to get their feedback. So all the documents that we create are made with our community and feedback from them as well as our career pathways guide. And so that's aimed more for the junior high high school but it does have information in there for as young as kindergarten. And I'd really like to draw your attention to our guiding document, First Nations Native Inuit Guiding Document. What I use this document for now is the wording. So if anybody is applying for funding on behalf of First Nations Native Inuit students and their families are to introduce the culture into your school or school council. We encourage you to please feel free to use the wording out of this document. Cut and paste if you want. Everything on our website is for you to use and we encourage all other people to use it. There is no plagiarism. We don't look for anything like that. We really want to share everything that we have. We also have a newsletter called Honoring Our Voices. So if something's going on in our schools, we encourage teachers, principals to take pictures, to write a paragraph and we put it in our newsletter and we send it out to our schools quarterly. Usually. And so that's something maybe that school council even could look at putting together newsletters such as that. And the self-identification information. So if people have questions about why self-identify or who self-identifies, this information comes directly from Alberta Education because they are the ones who set the standard for the self-identification. And so this is where our poster is. And so you could print it from here or take the words from here and make it your own for your own area. And if you need to help doing that, I could definitely help you find the right people to find out who are the First Nations made to your Inuit in your area. So that's the left side of our website. I would just like to show you a couple things up at the top. The ribbon at the top where it says, Educates. If you click on that, this is something that we have made up Educates in our unit and we lend them out to our schools for a two-week period and then the school truck mails it to the next school who's going to use it. And so under the paragraph that describes the Educates in the box where it says First Nations, if you go down to the third sentence, it says click here for description of the contents. So if you click that and you go in and you take a look and it's got all the Educates that we have and when you click on the folder, it opens up and it's, um, or on the arrow. It has everything in there that you would need to make your own kit except for the artifacts. So you could view them or download them, print them, put them in a binder, and then it also talks about the artifacts that you would need to go into your Educate. If you have trouble finding them, just send me an email and I can talk to our admin assistant who buys all our stuff up at the top of that page. There are, there is a list of places where we buy some things and so you could try those places first if you're interested in making these kits. Any questions? Hi Dawn. You actually had to go on to the, click on the link there. Brenda posted a few screen downs, roll up in the chat room. It's the H-T-T-P-S sites.google.com If you, the FNMI Education, if you click on that, it would actually take you to this First Nations Métis and Inuit Education website from the Edmonton Public School site. And she was, Athena's been talking about some of the features that are on the website. Yeah, and if you have any further questions or you think of something later on, please feel free to send me an email. And so everything on our website, like I said, we share everything. You can look at it at your leisure, go through. We also have in, on the resources, our literacy resources. There is the Literacy Kit, which is something that schools can start with. It's got 76 books in it from K-12 with First Nations Métis and Inuit theme. To buy all the books costs about a thousand dollars. So that's something that maybe school councils might be interested in supporting, or you could talk to your principal or to find out. And if you go to our website and go under our literacy resources, under reviews, you can scroll down and you'll see the Literacy Kit. And you can click on it and go through and look at all the books that are in there. And there's a bit of a review about the books. As well, if you have questions about books, you can also send me an email. And I can try to help you find out whether they're approved or reviewed. That's another thing that our unit does, is review books for our schools and for publishers. So, any questions about our website? There's also edu-sites in there. There's one that is on the history of Edmonton. It's called a Miskwichiwa Sky Gun. And one of my co-workers. Oh, thank you, Jen. One of my co-workers did that edu-site. It has six lessons in it. The history from an Indigenous perspective of Edmonton. And they're great. Like, anybody can just go in and print them off and alter them to your area if you want or just use them the way they are. And after, they're really aimed at the grade four curriculum. But you could, you know, teachers, of course, know how to make them fit for the class that they're teaching. Well, after schools do the lesson plans, teachers' classrooms do the lesson plans, they can take their students on a river walk, which my colleague does. And we're all, all of us in our unit are learning how to do the river walk from the lesson plan. And so, it's very interactive, very hands-on. It's really a great way to teach kids as well and to teach them about the culture. So, I'm going to move on to the next slide. And talk a bit about protocol. So, the picture that we see here are some of the medicines that we use in our protocols, smudging, sweats, powders. Do you recognize any of the medicines that are in the pictures? Is it big enough for you to see? If anybody wants to take a guess at what they are? I think sweetgrass is the long braid. That's right, it is. Sage, yeah, definitely. This right here is sage. And this is fungus. And this is a root. That's fungus and a root. Rat root, I think is the medicine. And so, we use the sweetgrass in a braid because it makes it strong. And the elders say it's for spiritual, emotional, and physical. And so, we've been braided all together. It makes it very strong. You know, when I'm doing a presentation, I have the sweetgrass and you can see that you can't pull it apart because of the braid, which makes it stronger. So, sweetgrass is a male medicine, they call it, which can be used by both male and females unless a female is in her moon time. Then we can't smudge with sweetgrass. Sage is the female medicine and so women can smudge with sage any time that they want. And as well, men can smudge with sweetgrass as well. The fungus, the elders say, helps calm, it's very calming when you smudge with it. And so, I encourage, like, if schools have smudge in their schools and kids sometimes, you know, are upset or whatever is going on, that if they have some fungus that the child can smudge with it and help them calm down like a type of meditation. And so, Celeste, do you have a question? I do, Athena. This is a silly question. Does the braid of the sweetgrass have any kind of correlation or relation to the braids that the young men wear and the women wear in their hair? Yeah, the braid is quite prominent in our cultures. You see a lot of people wear braids for strength because there is a belief, you know, that our hair gives us strength. And so, yeah, I would say definitely that the braid is significant for strength. Thank you. Gotcha. And so, I have listed on here the teachings. I was gifted from my friends with a smudge bag and the smudge teachings, which she received from her elder. And so, I feel that I can go into schools, go into classrooms, and do a smudge teaching because I was gifted the smudge bag. I wouldn't, you know, if other people want to do the smudge or to teach about smudge, then you can ask maybe First Nations or maybe people in your area or ask me to help you find someone to teach you about smudging and help you get your own smudge bag because it is a beautiful thing. I mean, people smudge at home in the privacy of their own home as well. It helps calm and, you know, just think positive thoughts. Jen, do you have a question? Hi. Yeah, I do. I just wanted to know about that. So, is someone who is not a First Nations able to be taught how to properly smudge and then be able to pass that on or share that with our class? Oh, for sure. Yeah. Definitely. You, like anyone else, can receive the teachings, can receive a smudge bag, and then once you receive the teachings, then you have them too. You can pass them on. You can show them in your classroom. Definitely, yes. Brenda? I was wondering with regards to that. Is this something that you do more than once? I know a friend of mine had mentioned that she had done something like that when she had moved into a new home. Is it something that needs to be done more than once? I would say it's a personal thing that people when they move into a new home will smudge the home, definitely. Or if something happened that brought negative vibes into your house or into your classroom, it's like a cleansing, definitely. And you do it whenever you feel the need. It's a personal thing, definitely. Sometimes we smudge before a conference or I encourage schools to use it for students if they need just a quiet place to calm down and center themselves. And there are definitely First Nations, Métis students who know how to smudge, who smudge at home with their families and so are used to it. And they could even, if they felt comfortable, that could be almost like a presentation to their class, to teach their class about smudging. It would be a really good way to connect. Absolutely. I used to work with an Inuit woman and she said they don't smudge, the Inuit don't smudge. So just for your information. So when elders, I'd like to talk a little bit about elders, we help our schools connect to elders. So we would be the first contact because we have the relationships with certain elders, like my colleagues have different relationships with different elders. So depending on what the school asked for, that we would perhaps ask each other, ask around which elder would be the best fit for maybe something like that. And even if we do find an elder and we would do the tobacco offering with the teacher, if the person who is requesting an elder to come into the classroom or to a school council meeting, and the first medicine is tobacco. So we would do the tobacco offering and our unit supplies our schools with Mother Earth's tobacco. We don't use cigarettes because we work with an impressionable population and so we use natural tobacco. We talk about how the elder would give it back to Mother Earth as a tobacco offering. And so when you go to ask an elder, request them to come into your classroom. I'll answer your question in a second, okay Beth. So when you're asking an elder, requesting them maybe to come into your classroom to do storytelling or something, you would take tobacco with you to make the offering. If the elder accepts the tobacco and they have made an agreement that they will come into your school, if they feel they are not the right person for what you're asking, they will not accept the tobacco. They might point you in a different direction and give you somebody else's name or just say, I don't feel like I'm the right person for that. And so that's one way of connecting to the elders in the Edmonton area. So we have a list, we know the elders and once the relationship is built between the school and the elder, our school council and the elder, then that's our cue to back away. And so we are just there as a go-between until the relationship is strong enough to hold. So I'll answer Beth's question. Is there something similar to smudging for the Inuit culture? I don't think so. Eileen never told us that there was anything similar. So I'm not Inuit, but I know from working with her, she just said they don't smudge. That's not part of their culture. So I'm not sure if there's something else they do. And there are... So Jen has asked, what about elders in the outlying areas? Definitely the elders do live in outlying areas, like out at Alexis or at Paul Band, which is out by Wabman, or Enoch's just outside of Edmonton, or Alexander, which is just outside of Edmonton as well. So there are many reserves across Alberta, where usually that's where our elders come from. And so usually that's where our elders come from. And so wherever you're living, the area that you're in, if you're wondering if there's elders in your area, you could send me an email. I could ask around. I could find out. Connecting with them? Connecting with elders? Is that what you're asking, Jen? Yeah. So we can help our... Another way to connect with families and elders of First Nations, Métis-Ninuit students is to phone the education director at the band office at a reserve that's close to you, would probably be the best, but we can start building relationships with the people on the reserves that it may be... Like somebody is from Ladouk, I think it said. So a reserve may be down south, down towards... Well, Ladouk's not far from Edmonton, so maybe Muscochise is out there. There's like the four bands out there. Enoch is in Edmonton, and usually most bands have an education director that you could contact, and they're used to talking to other school districts and working together, so that would be a really good way. If you needed help in getting that started, I would always be happy to help support you to get in contact with people. Celeste? Hi, Athena. I was just wondering about elders. Are they... I think, myself, I've always had an envision in my head that they're elderly people. Is that always the way, or can they be younger elders, or what makes someone an elder? Well, that's a very good question. They... Most of the time they are elderly, but not always, you're right. What makes an elder an elder is their community. If they are... If their community says they're an elder, then we accept that they're an elder. In our community, we talk about... we get suspicious when people are out self-proclaiming that they're an elder. We don't like to encourage our schools with people who don't have their community behind them. And so we work directly with the reserves and in who they... We ask them who their elders are, and they usually will put us in contact with them, is how we have been finding our elders. And I work with incredible people who one of my colleagues used to work for the Alberta government. And so she has a great connection to lots of elders across Alberta. And so, you know, she knows a lot of them in the south. She did a lot of work down there. And so we have a list of elders, but we don't make that open to the public because we like to make sure that the elder's not, you know, too busy, too overworked as well. It's about the relationship, and so we like to help support the relationship between the new person and the elder. Great. Excellent. Thank you. You're welcome. So we also have a document coming out, a protocol document. Hopefully it'll be out before the end of this year. And so it talks a lot about engaging with an elder and the medicines and the protocols and different information. And so I told the group this morning that when that document is ready, I will send it to Wendy Kever, and she could send it out, the link out to whoever attended the webinar so that as soon as we get it, I'll send it out to you. It's a really good document. It's a draft right now, and so we've all seen it. And we're really just waiting for it to come out. And it has a lot of... I tried to explain a lot about what I'm telling you on this one slide. So any more questions, comments, or anything? Before I go to the next one. Okay, so did everyone get a chance to watch the family night video? Oh, good. Good, good. So we were asked to partner with Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium to make that family night video. I'm a social worker, so that's one of the... my specialties, I guess, is help supporting schools to host a family night. And as you saw, the family night just has a theme of First Nations Made Teen Inuit. Everyone is welcome to come and learn about our culture. And so when, in a group, I would ask how schools or school councils, how would you... how do you think that you could reach into the circle of First Nations Made Teen Inuit school community to make it more welcoming? Do you have ideas that you might want to try or might want to discuss right now that you might, you know, need a little bit of support with perhaps? Hi, Beth here. Hi. I think one of the things that I'm struggling with in our school is that I see a need because the kids that I end up working with as an EA are the ones who are struggling and often are the ones who are First Nations. And it's getting everybody at the school to see that we need to... we need to be aware of their cultural needs and be welcoming of that. So how do you... how do you convince or show others the importance of this work? Does that mean ta-da? Yeah, for sure. So staff is what you're talking about. Yeah. Have you heard of the blanket exercise? The Cairo's blanket exercise? Yeah, actually, we did it with our grade 9s at our school. And it was great. And the teachers who did it loved it. But as a staff, a lot... we had a number of them say, oh, that was such a waste of time. It took too much resources. It took away from their class time, because the students, afterwards, were so excited about it. So did these teachers who said that did they go through the blanket exercise as well? No, they didn't. No. Because it's quite powerful, as you know, to go through it with your staff. We do that. That's one of our roles. We do a lot of blanket exercise, actually, and we build student leaders. So one thing you might consider doing is the grade 9s who've been through it, that they become the facilitators of the blanket exercise and maybe do it for the staff of the school. I can invite all the staff to come to the blanket exercise. We have the scripts on our website as well, if you wanted to take a look at them from there. Yeah. It's hard work. It's like because of our past has not been that great. No. We have to persevere with this information now and just try to build understanding of why it's important. I like that idea. Thank you. I work with leadership students to help them facilitate the blanket exercise, and we just did it on Monday. These students did it for the school staff, and it was amazing. The staff really appreciated the students doing it and the leadership that it built. Well, I think if it came from the students, it would be received better than if it came from another staff member. Yeah. Or from admin, right? Like from the principals. Yeah, that's right. No problem. And yes, Jen, the blanket exercise is on our website. I think it's under edukits, that if you go in there and scroll down, you'll see it'll say click here and then the script will come up. And if you can't find it, please... Go ahead. Uh-huh. You can already know me, and I'll help you find. Um, Millwood's United Church in South Edmonton is actually doing a blanket exercise this Sunday at church. Oh, good. That's a service on Sunday morning. So at 10.30, if anybody wants to go and participate in one, it's welcome. Everybody is welcome. But the church is doing one as a service. The minister is away this week, so we decided that that was a good way to do a service. So if anybody is interested, you can certainly go to Millwood's United on Sunday at church for 10.30. Wow, that's great to hear. That's cool. And so I just had a couple of questions there about reconciliation, because this, you know, what you're talking about is about reconciliation. And so how do we just share our information and respect each other as part of reconciliation? And so, you know, to talk about the welcoming environment, to expand the definition of parent to include the family, the elders, in our communities, we all, we take an active role in raising the children, aunties, uncles, grandparents. And so for parent councils, which is what a lot of them are called here in Edmonton, I encourage them to call them school councils, because, you know, when you say parent council, maybe grandparents or aunts and uncles just think it's only for parents when it's actually for a school community, so families are welcome. So I know the Alberta School Council Association likes to call them school councils, and I agree that that is more inclusive, I guess, more welcoming. And so as I talked about before, in your meetings, in your classrooms, you can use the seven teachings, you can use the sharing circle. When I walk into a school, I look at the halls and the walls in particular to see if I can see myself as a Métis person in the schools, the resources, the literacy kit, the books. Our protocol document, as soon as it's ready, I'll send it to you. And the blanket exercise, which is on the Cairo's website. So if you just Google Cairo, it'll come up. And there's other things you can do, the project of heart, after you do the blanket exercise, they have different ideas. So it looks like we have two minutes left. So I'd like to leave a few minutes for any comments or for the ending questions. Thank you, Jim. It's very nice of you. And please, feel free to contact me. Oh, that's great, Beth. I'm glad. Hi. I just wanted to mention that I was coming from a bit of a different angle. I was a teacher many years ago, and then I stayed home to raise my children. And I'm heading back to school to upgrade, going back to the U of A. And one of the courses that we need to take is EDPS 474. And it's learning all about culture and how to implement FNMI into our classrooms. And I think it's just a fascinating thing. So this really was my introduction to it. And I think as a student teacher, I think it's just fantastic that you're pointing us in the right direction and giving us some resources to work with. So thank you very much, Beth. Thank you. I appreciate that. This has been fantastic, Athena. The short time we've had, we've sure got a lot of resources here to take the opportunity to explore. Thank you so much for sharing everything and for joining us this evening. And thank you to everyone for participating tonight. I will turn the recording off, but if you still have some questions for Athena, we can wait here for another minute or two. Or feel free to email her as well. We've posted her email address there with Edmonton Public in the chat window so that you can keep in touch with Athena as well. And if you do go to exit the webinar, you just click on the X in the top right-hand corner of your screen. And you'll get a pop-up window that's just going to ask you if you're sure you want to exit. And just click on Yes, and you'll be out of the room. So thank you again, everyone, for joining us. And thank you so much, Athena, for sharing all of this information. Greatly appreciated. Thank you for having me.