 Hello, my name is Curtis Michael. I'm from the Sabiganagity First Nation here in beautiful Nova Scotia. And what's the program that you're running? Initials are MHRRA. I think it's to have trouble with this one. The Big Ma Heritage Research and Restoration Association. My role there is to name it. It's to teach the Big Ma language to Smith, Francis, Read and Enlighten. I also work for M.K., which is the Miigamangana Mugnawe, the Miigma Education, as a teacher for approximately 20 years at the school here on the reserve. Well basically what I do is I make short videos online and I record them and we put them onto a secret site, members only. It's language and conversational, so the participants, they watch the videos. I said they're only 10 minutes long because there's quite a lot of information and I don't want to bore the students, really. So they'll repeat my words and my lessons and send them so I can prove them and have to watch them. Basically that's it. It's pretty interesting. What are the age groups of your students? I would say from teenagers to probably 70, from about 15 years old, maybe to 70. And what impact do you see on the students after they take the fall? You know what? When I see them in person, like at a conference or at a meeting or a gathering, I notice they're using a lot more Miigma than when I first met them. They're more confident across, I don't know, we build each other up, right? That's basically it. I hear a lot more Miigma being spoken when I go to certain areas of Eastern Canada now. Do you find an emotional impact on that? You know what? A lot of pride. I see a lot of people with their pride, like the gentleman you just voiced just here. Big time. He's proud of his heritage and his culture and his language. And I see that even the young people, adults, everybody see a lot of their cultural pride through language. What is it about what you're doing that is really effective? I don't know. You know what? When I worked with kids in the school system, I found it very effective because for the first time in my life, I've heard Miigma being spoken here in the education facility. We were the home of the residential school. We had the Indian Day School. Now at our school down the road there, the LSK, K-12 school, you're hearing it in the playgrounds, in the hallways, in the cafeteria, in the classrooms. It's a real good feeling. This is a huge question, but what to you is Indigenous education? What's that? What is Indigenous education? Indigenous education? To me, it's nothing you're going to find from a book. It would be the teachings of our ancestors, our grandfathers, our uncles. Stuff like living the reserve life and the culture, especially like my family were basket makers. To me, watching them and listening to them and remembering what their way is, that's Indigenous education to me. It's more hands-on. When I teach, I try to teach the way I want to be taught, not from a book or a recipe. For instance, here's an example. My grandmother would make loose skin again. She didn't write it down on paper and said, here you guys go. She told us to sit down, watch me. I had to copy her, really. That's Indigenous education to me, anyways. What do you hope to see in the next 10 years for Indigenous education? More control. More control by Indigenous people, First Nations people. And a lot more land-based teachings, too. We're starting to do that around here. Growing up, land-based to me was going to the wildlife park once a year. That was our field trip. Now they're taking kids out and making canoes, baskets, knives, spears, fishing, ealing, hunting. I'm proud of that, but I can see that increasing within the next 10 years. Same with our language courses. What advice would you have for anyone else who wants to teach a language program? For anyone who wants to teach it or take it, teach it. Leave the books out of the classroom. I did a lot of TPR, total physical response when I teach, a lot of visual. Basically, I act like an idiot in front of class, and the kids would copy me and mimic me, and then we would start talking without the books. Also, record every elder, because we only have a few MiGma speakers in this community. They're elders, right? I'm not fluent. When I get stuck, I go see my elder down the road or call her up, and she's always right there. But I was wishing we could record her, her stories and stuff like that in MiGma. But I guess if you're going to start, if you want to teach it, do it effectively. MiGma way.