 And now for our first keynote of the conference. Darian Latender is an in-stem and land-based learning coordinator at Norquest College. Originally from treaty eight territory and currently living and playing within and around a Miskwachiwa Skygon, which is treaty six territory. Darian brings years of experience engaging indigenous youth, elders, and leaders throughout treaty territories on topics such as governance, sustainability, and culture. As a youth instructor with Actua Canada, he is dedicated to creating open, accessible, barrier-free, and culturally relevant STEM learning experiences for indigenous youth and students. He has a tremendous passion for education and public speaking and hopes to further unlock the potential of indigenous ways of knowing and being. Wakotoin is the kri word for kinship. It denotes that we are all connected in deep and meaningful ways. This connection extends between each of us to the land we are standing on and living on, and we are accountable to uphold Wakotoin in all of our relationships and interactions. Working alongside Darian means working in this way, and it has been an incredible learning experience for me. I can't imagine a more meaningful way to start this conference. Please welcome our keynote speaker, Darian Latender. Thank you, Darian. God's say. Good morning, my friends. What a beautiful day it is. So I'd like to begin with sharing with you my gratitude. The gift of another day, and I want to be thankful to creator and to my ancestors, their strength and their resilience, which really allows me to be here with you today, and really in a lot of ways, which allows all of us to be here today. So as we move forward on this journey today, which is in many ways an open educational journey, the way I speak to you is going to be in the storytelling method, which has been a tradition that has been passed down through generations. So today, when I share my story, when I share the knowledge, know that this knowledge finds us today across generations. And this morning, before the sun came up, I laid some tobacco down, and I shared my gratitude. And I thank creator for being a carrier of knowledge, for the gift of knowledge. Because I don't own this knowledge, but it's my responsibility to share it when I can. And so today, presentation desk. I was looking at this one. So today, we're going to be talking about revitalizing sustainable relationships through two-eyed seeing, Mio Wukotwin, good relationships. And I'd like to begin with this reminder, shared with me by Sylvia McAdam, who's a treaty 6, Nehio Esquil, that to be born Nehio is to be born into the lands, languages, and cultures of the people, as well as the responsibilities and obligations. I'd like to talk about responsibilities and obligations. You see, in a very simple form, I'm responsible to myself, and I'm obligated to myself. And you'll hear that throughout today is that everything begins with self. And so I'm responsible today to share with you in an honest way, in a truthful way, to be obligated to your learning. But that extends two ways. As responsible and obligated as I am to you today, you can be responsible and obligated to me. You can share with me your attention and what an honor that will be. You honor me today by being here with me. Many of you have traveled far and wide, and I hope that you've had an opportunity to get some rest. It is truly a gift to be standing here before you today as a young indigenous man. So who am I? I'm a Nehio Meti man from Kelly Lake Cree Nation and Horst Lake First Nation, up in Treaty Numberia territory. I'm a very proud husband to my wife, Emma. We celebrated our one-year anniversary over this summer. Thank you. And we're proud co-parents to our boy, Miko, who is a very lovely four-legged relative, and he brings us so much joy. And I know he's at daycare right now. Hopefully he's having a good time with the other pups. But I want to talk about these really meaningful connections that exist not only between us as people, as a community here today that is united, that is together to share big dreams, because it is a big dream, how to build a sustainable world through open education. How do we build a sustainable world together? Well, in order to do that, I want to share with you an indigenous perspective. My perspective, which is rooted in a very specific place. And all of us come from our own communities. We come from our own homelands, our own territories, and that will often shape how we exist in the world, how we see the world. So it's going to be important for me to share with you today where I come from, the place that knowledge. Where I come from, for those of us who may be unfamiliar with treaty territories in Canada, these are the 11-numbered treaties highlighted in red, located with a beautiful little arrowhead, is roughly where my two communities are, Kelly Lake and Horace Lake. I like to say that I'm from both, because really I am. My mum Bridget is from Horace Lake, and my dad is from Kelly Lake. But Kelly Lake is the community that I grew up in, and is going to be the main focal point of my storytelling and my teachings for you today. So I love using Google Earth. I don't know if anybody else loves using Google Earth, but this is a good little shot of where Kelly Lake is on the map. So this is the beautiful little lake that I grew up around. And that is my community. That's a nice little aerial shot. And for me, Kelly Lake was a place where I connected in very meaningful ways with my culture. I often share with people that there was a lot of freedom in Kelly Lake. It's probably one of the most free times that I'll ever experience in my life. We weren't really impacted by laws. We didn't have a lot of RCMP coming into the community. So it was a place for me to practice my culture with no judgment, no ridicule. My community was practicing the same things. We were doing a lot of the same things, so we're connected in this way. Our territory has created a common understanding. I enjoyed growing up in this community. Kelly Lake. It's a bush territory. I often joke that I grew up in the sticks because it's in the bush. So I spent a lot of time on the land learning from very important people. People that were very special to me. And as we move today, I encourage each and every one of you to bring to your mind, to bring to your hearts people who had a very important impact on your learning because we all have teachers. We all have people who have shared with us knowledge and wisdom that was so impactful for us that left something on us. So think about them as I think about mine. Now this is a picture of Kelly Lake. A few photos actually, a very beautiful place. I love growing up in Kelly Lake. There was a lot of connection there. I spent a lot of time on this rickety old wooden place that when I was young, I think it's kind of falling apart these days. The land is slowly reclaiming it. But I enjoyed growing up out there. And this is the only place that we had. But you know, more importantly for me, if you notice this big, beautiful tree in the background, I like talking about this tree because when you come through Kelly Lake, it kind of stands out of place. It's so magnificent and it's so large. But I created a really important connection with that tree and I didn't really realize it until I grew older. But this tree is magnificent and it helped me connect throughout my generations with my family, with my dad. My dad would share stories of how he used to climb that tree. And so I tried to climb that tree. It was hard at first, but it taught me a lot about myself and how to grow and how to grow with my community. I would see the older kids climb up to these branches and I would try my best to try to get up there. So I had to learn how to climb this tree, find the little footholds, the little handholds to get up there. And I did after a while. So it taught me how to be strong. It taught me how to be connected with my community. Spent a lot of time down by the lake, harvesting medicines, fishing, swimming when it was less polluted. And I mean, that's an issue. We talk about building a sustainable world, but it's hard for us to maintain sustainable environments and that leads to a real disconnect. And so for me, growing up in Kelly Lake was about connection. It was a place for me to connect with my culture, with my people, with my community members. And really, I like to think about myself. So we're revitalizing sustainable relationships through two I'd seen. Well, what does that mean? In the hopes of building a sustainable world. We have to think about our connection, where we come from. Because my story is a story of place and time. My knowledge is rooted in my territory. It's rooted in my people. It's rooted in the place that I come from. And if you're not familiar, this is the medicine wheel. So this is a really fundamental framework that has been adopted by many indigenous peoples to understand ourselves and the gifts that we each share. I want to share with you that teaching that I was gifted by my elder, Andrew, who was an advisor to my chief that it's in the Nehal, the Nehal people were the people of the four. The four elements. The elements that unite us. Aski, Nipi, Iskoteo, Yotin. The land, the water, the fire, the air. And that when we're brought into this world, creator gifts us with four things. Our emotions, our spirit, our bodies, and our mind. And each of these things exist in a very intricate balance. You know, many of us have probably had some tough days. You know, some, maybe our emotions. Maybe we're sad, maybe we're upset. Maybe, you know, our minds are suffering a little bit. Well, my elders, they tell me when you're feeling these ways, get out on the land. Get moving. And let me tell you, every single time I get out on the land, there's this awakening. There's this connection. And I can be on the land and not feel alone because I'm connected. Because I believe that my relatives around me, my plant relatives, the animal relatives, the wind, the sun, the air, it brings me joy and allows me to connect with my spirit, my ancestors. It allows my emotions to come back to me. It allows me to think clear. So when I get out on the land, I restore that balance. And when I'm in balance, I can treat others with more respect, with more love, with more courage, because I have the capacity. I have the ability to do that. And so I encourage people to think about their balance, to think about themselves. Because how can we dream of building a sustainable world through open education? How can we dream of revitalizing sustainable relationships if we can't have balance in our own ways, in our own hearts? So for me, the medicine wheel is a way that connects me with myself. In a way that reminds me of how to remain balanced. It becomes a very fundamental framework for health and well-being. And we talk about connection. And I talk about connection to myself because that's important. But what is the connection that we all share? And we've heard about it, braiding. So this is a photo of me. My hair used to be a lot longer. I braided it, this was during my wedding day. And for me, braiding is such an important practice. For me as an indigenous man, I wanna share with you the teachings that I've been gifted around the idea of braiding. And we've heard a little bit this morning in our opening prayer and with our drum group, which was beautiful by the way. What a beautiful way to start the day. And I was reminded that for me, I was taught that our spirit lives in the base of our skull. Now when we grow our hair and when we braid it, when we make that connection between our mind, body, and spirit, when we make that connection with the past, present, and future, and when we braid our hair, the closer to Mother Earth it gets, the more grounded we become. Now I also find it pretty interesting. We might have heard the saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Now if you know anything about human anatomy, you'll know that in the eyes, it connects through the optic nerve and ends up in the occipital region of our brain at the back of our skull. So I thought, what a connection? What a connection between science? What a connection between culture? What a way to see the world with multiple perspectives, to have a two-eyed seeing perspective, to be able to draw those connections between our past, present, future. And for me the connection to my culture, one of the first things that was done to indigenous boys and girls in residential schools is they took our hair because there's strength in that. There's connection in that. They took our languages because they know that that was what made us strong. And so when we braid today, as we move forward through the next three days of our conference, we can think of it as three strands that are coming together. I encourage you to think about the ways that we can interweave our knowledge and experience to create something truly special, strong. We think of one strand of hair. It's easy to break. But when you start to interweave and when you start to connect those strands, something magical happens. You get something that's so strong and we can be connected. And so if we wanna build a sustainable world, we need to be able to openly share with one another and educate one another. And I think my gift to you today will be the truth, will be honesty. Those are sacred teachings and we'll talk a little bit more about them later. But for me, braiding and the ways in which we've braided our conference, the program, is a meaningful way to learn about knowledge because you don't just get one perspective. You can get multiple perspectives and what a gift that is. Now two-eyed seeing is something that was shared to us by Elder Albert Marshall. He's McMoggy from Eastern Territories. And for me, he really put a term to this perspective, the gift of multiple perspectives, the gift of two-eyed seeing, which is really about learning to see with the strengths and gifts of Western knowledge and also learning to see with the strengths and gifts of indigenous knowledge and using both those perspectives, both those lenses for the betterment of all. Now what a beautiful thing that is to think about. Each and every single one of us here comes today from our own places. We carry our own knowledge and our own gifts and when we share those with each other, when we share them in a meaningful, honest, truthful way, we can connect, we can bridge that divide and we can move forward in building us to the innermost world through the belief of open education by being accessible to one another, by being responsible and obligated to our gifts and to our knowledge. Now it can be tricky to see two-eyed seeing in action, but I wanna share with you this photo from my territory. Now you'll notice they're both beautiful. They really are. And this is territory that I would have spent a lot of time with my cook'em and my dad and my brother and my community members learning. Now I stared at this photo for a long time because I knew there was teaching in there somewhere. There was knowledge in there. When I looked at them, I saw two pathways, two perspectives. You see one, it's more natural, it's beautiful. It's a waterway, it's a river. When I think about how rivers connect us, I can think about the North Saskatchewan that lies just out there and it's been mentioned that this used to be a meeting place of people. And look at us today, meeting here again in good spirit and good ways to share knowledge, to share experience. When I looked at the left photo, I obviously, you see a road which would have required the use of tools, modern technology, people coming through the territory. Using Western knowledge to be able to get there. Both to me are equally valuable. They allowed me to get into my territories to experience culture, to hunt, to trap, to harvest with my dad and my cook'em. Both could be used to traverse the territories. They both offer gifts. They're both strong. One exists within an indigenous perspective. I would much prefer to keep things the way they are, natural. But I also understand that we need tools. We need modern ways of thinking so that we can get into our territories. And I say modern ways of thinking, but I'm an indigenous person that stands before you today with a lot of culture and with a lot of knowledge. And so it is modern. I exist today, you see me today. And so this is a way that we can see too wide seeing is that there's gifts in both perspectives. And when we choose to embrace multiple perspectives, when we choose to embrace the perspectives of other people, we can find answers to problems that seemed unsolvable. But because we have different perspectives, we can be better problem solvers. Maybe we can think more critically, more creatively because we're not bound just by one lens. Now think about how much you could miss. By walking through the world like this, so we have to be able to have the gift of multiple perspectives. Now I talk about connection. Talk about revitalizing sustainable relationships. And it's important to do that because as we move forward with the hope of building a sustainable world, we need to be able to connect. We need to be able to bridge those connections and those divides so that we can find the answers so that we can treat each other with love and respect. We can carry those with us. Now I want to introduce you to this very brilliant woman. It's amazing woman, my cook'em, Shirley Latender. And remember when I invited you to think of your own teachers, people who have left the mark on you and impression, my cook'em, my grandmother, my mom. She raised me and she raised me within the tradition and culture. But that was a funny thing because it wasn't ever taught to me that way. Nobody ever came to me and said, this is your culture. It's just something we did. When we were out on the land, when we were harvesting, the way she interacted with the territory inspired me. She would often sit like this, gently on the land in the moss beds, and she would be picking her medicines. And even before she began that process, she would lay some tobacco down. She would show the land respect and consideration that before she took something, she had given something back. And that's a beautiful spirit. Because I think we live within a world where we get used to taking, taking from the land, taking from one another. But how do we give back? This morning I was offered protocol, a trade, a gift for my knowledge and experience, which allows me to story tell and share with you in a very honest and truthful way. And that is what she did, and that is what she taught me. She knew the land like nobody's business. She was brilliant. It's unfortunate that I shared that. She only had a grade three Western education. But the knowledge that she had, that she carried with her, that she was able to gift me a little bit in her time here. Because she's not with us. She walks in the spirit world now. But she is with us. She's with me. I am her. She is me. The knowledge she shared with me, as I mentioned, reached across generations. So yes, I'm a young person. But I carry knowledge and stories and experiences that have transcended hundreds, thousands of years. And it's a gift to be able to share that with you. My gift for you today, my cook'em's gift. I joke with people that I didn't have the opportunity to know people like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, John Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, you know, people that have left such an impression on our modern thinking in modern society. But I did know my cook'em. Let me tell you what a philosopher she was. The knowledge she carried was so rich. The way she related to the world. And what she passed on to me was that love, was that respect, and that knowledge for my territories. So I'm responsible and obligated to them, to take care of them, to show them that love. And that's how we can move forward. So we build a sustainable world in those ways. It's by being sustainable with ourselves and our own practices, thinking of our own beings. Because sustainability really begins with self. Now that's me, I was really young, my cook'em, my little brother Rocky. We had just harvested a moose, and my cook'em is sitting there and she's preparing the meat to put on the racks. And my cook'em shared with me a lot of teachings. And I was about that age when she showed me my first one. I think I had a piece of dry meat in my mouth. I was real excited. Love dry meat. This is the best thing in the world. My wife would disagree. I don't think she's used to the taste. But you know, my cook'em, when I was that age, she taught me a very important teaching. My very first teaching. I wanna share that with you. Because braiding is a journey of understanding our past, to know how we got to where we are today, to maybe help guide us into the future. Which is yet unwritten, it's untold. And we have the power to change that. We could do it together. My cook'em, she took me out into the backyard there. Don't mind all the old cars. We just had a lot of old cars sitting around. I don't know. Never gave them up. My cook'em liked keeping things. But she took me into the backyard and she said, my son, I wanna show you something. And she was aware of the environment that I was growing up in. She said, I wanna show you this so that if you ever become lost and you need energy and you need to survive. So she took me out onto the land. She took me to the back and she cut a small notch out of this poplar tree. She peeled it away. And of course, before she did that, guess what she did? She laid some tobacco down because she knew that we were gonna learn something. We were gonna take something. And so she carved this notch and she scrapped it with a, scraped it with a knife blade and she said, here try this. And I tried it and it tasted sweet. It was really good. Honestly, that was the last thing I could have expected. And I was young. This was even before I had an opportunity to go to a public school to receive a Western education. When I did go to school, when I did start taking science, you'll learn that trees are a lot like us. They have their own pathways within them that carry nutrients and carry water to allow them to thrive and survive. And the layer that she had access was known as the xylem layer. It's the layer that carries the sugars throughout the tree. But I didn't learn about that until a little bit later in my life. And I think that really brings attention to the specialness of indigenous ways of knowing an indigenous knowledge is even before I had an opportunity to learn a Western perspective, I had an indigenous perspective. I was gifted that and was taught to me in a way that allowed me to create a connection with my environment so that I could treat it with much more respect and consideration. Not just a resource to be used, but a relative who cared for me and loved me and could provide for me. And so I cook them, I thank her, and I think about her. And I think we should all think of our own ancestors, think of what it took for each and every single one of us to be here on this journey. So how do I carry these teachings presently? As an instem and land-based learning program coordinator and instructor, I have the beautiful opportunity to meet with indigenous youth and bridge the connections between Western ways of knowing and indigenous ways of knowing so that they can understand themselves in some ways, but they can bridge those connections. They can make those really meaningful connections between knowledge systems. So this was at a land camp in Northern Alberta and treaty number eight territory, about 40 minutes south of Fort McMurray where we had an opportunity to teach and educate the youth in a land-based learning setting. And I'm a firm believer that land-based learning holds a lot of answers. It holds a lot of connection. Like I mentioned earlier, when you get out on the land, you just connect. It's almost natural. And so we taught these youth, we taught them about water care, taught them how to take care of their water sources, how to test them utilizing modern Western methods using pH strips, litmus test, all these really cool things that we can use to understand our water systems. But before we even did that, I sat them in a circle. And we talked about water and what their connection to water was. And I want you to think of your connection to water. You know, this morning we had the privilege of listening to the beautiful big drum and I love the big drum and I've shared this with my friends and my relatives and my colleagues. It is sometimes, you may have felt this, there's a familiarity to it. There's a good reason for that. It draws you in, it captures your attention. And what I've been taught and gifted with is that each and every single one of us, we spent nine months, 10 months, maybe less in our mom's belly, in her womb, and we listened to her heartbeat. And so when we heard the big drum today, that's what it reminded of, of that heartbeat that we all share in common. We all existed in water for that amount of time. And so we sat in a circle and we let the youth talk about their experiences, how they understood water. Being in circle is a beautiful thing. We think of the medicine wheel. Circle is very sacred geometry. There's no beginning, there's no end, there's only connection. And so we sat in a circle. We allowed them an opportunity to share their truth and their honesty, such as I'm doing with you today in the storytelling manner. And at first they went around, some were shy, some didn't wanna say anything. Few of them did. Then we went around that second time in the teepee. And then every single other person that didn't share something found something. That they wanted to share. They gave them a safe space to share their truth and to share their knowledge. And as educators, I think we know how hard it can be to get 100% attention, 100% participation. So I was very happy that every single one of those youth participated in that circle. And to me that reminds me of the power and strength of indigenous ways of knowing, of ceremony, of these very communal connected practices. And they shared about water. And then we went to this water source and we tested it, we learned about the health of it, how it contributes to our planet. And furthermore, talking about connection, our bodies, this is magnificent, our bodies are made of 60 to 70% water. Mother Earth, our world, is also comprised of 60 to 70% water. What a special thing that is. You know, we're here, we're us, but our mother Earth shares a lot of similarities. We all need water to survive. We all need water to thrive and we all come from water. It's one of those sacred elements I mentioned earlier. And so we utilized the two-eyed seeing perspective. We bridged those connections. It's actually really sad to hear that for some of those youth that was the first time all year they had practiced science. Just concerning in a lot of ways. I think science allows us to understand, STEM allows us to understand, and culture allows us to understand. And indigenous peoples have always practiced STEM in our own ways, in our own traditions. And land-based learning is something that allows us to connect. It is a form of education. It's probably the purest form of open education. Because the land is indiscriminate. It doesn't care what you look like. It doesn't care where you come from. All it requires is that you come willing to learn that you're curious, that you learn about the places that you're in. It's a gift for me to be a guest here in the Miscochila Skyagon Treaty Number 6 territory to think of the ways in which the land sustains me and the ways in which I treat it. I offer it respect and I offer it protocol. The North Saskatchewan River sustains me. Allows me to go to a tap and run water. That's a special thing. It's a very connected thing. And we think about these things. And so storytelling, land-based learning is an open education practice. It is a way to transmit knowledge. When my cook come took me out onto the land and she showed me these teachings, she was openly sharing with me her knowledge, her experience, which I can carry with me today, which I share with other youth. And the youth will carry these teachings just as maybe one or many of you today now have these gifts, have these teachings. And you can carry them with you in your own journeys and you become responsible and obligated to share with others this knowledge. And what connection that is? What a community that is when we come together as people to share knowledge in open ways, in accessible barrier-free ways. I liked that comment earlier that open education is not free to make, it's free to use. I like that. And so we need to be able to introduce and invite these perspectives because we cannot continue just walking in one world. We need to be able to walk in both worlds. And as a young Indigenous man, I'm able to do that because I was gifted with an Indigenous perspective. I was able to receive a higher education. So I'm able to walk in both worlds, define those answers to the solutions. A dream as big as building a sustainable world through open education, for example. In order to do that, I think we need to revitalize the relationships that we share with one another so that we can connect, so that we can understand each other. So we can work together in true collaboration. We talk about treaty partnerships and treaty relations. We're all treaty people. We're all people that enjoy the territory of the land. It sustains us. It provides for us. But what can we do together to give back? Like my cook'em gave back. Like my dad would give back. Like I give back when I can. And I'm not perfect. I don't think anybody's perfect. I think it's gonna take a while to learn. But it's by inviting Indigenous perspectives, even into spaces like this in the present today, learning from young Indigenous peoples, the connections between elders, youth and those who kinda lie in between. There's a lot of knowledge there. And it completes that circle. That circle of knowledge, of knowledge transfer. Now, I love these. These are the sacred teachings, or grandfather teachings, as I understand them as a Nehiyau Metis person. Now I don't speak for all Indigenous peoples. I cannot. That's not true and it's not right of me. I share with you a Nehiyau Metis perspective that's rooted in treaty number eight territory. That's rooted in Kelly Lake. That is where this perspective comes from. It also comes through my years of engaging with other elders and knowledge keepers throughout treaty territories, and the stories that they have gifted me. Now you might notice the next few days as you meander in and out of rooms, that some of our rooms have place names, Indigenous place names. For example, today we're in Bear Room. I find that very fitting. Bear carries the gift of courage. Took a lot of courage for me to come up here as an Indigenous man, a young Indigenous person, to share with you honestly and openly. And can you imagine if we all move forward in our lives with that level of courage to be able to defend not only ourselves and our beings and our communities and our families, but to extend that beyond, to our environments, to our lands, to our territories. And for me, like I mentioned earlier, everything begins with self. If we want to revitalize sustainable relationships, we should be able to show ourselves these teachings. We should walk honestly. We should tell our truth. We should have love. And I think love for me is the most important teaching. When I was young, my cook'em would tell me that eagle, anytime I see an eagle, and to this day when I see an eagle, I'll scramble to find some tobacco because she would tell me that eagle can carry our prayers and our thoughts up to Creator and to our ancestors. And to this day, I see an eagle. I just want to lace some tobacco down and offer a prayer and offer good thoughts so that Creator can hear. Now, eagles carry the teaching of love. And if you ever see eagles, and if you know of eagles, they're very loving animals. They co-parent. And if they can, if they're lucky enough, they will mate for life. They will show each other that love. They'll each take care of their offspring and their eggs and they'll hunt and they'll do it at different times. So they show that love. What I love about these teachings is that they don't come from us. They didn't come from me. They come from our non-human relatives, from our animal relatives. We see their being. We witnessed it. And they taught us. And that's what the land can do for us. It can teach us. And that's the importance of why we need to maintain it and sustain it. So that we can continually practice these things. For me, I can tell you very honestly, that I wouldn't be here without a lot of love. My dad loved me. My cook'em loved me. My brother loved me. And do love me. I have a lot of love in my life. And that love, in a lot of ways, was taken from us. And we try to get that back. There's a lot of trauma that exists in indigenous communities. But if we can love one another, and if we can learn to love ourselves, we can share that with the world. We can share that with each other. We can create those connections, meaningful connections. See, because as a young person, I had a lot of people that were against me. Probably still a lot of people that are against me. You know, when I was in high school, had a teacher come up to me and told me, you know, you're never gonna go to school. You're never gonna go to university. And that's the truth. Took a lot of strength to be able to find myself in higher education, learning more about myself. And I think that's the power of open education, of making an education that is open, accessible, barrier-free, to people who have been traditionally left out. Because I can tell you that it was in higher education that I discovered more about myself. Like I mentioned earlier, growing up on the land in my community, it wasn't taught to me that this was my culture, but I started to read about it in textbooks. And I started to read about it from other people who were able to contextualize this experience. But I did have culture, and I do have culture. And so I share with you these teachings. Because for me, to take these teachings to internalize them allows me to achieve what's known as meal tamatsuan, which is a good life. And I want that for us all. I want us all to have a good life. I want you all to know what love is, how to love. How to love yourself first and foremost. Because how can we love others? How can we respect others? If we can't do that for ourselves. So we need to practice sustainable, good relationships with ourselves. We need to be balanced. Think of the medicine wheel so that we can move forward in our future, together, in community, in solidarity to achieve the ambitious goal, the dream of building a sustainable world. And we can do that by openly sharing with one another, by talking about perspectives, by learning to see the world how I see the world, how my kukum saw the world, how my community sees the world. And I wanna know how you see the world, I wanna know what your dreams are. Cause I got a lot of dreams. I do want to build a sustainable world. Because I know that in building a sustainable world, I'll have the territory, I'll have the access to the land to continue practicing. The knowledge will always be there if the land is there, the water is there. If our animals, if our non-human relatives have a place to exist, we'll learn from them. And so for me, building a sustainable world or open education is a beautiful thing. But it requires first that we revitalize the relationships between us as relatives. Because Creator put each and every single one of us here for a good reason. And we've all found each other today in this space. And what a gift that is to come together, to be together, to allow, to share for these things, to talk about them, to internalize them. Now, we've talked about the past. Learned a little bit about the future. Where are we going? What's the future? Well, we don't really know. It's unwritten. So we have a lot of creativity that we can do. We can be creative with 2-IDC. But for me, I think the future is what we're doing. It's kinship. This is Sweet Grass Bear. Sits the U of A campus. Not too far from here. You can go and visit it if you like. And it talks about these teachings. And it shows that we are all related. But what does that mean? We're all related as people. The connections between people, between communities, between families and societies in the world. Each and every single one of you carries your own understanding of what kinship means. I want you to think about that. What does kinship mean to you? Does it mean your family? Does it mean the connection that you share with your spouse, maybe your pets, your little four-legged relatives? For me, Wakotwin is a natural law concept that guides me, that inspires me to extend love and respect to not just people, not just those that look like me, dance like me, move like me, and talk like me. But it's really about all of our relatives, our animal relatives, our non-human relatives, our plants, the sky, the sun, the moon, our elements, things that we can feel that carries spirit. We're all related. We all have a role to play in the sustainability of our world. It's part of our being. We talk about the land, the water, the air, and fire. These are all things I think we've experienced. These are all things that connect us and truly unite us. And so it's in the spirit of Wakotwin. It's in the spirit of openly sharing, of openly educating, of being an accessible resource. I like to think of myself as an accessible resource. You just gotta offer me some protocol and I'll tell you stories all day, friends. Let me tell ya. But you know, we are all related. And coming back to my point about roles and responsibilities is we are responsible first and foremost to ourselves. We're obligated to ourselves, to our communities, and to our families. And when we can find balance, when we can find connection with the places that we come from, with our people, with the people who have left an impression on us, we can share that, we can find answers. We can build a sustainable world, but we need multiple perspectives. We need to continually invite these perspectives and hear from them so that we can internalize them. So that we together as a community, and dare I say it as a family, we find the answers to those solutions. Solutions to those problems, rather. We can build a sustainable world. It will be together, and it won't be apart. So I encourage you to think of Ocotwin, what good kinship means, of how we can love and be loved, how we can hear, be heard, and how we can hear from others. You know, as an indigenous person, a Nehiyamiti person, I want to connect with people and the courage that it takes for indigenous peoples to continually want to do that is amazing, because we've suffered, continued to suffer. There's a lot of hope in our ways of knowing and being. There's a lot of love there. And it's been a privilege and a true honor for me to share with you some of those gifts, some of those teachings, the gift of storytelling, the gift of understanding. And so as we move forward and we move on today, I encourage you to make those connections, meet new people, look into their eyes, see their spirit, see their souls, see where they're coming from, see what they have to offer you. We each carry a gift, we each carry knowledge, and we each carry perspective. Each one is valuable. Each one has something to offer. And like that two-eyed seeing picture I showed you earlier is we're all just small pieces of a grand mosaic. And so the future will be good kinship. The future will be what go to it. It will be the ways in which we come together to share, to learn, to love. So that may be one day we can build a sustainable world and we can revitalize those important relationships. It's a big dream, but it's a dream that I believe in. It's a dream that my cook and believed in. And I hope that it's a dream that we all believe in. And with that, say thank you. It's been an honor. Yeah, so I guess we have some time for questions. I always like to leave an opportunity for questions because I like to think we're a curious bunch. So don't be shy. We're relatives today, we're a community today. Like I mentioned earlier, I've been offered protocol, so this is a great time to ask questions. I want to share as much or as little as you need. So please, don't be shy. Just shout at me if you need. I don't know if we have a mic in the room or not. Great, thank you. Miigwech, thank you so much for your talk today. I am over here in the back toward the door. Oh, it's bright, this light's shining right in my face. Where are you at? Sorry about that, right here. Oh, there you are, perfect. I would just like to ask if you have so many of us work with young students, many of us work with Indigenous students coming into post-secondary. What can we do to help them feel more welcome, more comfortable, not only included, but empowered with what we're trying to do? No, that's a very good question. I appreciate you asking that. Now, I think of our spaces as spaces for all people, and we can think of Indigenous peoples and how I describe this is I was recently at a conference earlier this year with Indigenous youth, and we're talking about empowering Indigenous prosperity. And prosperity exists in many forms. It's not just about how much money you can put in our pockets. That's good, don't get me wrong. But prosperity also exists in how we can come into our environments, how we can come into schools, organizations, and feel safe. What I can share with you is that that was a common theme with the youth, is that they wanted to feel safe. They wanted to come into a place where they could be themselves. And so I think fundamentally we need to be able to change and adapt our institutions and our structures so that they become much more nourishing environments. And I think about it in land-based terms, and this is how I kind of walk in an Indigenous world, is you can plant a seed, but if you don't have the right conditions, if you don't have the proper care and attention, that seed will never grow. And so our schools, our institutions, should be places that are nourishing, that are welcoming, so that Indigenous students can transplant themselves and that they can grow, so that they can be loved and respected and they can practice their teachings and not be judged for them. For me growing up in Kelly Lake, that was something that was very special, was the opportunity to practice culture with no judgment. And nobody trying to tell me that I was wrong for doing what I did, because oftentimes I think Indigenous students, and I've faced this myself, is you have to ask to practice your tradition. Smudging is something that's very important and for those of us here today, I encourage you to make your environments a place where Indigenous peoples can practice their traditions and cultures, openly and honestly, because there's knowledge in that, there's truth in that, there's experience in that. They need to be safe. And that's really what it's about, is just having safe environments for not only Indigenous learners, but all of our learners. If we can make a safe, nourishing environment for Indigenous learners, we automatically create a safe and nurturing environment for all students, because Indigenous peoples, we're not different. We're people, we're human beings, we have hearts and we have minds. So I think that's what it's about, just creating good, safe, nourishing environments, a place to grow. Thanks for the question. One over there. Almost need some like, intermittent music going on as we transfer the mic. Hi, hi. Hi, hi. I'm Eugenia from Uruguay and from Mexico. I'm very happy to, to help you and to, and the thoughts you shared. And the concept of TWICE is very impressive so as to connect with diversity and inclusions in a real way, not diversity, equity and inclusion, washing. This is our most important issue nowadays, I think. I want you to share, what do you see as the future of open education regarding diversity, equity and inclusion? What do you see as a young man and ask in the way you see the inclusion of your people and also the way you see the dialogues among cultures, among these diversity that everybody here in the room, we are all diverse. So how do you see the future? Thank you very much. No, thank you for that question. It's a brilliant question. It's hard to know what the future holds for us. It really is, but I think that allows us an opportunity to be creative with the future. I like that you talk about diversity, inclusion and equity. You know, when we talk about open education and open educational resources, you know, I think in many ways, just the practice of what I shared with you today is open education. It is an indigenous way to practice open education because I can share with you teachings and knowledge through the art and gift of storytelling in a way that is open. And I think that open education in the future is just about that. It's about inviting multiple perspectives. It's about welcoming diversity and uplifting them equitably so that they can be heard. You know, we've heard a lot of the Western story. We've heard a lot from, you know, non-indigenous, non-black, brown, scholarship, you know? So it's important that the future of open education includes those perspectives because if we think of the traditional education system, it's just been predicated on patriarchy. It's been founded on hierarchy. It's been founded in those ways. And a lot of people were left out of that. Women were left out of that. Indigenous peoples were left out of that. Black people were left out of that. A whole lot of people got left out of the building of these institutions and these structures. So moving forward, we either need to be able to adapt our systems currently and welcome that and invite that in and practice the courage or we need to build something new that does include all perspectives so that that foundation is founded on multiple perspectives, two-eyed-seeing perspectives. And so that will make education much more equitable and much more diverse, just in essence. So I think that's my answer to that. And hopefully in doing that, the future will be a lot brighter because we'll have future youth, future people that have the gift of multiple perspectives. I can see the world in multiple lenses. So thank you, that's a good question. We got one more question. Hi there. My name is Nikita, I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, in the USA. And it seems to me that open education, open educational resources tend to have a singular narrative where it's only about how do we make an impact by saving money? How do we make an impact for students by making things more equitable as far as the access to traditional cost of open educational resources? But your perspective this morning is really impactful to me because I believe, and the reason why I'm in open education is because I believe that there's a much bigger, a wider narrative to talk about than just how to save money for students, even though that's a big one. And your approach to our responsibility and our accountability to each other for gifting knowledge and that kind of thing, I think is more along the lines of my passion. So I wanted to know how you might help us articulate a wider narrative for why open education is important. And I think maybe you answered it by speaking to the diversity piece of it, but just being able to help us articulate a bigger message than just cost savings is what I'm asking. That's a good question, it's a big question. Now I think that open education and education alone has the power to change the world. I'm the first person in my family to receive a higher education degree. And I think that means something. A lot of indigenous peoples, indigenous youth, black youth, girls, they don't have the opportunities to get that education, they don't have access. And for me growing up in a pretty remote community I share with people, I didn't have wifi until I went to school. So there's still a lot of disconnect. And so if we can make education accessible, free to use and to access, people will be better for it. I like to think that education is a human right. And it is a human right. All people deserve to be educated is because when you have an educated peoples, when you have educated communities, you can solve problems because people can be critical thinkers, they can be problem solvers. It's just about getting the people there. We can no longer leave people out of education. Everybody deserves to be educated. I deserve to be educated. My community members deserve to be educated. My people deserve to be educated. They also deserve to be educated where they're at. We also need to be able to meet people where they're at. We can't always ask them to come to these big cities, to these places, to leave their homes. So one thing that I love about open education it provides the possibility and opportunity to learn from where you are, but learn in a very good way. Because knowledge doesn't exist on a piece of paper. It doesn't exist on those kind of credentials. The knowledge that we carry exists in here and in here. So we can share that with one another. And we just learn from one another. And so for me, the broader perspective is about getting the people who have been left out into those systems. Because like myself, my story is about that. It's about the power of education. It's about the power of understanding. When we can understand ourselves and we can understand the communities and the lands that we come from, we can start to think of those questions. But how to build sustainable worlds through open education? So I think open education is powerful. And I think it will be an integral part of our future as people. And I love that spirit of just gifting people knowledge, of just letting them have it and letting them decide for themselves, being responsible for themselves, allowing for that self-determination. Be like, this is what I want to do. Thank you, Darian. So much for sharing your message with us today and your teachings through your stories. It was very inspirational. And I look forward to learning with you together in the future. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it.