 Well, what I've liked about this interview so far is a lot of the sharing that's happening, but how you've been able to weave like stories and Teachings that you've kept you've heard in the past and you're bringing these forward at the expense of selling repetitious Because you have you have shared some stories, but Your your grandson happens to be here which kind of really leads into this question about What stories or teachings do you want to make sure gets carried on to him and that he could pass on? It's the kind of thought that's carried in the language That becomes important because it's through your language that you immerse yourself in your own culture You don't you rely on another language coming from another culture to describe yourself and relate to the world That you are coming from so you are able to think in your language, which you mean my language way It's in if not them one There's a a way of seeing a way of being inside the language Which is an eight within the language that? Makes it difficult at times for people to come to know Especially if you're coming from that modern scientific world you find challenge and Leaving that world and coming into the world of being an ishnabek Because you're having to put away the physical dimension of what that Weage economic world that Western science world is coming from and people who are there this is The challenge that they have it or having to overcome So in a used the example of the translation of the baby term Say when you talk about baby in English you say baby You know you want to move up in the language you live in that culture You wonder and you understand okay that there's something about an infant a young child a Baby that's innate within the word But it's an object Focused okay way of thought the way of way of seeing way of living and when we Take the term and translate the term baby into an ishnabek way of being You put a Bigger dimension to what the baby is When you say Abanoji is the term that we use to describe what a baby is about and we just say baby We say Abanoji Abanoji Making and framing that word has pieces that are brought together Example would be the first part of that ah That's this explanation that their spirit here very much a part of What this little infant is There's a spiritual dimension to that child. It's not an object. It's a spirit being Okay, Abbe says it's It doesn't move when it's first born it can't move on its own It's dependent on someone providing for its care But oh yeah, I've been okay Ben says this little spirit has coming into this world It comes from a spiritual world realm and it entertains in this physical space Now you're getting into the world of the Western science mind Can we say I've been it comes into a Space that we are born into which is a physical place And that's what the understanding is you come from spirit. What did you what were you before? Well, there's an answer said well the child was here before But it wasn't in the form of this infant baby. It was here as a spirit being But when life came the spirit from that larger outside world suddenly was put Into this little vessel of this little infant body and now it's here in that form But it's connected still with that wider realm of Relationship and it hasn't split off in any way. It's connect directly connected, but we In trying to wrap our eyes around in our head around this kind of a way of seeing It makes it of a challenge to want to accept because you're wanting to say well prove that to me You want to see Validation like we do in science for what you are describing and for our people to say it's just understood When we think about the vastness of the universe the placement of the stars Okay, so when you look at the twinkling star in the sky Okay, we say nongos Okay, nongo suck Fastness of the quantity of them small But they're out there in their human spirit And you don't know that these are physical objects some of them being quite larger in our own Sun thousand times bigger Some of them when they look at think about what they are and science tells us that they're that there is there But we say well some of them are so far away. We don't even know if they're still there But the light that came from it is still traveling here to get here So that is difficult to understand explain So when we think about the way of seeing we did we did the way that we relate to the world is a different View and that's what that's what becomes important. That's what makes an oceanic distinct from other nations of another people's of the world it's that The way it's described today Let's say it's our The word is slipping my mind But it's our culture It's our world view That makes us different and The Western science today finds challenge and wanted to accept our view as being somewhat real legitimate It wants to put us in a lower form a lesser form And say what don't Make those kinds of assessments don't do that kind of That kind of labeling There's nothing inferior. It's just an alternative way of seeing and Acknowledge that there's just in a different way to look But the inside what it does it creates a Different society and The society that you create is what we see the early explorers writing about Inside the society their poverty is not there because poverty is something that Never came so it never was there. You don't even know what it is. They don't have a word to describe what it is Similarly when we talk about the possession of the land and this is what the inside that treaty We look to We were we just came through a court case and the big challenge in In the court case was trying to translate the first part of what the treaty language is saying You see words in there seed surrender transfer title convey That's all property language object-focused thinking But we can't translate those ideas in those the opening phrases into an issue not everyone It's not possible because the ideas don't exist and yet we have this treaty which talks about our Transferring over to Great Britain title in land Say we can give you permission to come and walk on the land, but we can't give you a title to the property so when we ask Today by the standards which are now in place There's this What they call the undripped United Nations recognition of Indigenous people's rights the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People's undripped and they're wanting to put a Piece of legislation to the House of Commons accepting on grip That's fine to accept undripped But undripped is limited It doesn't go To the step that's needed to be taken The acknowledgement of us as a nation That's what the treaty provides for The treaty provides for our Acknowledgement and our existence assessment and our accommodation as being a nation Canada has to admit that In it doesn't want to do so because suddenly it puts itself into a disposition of Having to sit down and get consent from us before it does anything and it talks about it doesn't want to have a Limited small body of people and people having veto over Canada's constitution So it creates problems For Canada But Canada can't get around it has to sit down because that's what the law provides for So when we deal with teaching our children, we're having to teach them about these abstract concepts about Who they are what they have what they're able to enjoy in being an Ishnabic And we have to take time to teach them what that means and what that is and the way that I was able to be Informed by my parents so that it doesn't become lost and you don't lose your house So I have to take care of my house. This is your house. It's your responsibility to look after it Creator put you here on this part of the world for you to enjoy. He didn't put you in Africa He didn't put you in Asia. He didn't put you in Europe. He put you here in North America and Turtle Island This is a place that you are able to enjoy. You can say this is my home So when we want to have we want our children to enjoy that comfort. I'm knowing that it's up to them to make those determinations about how they're going to choose to live, but We want to make it secure for them. So that future generations are possible That they can dream about being able to have those pleasures So it's going to take us some time to To do that work. So my grandson it's important that he Sees himself from the perspective of being positive and that's what I'm able to share with him Go outside and put the back in the fire Go down to the lake and put some catch a little frog Not to kill him, but to look at him and put him back in the water Little things like what you're so meaningful for the children when they're growing up And I was able to do that with my own children. I watched him on the dock to catch the little fish fill up the little bucket So you caught the most put them back in the water Next they go back and do the same thing again The pleasure of being a child And that's what my brother when he came home. He cried okay, we went out to the lake because he missed that when he moved away for a time He brought tears to his eyes the memories of how much fun it was to be able to do that as a child I like that that idea about you had said to dream about a good lead into the into the question about What is your vision for an ish novice education? Over the next ten years then I Think it's to change the curriculum to get Canada to accept that the initial public People have a rightful place in their own home and that we are in relationship with Canada that's Unique distinct so within Canada we don't fear the idea of there being an ish novice people here Who's like going across Canada when I leave Ontario I go into Manitoba when I leave Manitoba I go into Saskatchewan when I leave across the country you're in different provinces But they're all within Canada or if you're in Sudbury you're in Ontario, but you're still in Canada But there's no fear about that has a lot to do with how the administration is put into place Acknowledging and supporting rather than trying to get rid of them and dump So there's a need for Canada to open up its mind and to open up its way of living to accommodate What the reality is that they're in the home of the ish novice and there's a treaty there that Confirms and makes that happen Just live with it and Teach it and enjoy it. There's nothing to nothing to be feared, but it has a lot to do with successful Cohabitation the partnership living in there and we talk about in our language we talk about them We talk about having relatives and we say all my relations Well, my relations include Not only people But there are animals life forms plants animals rock water It's a different way of looking and we have responsibility to ensure that those Relatives are also going to be able to exist Say the water will be pure salt water and fresh water trees will have a Habitat animals will have a habitat although those change with the changing populations but there's a an awareness of each one Having the ideas about right to exist We have obligation to manage what those responsibilities are in the best way that we are we are able so it's a different way to look at What we are needing to do as our work Do so in a way, which is going to be responsible And loving toward your neighbor so in terms of the my children It's getting that finish not big education. That's what it amounts to Not to fear it But to look at it as being a prize to be enjoyed When you had brought up The need to change the curriculum There's the initiative education Initiative that's happened there was a vote to to move forward with this this education system is Implementation of something like this feasible like a 10-year period Whereas does there's something else have to accompany this to achieve your Your 10-year kind of goal like this the achieving of the of the goal Requires Canada to shift the way that it currently operates. It's having to open up its its mind Political system to accept what has been produced by the historical agreement. It's running away from those responsibilities in my view And that's what the old people Indicate and I've said Canada it's time for you to sit down and own up to your obligations So when you go back and learn that history for me, it's very clear Because it's what I use when I sit down with Canada on occasion to remind them about I'm not coming out of the dark I'm not coming out in somewhere. That's unknown. It's coming from clear defined pathway milestones and We are at a time now 1850 and we've just come to a court case and this court case has said there's an obligation upon Canada in Ontario to increase The annuity payment that's due to the Anishinaabek, why did we have to take us a hundred and some odd years to go into court To have a court safety Canada that they're failing miserably and upholding their side of the bargain Are we going to go to another ten years 50 years 20 years of time before Canada Sits down and actually does something that's required of them legally requires Them to follow through with obligations that were entered into on in healthy relationship Living I think it shouldn't we shouldn't have to go to court It's just unthinkable that you take your own nation to court in order to get some kind of a well outcome That's going to be meaningful. How do we? Get Canada to move it's like a little child that's abused in the schoolyard When there's a say a great-age students taking the lunch money from the kindergarten child Kill the garden child really cannot defend themselves But that does not make it Legally right or morally right that the great-age student can steal the money lunch money That's the kind of relationship that we find ourselves today in in terms of how we relate with Canada It's like I this is what I say Very clear to say we are bullied by by Canada and that's Sad, but it doesn't make it go away. It doesn't make it right, but Canada tries to pressure and tries to Make extinct Makes tries to erase those Obligations so when we sit with Canada, we're having to be very careful. This is something that we encountered when Canada was Going through this idea of patriotic in the Constitution When we went to Great Britain to object to Canada's acting alone because it was going to produce a document that Ignored our people Canada cried and tried to stop our delegation from going to Britain They sit and get an audience with the British Crown and the British government and they did everything to try and Stifle that process But all the people said no, it's not for you to Interfering it's not for you to stop So our people went to Great Britain and we were able to get an audience with the House of Lords Which is for them the Supreme Court of Canada the Supreme Court of Great Britain and the House of Lords Said to our people very clear We have ties with you formed by treaty when we passed authority for Canada to Make law under its system of government Modeled on ours a style of government. We didn't erase you We didn't rub you out We pass obligation on to Canada to complete and Follow through with its obligations that we made with you. So when we look at section 109 it talks about Agreements made by Great Britain before Confederation and all those Agreements have to be carried on in Confederation after Confederation occurs And it also references back to the well proclamation. It says in the well proclamation This is law that gave Canada the route to which it came into Existence and again inside there. It says before we come on to your land We will first make a treaty with you and it's not something I want to force on you It's at your request that we make the treaty So Canada can't force its way into the land onto the land into the territory into the homes and try to wipe out The inheritance that we have which is the title to the land So it's important that that be understood So when we sit down with Canada today, Canada's Constitution and that section 35 It says inside the document That we will not abrogate or derogate the treaty The treaty is entrenched in the Constitution as primary law Canada can't just arbitrarily come out and try to eradicate it It can't do that has to be in order to do that. It has to open up the treaty Canada doesn't want to go there Because suddenly we're more informed about Canada's system of politics the system of its of the Constitution making because now we speak the English language It's not as easy for them to try and weasel the way around and this is something that we see in the record When Lord Elgin gave instructions To mr. Robinson and coming here to make the treaty It says in his instructions use coercion to gain advantage Those words use coercion to gain advantage should totally invalidate the treaty And say the reasonable treaty and then when we went to court and we asked the question in the court What did we gain from the treaty? What did we gain? The answer was absolutely nothing Because we already had everything and we continue to possess everything that we had before It hasn't gone away. We haven't lost anything And that's what our people need to understand What that means? What does that give us it gives us a very real firm presence about stature? And we need to know what that is what it looks like and we need our children to be able to talk about that comfortably So when we sit with Canada We remind Canada About where it has traveled what it has done and I recall going down to six nations 2008 at the at the gathering via ecumenical gathering of indigenous nations indigenous peoples from north and south America Travel across Canada and I sat down here and I will listen to a young girl cry and I Stood up and I sat said to this young girl. I think I have the answer that you are looking for That's what we are having to do is hold Canada to account for what it has been doing To us as people It's like holding the Nazis to the at the Nuremberg war trials to crime against humanity We have told Canada to the same kind of standard in terms of its behavior About what it's doing to us as the first people So we have to Canada has to sit down and admit They have a treaty with the Anishinaabek It doesn't change the relationship that we are in but it does require them to make some shifts About obligations So that we're not made to suffer as it's recorded in the early documents We're not going to be in need in our own house. That's what's important to understand and learn to come to know Don't let that be taken from you though. It means that you understand what it means to be an Anishinaabek has a citizen of the Anishinaabek nation Who is teaching you? And I certainly at school they're not showing you that and not informing you about those that history So anything has to happen. It has to be learned at home and sadly and for some of our people a lot of that kind of story has been lost Unfortunately within our family within our community here. We still have The very rich history and every very strong story to carry and that's what I share with our with our family and community Were there any thoughts that you you thought of since we were last Chatting that you wanted to make sure we're documented or were you pretty satisfied with? What what you had shared when we? Look at the ideas around the concept of our concept in relation to programming Programming can cover many kinds of activities development planning physical planning Economic planning social planning and When you begin to take a look at what those are about you start to get into the idea of a long-term program with targets that you're going to Work toward in terms of being able to look at success So within our communities we start thinking about to say the aspect of a social development What does that look like what does that mean? When we're looking at the idea of the preservation of being in a shinabic We have some teaching models And the teaching models are quite sophisticated, but at the same time they're very Simple in terms of a diagram But the mandate about which they operate under in terms of what they are designed to protect is Really remarkable That we had some good people that were able to take these very difficult concepts About how we maintain our senses sense of people as being in a shinabic We have simple diagrams. We have simple drawings to capture what that's about And when we look at them today in the content of what they're carrying we see that being a part of what's Included in studies in more advanced education centers like PhD programs master's programs the content of what Is being carried so when we Something simple so in education. We've got a five-step Activity Circle one put five circles in a row the first four First are close together And then you get the fifth step which is offset from the first four You say well, that's the trail of education, but there's education at the primary level The high school level the university level and the doctoral dissertation level. They're all captured in those And those circles of them in terms of the journey In the first level you want to go through it's like going into the grade one learning to Write English in one syllable words when you learn to write in one syllable words It's easy to relate to your world Like book tea Very simple very direct very Easy to understand but when you go up to scale in higher Learning concept like validation validation to a child doesn't mean anything book does So we look at this education Scale here, and that's what we talk about in terms of education You've got the level of Level of abstraction increases as you go through the years of learning and the way it's laid out this It's the same at each level the first level is awareness Becoming aware of the book becoming aware of a one-cellful word Attaching a one-cellful word with sound to give meaning That's captured. Well our language is structured in the same way to achieve the same outcome But it's when you put the words the syllables together You begin to touch concepts That are language so our language becomes much more complex as opposed to somebody Methods which are used in the English language So when you think about say what's occurring there? Well, that's partly what we're having to come to better understand in terms of the ideas in relation to education What are we teaching? How are we teaching? And they say that in concepts like pedagogy or the preparation of the curriculum In our school Okay, it's living out on the land where you're going to education where you're going to school So school is out on the land with somebody that's informed That has a good cons good command of the initial topic language So when you go out there when you travel with your grandpa He has that kind of higher knowledge Hope you go out there with your younger sister It's not the same She'll teach you ideas, but she won't teach you the kinds of concepts that grandpa can Because she doesn't have the the knowledge and the living experience yet in time. She will so you're I'll always coin So education doesn't stop. It's a lifelong experience and that's what education that's with described today about The way we are living Education never stops. It's a lifelong is like long at life experience Well, we understood that and our systems were set up to support That awareness of this is the way it is so when we think going down to Six nations and say well People were saying what are we what kind of message are we going to give to the world? We said well, we are going to say to the world that we have to hold the colonizer to account behavior that has been shown to us about trying to make us make us extinct and How we are going to do that is going to take us some time, but we're not going to lose sight of What the infractions were So there's a need there to Not lose sight of what the outcomes have produced. So when we look in look at Canada And this is something that We consider see when Prime Minister Harper got up in the House of Commons to apologize about the residential schools Morality says After was meaning in his words The day after making the apology there should have been a shift and a real major change in the behavior So what did we witness the change in the behavior was a cutting back of Program dollars to support activity that was occurring within our communities. That's the sad outcome of what occurred The apology was meaningless in terms of What the words were showing What the behavior Demonstrated so we have to go back to Canada today It's like Cindy Blackstock taking Canada to court about child welfare The court has said you have been in violation of the rights the children In the way that they are treated Their rights have been violated. You have not been providing with the care that they ought to be receiving for their Benefit and They are being treated as second-class people They're not being funded to the same level that other people's receive and provide the same types of care Why? Because they're indigenous living on a reserve Or they're indigenous living within a city because they're indigenous they get less care less consideration that that kind of nonsense has to stop So people from the indigenous side Can say what pride in their eyes and bring tears in their face to say that I'm a Canadian They can't do that right now when they see tears. It's tears of sadness not joy And we have to get to that over those kinds of hurdles. We think about Queerness that we are today. We're the first generation that can actually Go to court and sue Canada for infraction It was made illegal for our people to sue Canada the law Borrowed us from being able to do anything like that There's only 1951 The door was opened and now Canada's Constitution has put in the place of another benchmark to say that it's possible to sue for rights infractions But there's still no law which defines what rights Look like in terms of what they are for an ischnaubic people or the other indigenous nations So what so we have to sit down and describe What that looks like and how would you like it to be acknowledged? like in The case of our tick machine people what does that look like what did we want it to mean what do we want it to say? But that's where our people to design and define so when I wrote my letter to the Prime Minister Harper when he didn't sign the first run-through of the UN DREP legislation and proclamation I Said to him I was sad that he didn't put a signature there, but I said at the same time his signature was not needed I don't want his signature on a document. That's international. I Want to see a signature on a treaty that's made with me protecting our community and That's our people to decide not some international community or not Canada Operating in Bentley out the way from us. You have to come here and get that approval consent That's the That's the law That's the obligation. That's the treaty. That's the way it is But you have to feel comfortable that Being able to speak like that Bars a lot of comfort and education a part of our people to understand and know that it'll be very interesting I think with all this information is gathered How frequently this message comes up Looking forward to that time when people have gone through the recordings of what you've shared And they pulled out some of the common interests and common threads that have been shared in all the like I've just one person in one region, you know, like there's Six of us in this region doing interviews and then there's other regions across the land here, you know, so I Definitely want to say thank you for for everything you've shared for sure There's that idea of having a shared pool of knowledge, you know, and The more of us that can contribute to this I like That's that's why I like attaching myself to this project because I feel like yeah, like there's gonna be lots of people sharing Similar thoughts similar voices into a shared pool You know, and we can use this to to come to come to see You know many of these dreams of ours coming to fruition, you know So, you know, thanks. Thanks again for Everything you've shared me Gwetch