 My name is Lori McLeod-Cabracasic, and my Nishnabe name is Mermaid, or Lady of the Water. And I am originally from Chigeng, I have also been living, I'm a member of the Nipissin First Nation and I've lived here for 30 years. I guess what's important to me and the next generation is the recognition of Nishnabe ways of knowing and seeing. From our perspective, we have actually, we've divided it up into about seven ways of knowing. And in our knowledge, one, it starts out with the importance of our language. And that's our original way of speaking, it's how we communicate with the creator, and with spirit and with one another. And it also contains how we view and interact with the world. I used to look back on native role models, like sitting ball, and just hearing the eloquence of their words, like how incredibly eloquent they were in imparting their knowledge and wisdom. And as I begin to learn the language, I realized that a lot of that was embedded in the language itself. For example, when we look at words like, mean dog say, which is commonly recognized to mean the word for miracle. But what it really means is that which is not possible without spirit intervention. So when we look at our own words and the direct translation of the meaning, not just the English translation, I'm talking about what the words actually mean, there's so much beauty in there, and there's so, so much knowledge. And so to me, Nishnabe is one of the critical factors of indigenous education, as well as Nishnabe and Atzu'in, and Atzu'in. And what that is is our behavior. For it contains our values and our way of living life and being in Nishnabe in the fullest sense. It's the development of the highest quality of Nishnabe personhood. It talks about our connection to the earth and our relationship to all of creation. So how we conduct ourselves, how we treat each other, how we interact with our, with Mother Earth and all of creation. And then the third one is Nishnabe and Endemuin, which was our own way of thinking, our way of perceiving and formulating thought, resonating from our Nishnabe beliefs and foundational truths. So it's our philosophy and our worldview. And the fourth one is Nishnabe Gikandaswin, which is our knowledge and our way of knowing. It's the body of knowledge that informs us of our original teachings, our way of life, and our way of being in our worldview. Indigenous people are the only nation of people in the world who have been able to live in balance with Mother Earth. And that's so powerful. We, the Creator has given us those gifts so that we know how to nurture her and live in balance. And that's one of our critical contributions to the world, what we have to offer. When we look at Nishnabe Gikandaswin, it's our way of doing things. It's our way of taking action with the life skills we need as Nishnabe people to live effectively in the world and contribute to the, to building a quality of living and quality of community. There is this big push for people to live independently, but as Nishnabe people, we've always lived interdependently, where every single person has a contribution to make. And our survival as a people is based upon everyone's ability to be valued, protected, respected, and supported in that circle so that we all use our gifts to the best of our ability to support one another and so that our people can thrive and continue to move forward into the future. We also have Nishnabe and Awendwin, which is our way of relating to spirit, to each other and to all of creation. It is an inclusive relationship that honors the interconnectedness of all our relations and recognizes and honors the human place and responsibility within the family of creation. And then we have Gdapkemenon, which is our connection and our relationship to the land and all of creation. It is the experience of knowing and understanding the relationships that exist throughout creation and understanding our own role and responsibility in this relationship. This connection is the primary shaper of Nishnabe identity and it is the total relationship with creation that forms our environmental ethic. And so each of these seven classifications is not only critical to our livelihood, but it's also critical to our contributions to the world. And so when we look at Nishnabe education, those are fundamental to our own well-being and protecting our indigenous identities. Specifically, in the work that I do, I mainly work with prenatal groups and I work with families of children, especially needs. And so when I work with prenatal groups, a lot of the things that we talk about are things to do with healthy pregnancies. And it always amazes me what our people knew long before Western medicines. And one of the things that we knew was that babies begin to retain memory, have the ability to retain memory at three months in utero. And so because of this, our people have always regarded pregnancy as being sacred. And the expectant moms were always very well protected and shielded from any kind of stressors or or negative impacts. They were always there, were supported to have the best in nutrition and things like that. Because our people knew that that impacted her baby and would have the potential to affect them for the rest of their lives. So good nutrition meant a good start for babies. And not only that, physiologically, when a woman is carrying a female child, the word for our for woman is quet. And the word for a small female child is quesnes. And what that means is a little woman. And a part of that comes from our teachings where our female children are born with all of the eggs that they will ever carry. And so they are in fact born intact. They may be small and have to and have growing to do, but the entirety of their being is already there. And so when a woman is carrying a female child, this female child is already carrying the eggs for her children. And so as the expected mom, we not only have the ability to affect the well-being of our children, but we're also carrying our grandchildren as well. So it's really important that we nurture their development. In our genetic material, in every cell of our body, almost every cell of our body, there's an exact replica of us. And 20,000 of our ancestors who came before us, which means that we also have, we hear a lot of talk about genetic memory and trauma through DNA, but we also carry that genetic wisdom as well. And we have healers and traditional teachers in our communities who have the ability to teach us how to access that genetic memory, which exists within all of us. So we not only have the ability to draw upon our own knowledge, but we also have the ability to draw on the knowledge of our ancestors. And so that's part of the teachings and abilities that we carry as Anishinaabe people. In my work with children with special needs, we talk a lot about traditional foods. Our people have always known how to eat strategically, and we always have done so throughout, especially in pregnancy. For example, when a woman was pregnant, she would have first, whenever there was a fresh kill, she would have first pick of the organs. So things like the, you know, the liver, the heart, and things like that. And so our people knew that they were nurturing her iron development and building up her body and her strength for childbirth. But one of the things that we've always done is that in the third month of pregnancy, our people would ensure that our expected moms would eat a lot of heavy fish, like white fish or sturgeon, things with omega-3s in them. And in doing so, our people knew that baby's brain was going through a growth spurt in that third trimester. So when she was eating those fish oils, we were actually nurturing our baby's development. So we also used food in that way to nurture healthy brain development. But now Western medicine is just starting to recognize the teachings that our people have always carried. And they're encouraging people to give omega-3s to children with special needs to help nurture their development so that they can retain memory, so they can retain what it is that they've learned and all of those different things. So those are the types of things that we talk about in our program, in terms of knowledge. But I guess one of the most important things to me personally is the importance of engaging the spirit. And by that I mean that we're learning a lot about, you know, science and technology. But even technology means a spirit to carry it. And within our spirit is our ethics, our identity. It's how we interact with all of creation, especially the spirit realm. I think that's one of the most important things about us is that in our belief system, nothing ever comes to an end. You know, it just, it merely changes form. If you look at something like water, you know, if you boil it and it evaporates, it becomes a gas and it's still, it's still, you know, goes on to exist. If we, if it turns into ice, then it just merely changes form. And so I think that's very critical in terms of how we look at that we too are forever a part of creation. And our people who have gone on to the spirit realm, whose spirits have transcended into that realm, that a part of them is still here and with us. And, you know, when we go outside and we spend time upon the land, then we have the ability to, to connect with them, you know, to, as their physical bodies, you know, nurture the land, the trees, the flowers, that when we sit outside on our lands, that we are, we're breathing them in and we still have the, have the ability to, to carry them with us and to communicate with them. So to me, in terms of Nishinaabe education, we need to nurture those, those teachings and those beliefs. I think that, I think it's really critical that all aspects of Nishinaabe people, of Nishinaabe education, be developed by Nishinaabe people, for Nishinaabe people. And that when it comes to issues like holding copyright, that that's also critical that we own our own knowledge because right now that's, it's often too exploited. And I see a lot of movement in the research to, to protect our knowledge. So that's always, that's a good thing for sure. I see a lot of things happening, a lot of exciting things happening under the Nishinaabe education system, where we are taking control over our own education and our future by developing our own level of excellence and accreditation for our programs and how our students are taught and, and treated and nurtured. So that's, you know, our own curriculum development. So to me, that's, that's pretty exciting. One of my concerns is that, you know, in the work that I do, I see a lot of women doing really well. I see a lot of women getting their college education, getting their university degrees, but I don't see as many young men doing as well. I'm not sure if it is a maturity issue or if they're just not as well supported, but we don't have nearly as many young male graduates as we, as we do women. And so I think we need to find ways to support our young men to help them to pursue their dreams and to be successful academically. You know, we do have a lot of really great graduates, but I think that that's one area in particular that we really need to focus on. I guess in terms of progress, just for more of our people to become engaged in the process, because this is such a critical issue, for people to really pay attention and to think about what it is that, that they want for their children to help to nurture that development. And we're on a precipice here where we have, we don't have as many fluent speakers as we used to. And to me, that's a critical concern because they are, they carry such valuable knowledge that in some times I feel that we are, we're running out of time as they get older. So we need to support them as much as we can, you know, support their well-being, but also engage them in terms, engage our elders and engage our fluent language speakers in what they regard as important for our youth and to support our children in helping them to see our culture and our teachings as being important to them and their identity. We need to, we really need to nurture their self-esteem so that they can be able to see beyond the stereotypes and to really think about what it means to be an Ishnabah so they can, you know, be confident in who they are and feel good about who we are as a people.