 My name is Haven Stumpf, and I'm the Executive Director at Urban Circle Training Center. Well, our clientele, we are a training center, an educational facility, which is Indigenous-led. And we service our community, which are Indigenous men and women. Part of our programming includes a component called our Life Skills Cultural Component, which is a huge piece of our programming, and it's our base. And this was introduced to Urban Circle. I'm trying to think. Urban Circle has been around for 29 years, going into 29 years, so at least 26 years ago. It was introduced to the programming, Indigenous Cultural Component, as well as a Life Skills Component. We have four programs, and the academic programs that we do have here. One is called our Adult Education and Employment Program. And that particular program, it's a six-month program. It's offered twice a year. We have that program for adult students to obtain their mature grade 12 diploma, and it's certified through the 7-0 school division. We also have three post-secondary Red River College programs. We've been in partnership with Red River since 1996, and our programming is our Dual Certification Health Carried Health Unit Clerk, which is a nursing assistant program. It's the one of its kind, so it's been put together to be able to allow our students, our Indigenous students to go out into the work field to be able to be employed at a higher level with higher skills. Also, we have our Educational Assistant Program, which is a level D. And levels are just the levels of pay scale when they're hired. And the Educational Assistant Program is working in the school divisions. And many school divisions were partnered with Seven Oaks, the Penn School Division, Louis Real, and soon to be, we're hoping a new partnership in the future as well with River East. Our third program, which is certified by Red River College, is our Family Support Worker Program. That particular program allows people to be able to get their certification and move off into the social work areas. The strengths of this particular program have all been evolved from the community itself. And what I mean by that is I'm going to just give you examples of all three of the programs of how they had come about. The Health Carried Health Unit Clerk Program had come about from the early 1990s to the late 1980s. It was talked about through the government of the Employment Equity kind of survey from their huge institutions. And when Health Sciences Center had done a survey in regards to the comparison of their patient population versus the indigenous employees that they had working at the time, it was very, very minimal. It was quite shocking. And I'm going to guess approximately, I would say about 3% had identified employees, had identified themselves being indigenous. So they recognized there was a huge gap from the workers to the patient population and they needed to fulfill that as Health Sciences Center serves a huge population of indigenous people. So they decided to go to Red River, Red River College had approached Urban Circle and we said, no problem in the helping field, we love those programs. It goes hand in hand with what we were offering as well with our life skills and our cultural component. And so away we went off and it's never changed as you know, the field changes itself, but the actual duties and the skills are still the same requirements to get into that employment. And the employment is starting wages are well enough to be able to sustain financially, to be able to get off of social assistance, to financially sustain your family and live happily with that. The family support worker program, that particular program came about when the whole de-evolution of the child and family services took place and where Child and Family Winnipeg Child and Family was giving back the children to their home communities to be able to look after the children that were in care and they recognized that they didn't have enough certified workers to assist with that. So we sat at a table of an advisory table and they had suggested that we put a program on. Red River sat part of that table and up came the family support worker program. This particular program is not offered in the college itself. It's specially molded for our students here at Urban Circle. And our third program, the educational assistant program, that particular program came about when we recognized that the school systems were failing our Indigenous community and our young people and the graduation rates were not there, people were dropping out and we recognized that the help is needed more hands on and to help these young people to get through school and so up came the educational assistant program. And to measure our statistical, we do leaving forms, which of course this past we just had a graduation yesterday and from out of our family support worker program we initially started with 20 people. We have graduated 23 family support workers. In our mature grade 12 program we had 28 students and we graduated 21 with their mature grade 12 who are going to go out there into other fields as well. Some come to Urban Circle to apply to our post-secondaries. Others will go out there for employment or to further their into post-secondary. Well, Urban Circle has been around for 20, we're going into our 29th year. Urban Circle has always been delivering a cultural Indigenous component and that is the soul of Urban Circle, the heartbeat of Urban Circle of who we are and what we do here and the successes come from that. And, you know, when we talk about successes, we talk about the student themselves initially, of them identifying who they are as Indigenous people. It's quite amazing. I as a former graduate of Urban Circle way back in the days had, when I first came to Urban Circle, it was much smaller. It was a woman only program. It only had one program and you had to have your grade 12 and I was on social assistance, I was a single mom. And when I had started the program, it was quite intense and it was all about yourself. And when I had first come to Urban Circle, I recognized that I didn't connect with even myself and my identity or my culture. I had no idea what a smudge was. I had no idea that, you know, that this is how Indigenous people had lived or this is part of the culture or this is part of lifestyles. And it was quite amazing. It was quite an eye-opener and when I started identifying myself and connecting with some of those teachings and some of those, the cultural components such as the smudge, the prayer, we had done shields of sharing of ourselves sharing circles. When I had started connecting with that, my biggest eye-opener was going on a sweat. It was such an amazing experience. It was like, I don't even know how to explain it, it was just so amazing. It was a life changer for myself. And, you know, growing up here in the North End, all of my life, I was never connected to those because that was the last thing you wanted to be was an Indigenous person. And there was so much racism growing up as well. My mother, both my parents were alcoholics and so my mother was always in shame about who she was and my father. And when I had finally grown up enough to be able to understand I had no idea why life was the way it was until I had come to urban circle and it started making sense when I started learning about the residential schools, the colonization, the decolonization. I went back to my mother and I started questioning her and I couldn't believe it that it sounded exactly like my life and I went to my mother and I says, were you in residential school? And her face turned totally white and she told me if I continue to talk about it to never come back. And so I was quite taken back by that and I said, well, what do you mean? So I was trying to get more information from her and she started crying, she was very angry, told me to get out and so I left and then I went to my grandmother and my grandmother was a little more open and I think just because of time in itself was allowed to heal some of those wounds and I asked my grandmother, my grandmother said she was in a residential school, said she was four years old and my grandmother had identified that she was in a residential school when she was two years old. In Birtle, Manitoba my mother was in Fort Alexander and I just think, I asked my grandmother how could you even go and take your child and drop your child off in some strange place at some strange building and just say, here you go, here's my kid. Have a good life and turn your back and walk away and my grandmother said she had no choice otherwise she would be going to jail for that. So it's very unfortunate that when I started understanding why life was the way it was when I was growing up and to understand my parents of the shame that they cared which wasn't theirs and the shame and the hurt and the pain and just everything of why they self-induced an alcohol and why my whole family was all nuts and so dysfunctional and I just think that no wonder why they are the way they are when I started learning more and more and more about the history I had no idea that even existed. I went to school, not once did they talk about stuff like that. So here at Urban Circle we talk about that kind of stuff. We talk about, we bring our elders in. We bring our elders in who have survivors of the residential schools. We teach our children that, our students that it's okay to talk about it. We have our seven natural ways of healing the seven natural laws talking, laughing, crying, yawning, shaking, sweating, yelling and those help us get through everything that we have encountered throughout our lives and to help us heal so we're able to move forward in our life. Our elders teach us the seven teachings of how to walk in those ways to be respectful, to be honest, to be truthful and the others that, you know, you learn that here and they practice, the students practice it within the classroom and it's a very unique teaching that you can't get anywhere else. When we talk about Indigenous, we have, I know the new word is land-based training well we've been doing it for many years, 20 years now, 20 some years you know, where we've gone out, we've picked our own medicines for the year for our students, our students learn about the medicines the traditional medicines to the modern medicines we do research, there's so many things that go on that it's quite unbelievable and the first thing that I have to say with the connection is learning who you are as an Indigenous person definitely needs to have that healing we have been hurt for hundreds of years things have been taken away from us I'm a First Nations woman I don't know any other language but English my mother didn't know any other language she grew up in a presidential school only speaking English my grandmother, I remember her speaking very little Ojibwe even when she would have a friend or somebody she wouldn't know very little it was combined with English because she lost that in the residential schools as well and there's so much, you know, just the values of a family what does that mean to a person that was stripped away because there were no families what role did a mother play, what role did a grandmother play or a grandfather or a father that was all stripped away and unfortunately in today that whole healing component we have to start and there's a place that we have to start and with our students it's a beginning of their journey and hoping they move forward and take those teachings and move forward so they're able to hand those down to their families well in 10 years time I can see Indigenous education changing I know that the school divisions are talking about Indigenous education I know that we have very strong leadership in the Indigenous education field to continue to bring that forth and to have books, to have literature in the schools to learn about some of the history that has really taken place and not to be shamed any longer of that because it's not ours to carry and I always say that education is the weapon that our Indigenous people are going to be using to strengthen and to be able to move forward through this well we have, one of our resources is to every one of our four programs we have what you call a life skills program counselor connected to the program and the life skills program counselor is available to our student to assist not just with educational goals not just with life skills but with their personal lives to be able to support them through counseling through maybe they're needing something, an operation done so they're there with them in the hospital supports with having to drive them to daycares at times we utilize our external resources as well we have, I don't know, we have a support worker who has his master's degree in social work who comes and assists with mental health areas some of the real huge barriers here at Urban Circle is our community and our students are getting younger and younger and they're coming with larger barriers in place and they come with homelessness, they come with gang affiliation they come with addictions, they come with mental health issues they come with loss of identity of who they even are there are so many barriers that our students are coming with so we reach out there to be able to get those external resources so when they leave school this continues on to be able to support them while they're moving along whether it be employment or furthering their education so they're going to be successful I think that here at Urban Circle what we do is something very special and I think it's all part of the feeling of belonging and the feeling of being accepted and that un, what is it, the un I know that our elder Stella Blackbird she always talks about love and she says to be able to love somebody beyond that problem or beyond that barrier because that's what the people are needing is to be able to love them unconditionally