 At the center and the heart, I feel a lot of Métis identity. Being able to learn Métis is really strengthening my identity and strengthening my confidence in who I am as a Métis person. Because it gives us a different perspective, a lot of the different words in Métis can't be directly translated to English, so you can't express yourself in the same way as you can in English as you can in Métis. A lot of the cultural things in being Métis and a lot of the activities that Métis we're doing are in the language and they're alive in the language, so keeping that language alive is keeping our culture alive and keeping us strong as a people. Currently as a language learner I speak mostly to the people in my classroom, but outside of that I always try and slip in a few words here and there with my girlfriend and with my parents just so they can hear the language and I end up using it a little bit every day. I'm hoping I will live a long life with a few children and I hope that I can speak with my children, with my wife, with my family, within my community and be able to use it on a more of a daily basis and integrate that really into my life. Well currently there's not a lot of Métis speakers and a lot of the Métis speaking I hear is either online watching some of the Métis videos and lessons that are on there already as well as the people in my class learning Métis and our teacher Heather. I would like to see many Métis using Métis in their daily lives in their homes, but I'd really love to see our Métis governments using it within all their publications and their media releases. I think that's really important and it really could really strengthen us as a nation. Métis should be spoken among Métis and other people who are passionate about languages that we interact with in our broader communities, but also within our governments as Métis governments and I would love to see it spoken in Parliament would be really cool. I think if others are not speaking Métis, we won't be able to bring the language back, we won't be able to use it, we won't be able to use it in our homes and retain that cultural aspects and that affirmation of identity. So if no one's using it and no one's speaking it, we won't be able to keep that alive. I think a lot of people would struggle knowing that that spark has kind of gone out, that our elders aren't there anymore speaking the language. I think that it would feel more of a burden. I feel like we're already in a state with the language that it's so important to bring it back because we don't have many speakers and that's a heavy weight, but to get to a point where the language is basically not there, it would be devastating I think. I think there's a lot of aspects to Métis culture that are still alive and still going. A lot of that traditional on-the-land stuff and our connection with the land and the people around us are so important to maintain and I feel like they're kept alive and strengthened with Métis. So keeping both together I think is really integrable, especially at a young age. There's a lot of benefits being bilingual, but for young people to be raised and having such a critical aspect of their culture in their life, their language, I feel like they'll see a lot less of kind of lost, misidentified people and for learners that's kind of what we can gain from speaking Métis. During the language, at my age I've kind of realized that there's no time to wait and there's no, it's nice to say I want to do this so it would be nice if we could have this kind of Métis school or Métis that and really kind of barked in me that I need to just hit the ground running and start building when I can build. When I started a non-profit for indigenous paddling and I want to be integrating Métis into some of the Métis things and by learning Métis I kind of realized that it needs to happen and I'm dedicated now to doing it. I think that sense of community would grow, especially like I live in Winnipeg and you know there's a lot of Métis in Winnipeg, but we're all spread apart and we go to jobs where we're not necessarily working with all other Métis, but as soon as we have like a speaker, a group of speakers that are either meeting in certain places and using the language that only enhances our community and strengthens what we have already in our city. So I see a more unified group of Métis if we can all start speaking Métis, based around kind of our language.