 Could you introduce yourself? Tell me a little bit about yourself. In the particular program that we're talking about, I was the principal and saw a need that for language teachers, Arcada 3 program is in Denizhati, and a lot of the teachers are older and about to retire within the next five, ten years, so it's like, okay, how do we make sure that our language immersion program continues? So, I was the one that reached out to UVic and working with the DFN and was able to bring the program into the region. What is your program called? The program that we're referencing here is, it was the University of Victoria Bachelor of Education in Indigenous Language Revitalization. And what age group or target audience is this program for? We targeted adults and the criteria for admission was really, it was those people that had an interest in language revitalization and they were adults. For those to continue on into the University into their third and fourth year, they needed to meet certain criteria. They needed to have certain math, grade 11 math and they needed to have their English. What is the aim of the program? The aim of the program was just to begin the idea at the regional level of looking at language revitalization in a more contextual institutionalized process so that we could ideally have teachers that are ready to go into the classrooms come out of the program. What in your opinion makes it an example of excellence in Indigenous education? I think to look at the cohort and see how empowered they became over the two and a half years was astounding. I think that as a group, they went through all of the emotions of dealing with residential schools with looking at some of the disparities within the north. I think, you know, if you look at Yellow Knight versus the Day Show, you definitely see the disparities. So for me, it was to see this group of students at the end of two and a half years and see how empowered they were. How do you measure the success of your program? Success for this group was 13 graduated, 13 were honored at the Day Show National Assembly last year and that right there is a success to have 13 graduates in a program that really, when it started off, didn't have a lot of government support, had a lot of regional government support but not at the territorial level and just, you know, through that whole example saying, OK, this is possible. I think it's showing the GNWT that we need to look outside the box. We always need to do what's been done before because we'll just get the same results. From my perspective, what is Indigenous education? That's a hard one because from a contextual place like Fort Providence, Indigenous education is education. It's trying to recognize that education needs to meet the community need but embedded within that we are working within an institution that in many ways colonizes people still. So how do you find that balance? So it's about creating a lot of opportunities that are place-based, that are land-based, that are experiential in nature and that give our students, give everybody the opportunity to really ground themselves first before they begin to learn. What is your vision for Indigenous education over the next 10 years? You can answer to your community, to our first territories or Canada. So my vision for education, outdoor education, it needs to be outdoor education-based. I want to create a charter school that's focused on outdoor education, a four-year program that has 16 students per year, that at the end of the four years you come out with a high school diploma in your college diploma that really digs deep in some of those outdoor skills so that our young people can start creating opportunities in their communities around tourism. Just empowering our people to get out on the land more. You know, I've done trips with kids in Botswana and I've gone and Peru and things like that and those guides really dig deep, they got a university degree, they know intuitively what everything they're surrounding and that's what we need. You know, our elders have that education so now we need to work in a contextual space to give that skill to our young people. Nationally, I hope that educational endeavors kind of recognize that there are multiple ways of learning, that there are multiple ways to define success and then within a contextual space it's about understanding that education is meant to tell a story. It's meant to tell a story that grounds somebody and that gives them the skills to do whatever they want, to honor their gifts. So that has very different meanings depending on what context you're in. Within the community it's about giving our young people the opportunity to get out and see and do with the idea that we need to create opportunities for them to come back because all of our communities, especially in the North, we need our young people to come back. We need them to come back with everything they've learned. So how do we, as a territory, create those opportunities that are outside of Yellowknife? What information, materials or resources do you need to achieve that vision aside from funding? I think you just need to create the opportunity. I think that within communities, smaller communities in the NWT they've been so, I don't want to use the word demoralized but they've been so downtroddened. I don't know if that's a better word. You create the opportunity to create an excitement around the idea of learning. And that's it. I think people intuitively understand that there's something special about the language but having grown up in where it was never valued and honored kind of diminishes that sense of value. So if you begin to create opportunity around what is possible in language revitalization and you begin to create that cultural awareness and pride, sometimes I think I'm just rambling. Probably a better topic would be what we're doing in the school in terms of our land-based education, in terms of what's really important. You know, if we get a kid at a grade 12 that has spent 50-plus weeks out on the land during their K-12 experience, I think that really grounds them. So you have a community like Fort Providence which has right now 20-plus students out at 11 different post-secondary institutions. I think that's really, that's what's possible in all of our communities. And we only begin to change with education whatever sense that is.