 My name is Solomon Katgamek and this is Buckingham Falls First Nations High School. I look forward to this part of the NNC program. In our school we get students from young as 12 to an old as 19, 20. All our students come from 23 communities and treaty nine and treaty five area as far north as Fort Severn and 23 communities. It all started back in the 90s and where our chiefs, elders, communities wanted a place for their children to go to high school. Prior to this all of our students were going to the public school system and success rates were not that great. So this is one of the dreams of our chiefs, former chiefs, elders and whatnot that many have passed on and this is a result of their dreams. To provide education, high school education for our students for language, culture, to connect with their culture and basically to provide a program to meet the needs of our students. Our school is all applied so all of our students here that graduate can go and drink it in the college and when this year we just introduced the academic program so university so any students we got three kids that now can go possibly once they complete the academic program they can go directly into university. Our retention rates have always been high 80s, 80s and 90s our credit accumulation rate for every semester has been in the high 80s and 90s so that to me and that's a first example of how we do things and their success rate and it's all on our teachers. All our teachers come from all over the place we've got some First Nation teachers, we have teachers from Toronto, urban centers and whatnot and so far and our teachers go above and beyond what's called you know we have excellent sports program and cultural programs and language programs, we have excellent robotics program here. Our students go down south and compete with other high schools and last year I think we won the judges award in robotics and technology we're high in technology here and anything I can do to promote technology I'm all for it and I'm also like to promote our cultural based programming our native language program and sweat our communities want parents want and it's what students want we listen to our students and what they're what they want for our school and sometimes we can accommodate them and sometimes you know it takes time but things have drastically improved over the years and it was an only strive to do our best and improvements are done yearly. Indigenous education is learning your culture your history what your parents grandparents have been through learning about residential schools learning about the land how to live off the land and how we did things a long time ago and bringing in guest speakers with indigenous knowledge in which we have lots of elders that come into our school to promote the indigenous knowledge for example yesterday we had an elder come in and taught taught a class to about medicines traditional medicines and from that response I got a note passed to me by one of our students saying hey we need more of us about traditional medicines and kids really liked it and that's resources are plenty in this area and anything we can do to promote cultural education we have an auto red program where students go out in the land they go hunting and I think every year for the past couple years we've how to say white moose hunting and we were successful and the kids bring back the moose in here and they cut it up and do everything help with the help of elders and they learn how to basically how things are done hunting hunting practices and and gathering gathering of fruits and you know berries and stuff like it how we used to do things long time ago and that's our kids really like this program and it's it's what our communities want and based on that and this is one of our successes in our program it's usually about 180 180 to 200 we get students from black school and our enrollment is always high what where it should be we can wish we could get more but it's only you know somewhere down the line hopefully we'll get some more another building made so we can add so we can add more because we do have a way to list that students and parents want their kids to be here and but due to space you know we can only accept a limited number we like to listen to our communities what they want for their children and for example we just got a cheese meeting and we're where students spoke up and they wanted the academic program and this is we introduced a pilot program through Tilo Ontario which is technology enabled learning Ontario we're partnering with up with the ministry of education WASA and our school to provide academic programs through it's a sort of e-learning and it's our credit is course and academics and so far we've got three students in there and from what I understand our students really like it and hopefully we hope to expand as the year goes by so we won so we have applied an academic program and then in Canada just to make the history of First Nations people non-native people to be aware of our history and and to make make our First Nations vision a reality and non-native population so they don't you know so they can understand where what First Nations people are all about and and our connection to the land our culture our language and how how we strive to connect our students our young students with the knowledge and to be you know successful in a non-native environment resources are out there you just gotta every year we'll get people that wants to come and do workshops for our our students and can be healthy relationships can be addictions can be health traditional traditional knowledge and traditional medicines anything we invite anybody in fact every time we go to meetings there's always an organization that always wants to come and help our students to promote these lifestyles healthy lifestyles and not only healthy lifestyles wellness you know all the three aspects physical mental all four categories and holistically things are approving yearly and we keep adding for example I think we've got a planning stage here to add another building to our school and use it as for offices for all these outside agencies that want to come in and help our students and also a medical facility for students you know or need that extra who are sick and stuff like that and and I see things are improving next year I think we're finally getting our baseball field thanks to the blue jays foundation and we got all this all this help that's coming in through proposals and whatnot from various native organizations and chiefs of Ontario national union brotherhoods the province the Indian affairs so things are improving for example another thing that we're doing is just we're on the table now is providing a sound studio for our students because most of our students are very creative talent they have talent that we want to tap into and you know if you notice online in YouTube students do create their own music and their own you know YouTube videos and we want to tap into that resource and you know have the students be excited about you know the music that they can create the YouTube videos and whatnot so and it's another form of keeping the students happy occupied and not just with sports even though we have an excellent sports program here we're with nor wassa where we compete with other uh outside communities like canora for frances whatnot and red lake and we travel volleyball basketball we have excellent blue ball program we have a baseball program so we do keep our students happy it wouldn't be possible with all the extra you know of our teachers who will above and beyond because they're not just teachers they're also coaches you know to deal with mental health issues they're very accommodating and they're very they seem to go above and beyond for our students and that's what makes our program successful