 My name is Denise Baxter. I am originally from Martin Falls First Nation. I'm a member there and I am a member also of the Barrick Clan. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me and my current role at Lakehead University for the full-time role is I'm the Vice Provost of Aboriginal Initiatives and a secondary role I have is also teaching the additional qualifications courses for the principal PQP 1 and 2 online for the faculty of education. Aboriginal Initiatives has many arms to it. One of the pieces that we have is our support to the entire institution to I guess all things indigenous. So whether sometimes we're looking directly at supporting students. So we have a department called Aboriginal Culture and Support Services and we have a team of three right now that work there and they provide all of the direct student support. So right now we have a staff who's working with a community member and students from the community to set up the sweat lodge today and then tomorrow we'll be hosting a sweat lodge which happens every month and so all the students whether indigenous or are not are invited to come or participate in that sweat lodge. So that is one example of the kind of work that Aboriginal Culture and Support Services does. We also have counseling that's culturally grounded happening within that area. We have a transitions coordinator who works with students and does all kinds of different workshops on health and well-being. We're working with the law school indigenous director right now to look at sort of so you want to go to law school series so that we can have people start thinking about that in their first second and third year. So that by the time they get to fourth year and actually have to write their LSATs and do their applications they've already had ample time to engage with you know what is the study of law what is the career of law look like what are possible career options. They've had multiple time to practice those LSAT exams so that they're successful on their first right. So those are just some of the examples. We also have a staff member who runs a little team of students and it's called the Aboriginal Mentorship Program. So Lisa works with faculties across the university and then works with school boards, First Nation, public schools and even some of the adult age schools in this in the system to look at how indigenous traditional knowledge can be recognized or is recognized and how it correlates to you know western scientific knowledge for example. And so she travels around the region she has regular students who she's hired through some student funding we have to go work like once a week and with a particular class in the school and they've done some really interesting work. The main goal behind that is to really work with all students so say it's a public grade eights class for instance the entire class participates not just the indigenous students so it's a learning experience for the teachers for the school principal and for all the students in that classroom to really see the validity and the integrity of indigenous knowledge in an academic setting and also the faculty that work with us then help bridge those gaps with traditional knowledge keepers and elders. They did a really interesting project at one of the schools last year where they built a birch bark canoe but they looked at all the physics and the like the dynamics and the aerodynamics and the flotation and the traditional teachings of the birch tree and harvesting roots so that they could actually build their canoe and then they tested their models they built one model and they tested it here in our flu so they actually you know shot it down through an actual science-y kind of space but they got to go into the 3D printing lab and print their designs out so it was really a full year pace but I had a chance to go in on one of the days and they had two elders with Fort Willam First Nation and Fort Willam Historical Park who were there and so they were also learning the language at the same time so they were learning the teachings of harvesting a tree because you actually kill the tree when you harvest it for a canoe and so what's the ceremony involved in that what are the languages what are the mathematical concepts that you come across so it's really really rich but it's it's about having I guess maybe demystifying the academy for students but helping students realize that there really is a lot of indigenous knowledge recognized across our institution in a variety of fields another piece that we do that we're involved in is outreach so we have a coordinator and a chief who right now is actually I'm part of the Apsip trail I guess so she's working with other post-secondary service providers who are indigenous but also are specifically servicing indigenous students throughout the schools in our region and they travel all over the province different weeks of the year in the fall but one of the things that she does is really coordinate outreach for graduate students incoming undergraduate students and so right now she's working with our indigenous learning faculty and our international vice provost and we've applied for a grant to have five students go to Mexico in the fall and so we just finished doing all the applications they're writing the proposal for that and so they have applied to go like a university is a part of something called can max where they have presidents from a number of I think 11 Canadian universities and 11 indigenous intercultural universities in Mexico and the presidents get together every year and they alternate Canada Mexico Canada Mexico at different sites and they get together to talk about what indigenous learning and indigenous education at the post-secondary level looks like might look like what they've learned and so we're hoping to send five students from the indigenous learning program down there to do some community-based research at the same time that this conference is going on so that's another example and then another program that we have that our department's responsible for has an old throwback title but it's called the native access program so nap and so we have students it's an access program and right now it's connected with the humanities and the arts faculty and so that's where the program sits but we have 22 students who've started this year and it's a program where they move together as a group the classes run between 10 and 2 every day and some of them are just for the group but then other classes like indigenous learning 1100 are they're part of the regular first-year student population who are taking that course so it's about scaffolding some learning and some skill development so that when they take the three credits that they finish from that program and move into first year they already have three credits towards their first year and a solid grounding of how the university operates I think part of what we know from the research is if people are first timers I guess in like first generation in a system they don't necessarily have any understanding of how the system operates and success is always higher for those people that know how a system operates to be successful in it so while we do our best to I'm going to use the word disrupt the system by really having people think about our practices on an ongoing basis and looking at where those changes need to happen and how how we can help that happen we really want students to understand the processes of registration ensuring what it means to you know ask for extension assignments things about it like our accessibility finance scholarships like there's so many systems in a university setting that if you don't have a guide to help you navigate that your success rate is not going to be as good so that's another program that we have here we have a few structures in the university and one of them is called the Ilkmao and advisory council and it acts as part of the three pillars I guess are three points of a triangle in our governance structure so the OHEC is a committee that's made up of probably about 60 percent of community members are representatives from First Nations, Métis and UN organizations and then we have staff and faculty that also round that out and it's an advisory council that provides advice and directly to the president as the other part of that is with the board of governors so the three those three pieces make up that triangle and the OHEC we meet four times a year at a minimum sometimes five and really we look at everything to do with Indigenous programming Indigenous faculty hiring retention Indigenous students political landscapes happening in our communities and for me that's a really important part of how we govern the university and the role that OHEC places in there the other piece that we have is an elders committee and we also meet we meet five times a year every second month and the elders committee everything goes through the elders committee often before it goes to OHEC so we have a 12 elders that sit on that elders committee from around the country really but they all live here in Thunder Bay now and so we meet with them and we actually like the academic plan review was the most recent meeting we had so that they were the first committee that the vice president did reach to through the consultation process of our academic plan and got some very pertinent feedback to help along that process so that that to me is another important piece of that we also are part of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine so we have an Indigenous reference group which has been really interesting to work with and are actually we just had a report and a community gathering that happened together with that group so I think you know recognizing the importance of partners and decision-making is is another important piece of of really making good decisions in education on many levels I think Indigenous education is really about how the lessons we were we were taught and the lessons we still are taught and I'm going to just digress to a personal like a story at the moment but when I think about this Friday for instance I have an elder coming to the house to share women's teachings so she's coming we'll have a you know a small feast in in our space I have a few female friends who are coming over as well as my two daughters one of my daughters is currently on her berry fast as her transition to womanhood she's 13 and my older daughter has already completed that first fast which last 12 months are 13 months and so for me a big part of Indigenous education is exactly those types of experiences and they're the experiences of teachings that have been taught for millennium they're teachings that are that are taught to help you live your life in a good way they're teachings that are passed down orally from person to person and while you can read about them you know many teachings and some of the books like by Edward Benton Benai are out there and the sacred trees another one so there's some great books that tell you about some of the teachings or share those but I think face-to-face in relationship learning for me is is one of the key areas of Indigenous education you know I think about growing up and spending time out on the Albany River with my family and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles and cousins and and what life was like and I you know I remember asking my grandfather when I was young and I was old enough to take the canoe out on the lake to to catch fish and I had he said oh get some fish for dinner and I wasn't allowed to do the sturgeonedding I just helped with that but I did take my rod and rail to get some prickler some speckled trout and I said what help me do we need and I remember looking at me and he said we'll just get enough and I'm like well how much is enough he said Denise there's six of us here just get enough for dinner and that was it off I went and I think of what that means in terms of sustainability learning in terms of harvesting in terms of you know living in an ecosystem to ensure that that balance stays the same so it wasn't oh I'm going out because you know the fishing limit is you know four or whatever it was if I caught a big fish and a little fish and that was enough to feed us and that was all I needed if I caught one bigger fish that was all I needed if I caught three smaller ones and if I didn't catch any then maybe we need something else for dinner you know so but but I think of those lessons of life of of and those teachings that are all embedded within those kinds of experiences and to me that is what indigenous education is so how do you do that in an academia is is a whole other kind of question and certainly we have a lot of I think really great opportunities as we think about what that decolonizing educational western education looks like how we bring a traditional and indigenous ways of knowing into courses as we build courses from the ground up sometimes it's it's really I hesitate to use the word indigenize because I mean for me that means kind of a layer on but really I like to kind of start fresh I guess so maybe unpack a course and then put it over here and then start and build a new course with the community about what those courses are looking like and so for my particular role a lot of what I do is build programming with faculty deans associate deans and First Nations and Métis communities so that we're building together through collaboration new programming new experiences so that we're embedding those traditional ways of knowing and being at the at the heart of it and building the program around that and that takes time it's not quick there's a lot of learning that has to happen sometimes it's about structures and governance structures in the university and you know course hours and that type of thing but also from the course building perspective how we do that together and that equal partnership and that sharing around the table together and and collaboration is is really I think how we move forward with that there's I mean obviously some great books on you know by Baptiste and she the Coté makes has written some stuff around indigenizing or decolonizing the classroom at the post-secondary levels there's a whole lot of things that can be read that academics have written who are indigenous people but for me I think it's much more personal at that face-to-face space for me I really see gosh I see things really changing because I see that change underway already I've had a chance to speak to some professors who are working at Lakehead University and there's a group of indigenous professors who are working with the First Nation community here locally to build a land-based masters of education program so that's not you know it's not the university going to say to the community here we're going to give you a program it's really about people sitting down together and working through things and listening you know not just with their ears but also with their hearts and I think those types of relationships and partnerships that are that are growing and really developing right now to me those are the kinds of things that I see indigenous education really or indigenous people really lending a positive aid to the university to have the university think about a learning opportunity to change just change things moving forward I mean the reality is formal education is still recognized in many many situations and so we've been exploring through processes that will recognize traditional knowledge and experience within the academic setting so that that's also part of it and part of that like the native access program for instance is one of the ways that we do that right now we also have our native nurses entry program and those courses are built and we're built with community and and the research from multiple communities about what is necessary moving forward one of the other partners we're working with is looking to build a business program that meets the needs of the members of their nations so that people from their communities can have that that learning but also connected to what they they are learning and need to learn about doing business within their own communities but internationally and nationally as well so really I think personalizing education is probably one of the the ways I see that moving forward