 I'm Jesse Hemphill. I'm from the Guasanaco Nations, and I taught a course called Topics and First Nations Planning at Vancouver Island University. The aim of the VIU Indigenous Planning course is to equip students within the Masters of Community Planning program with knowledge and skills around Indigenous planning and land use so that when the students who are mostly non-Indigenous go out into the world as professional planners, they're better equipped to work with and for Indigenous communities and have a greater knowledge base about our planning practices. The course has been different each time it's been offered. This last time that we offered it, we took a chronological approach. So we started by looking at Indigenous planning prior to European contact, some of the traditional Indigenous planning practices. Then we moved up to the impacts of contact and colonization on Indigenous folks in Canada primarily and how that impacted our planning. We took a look at some of the legislation, in particular the Indian Act, and how the Indian Act influenced the way that planning took place with the development of the reserve system and other legislation to control Indigenous lands and Indigenous people. We then spent some time talking about developments such as the BC Treaty process and comprehensive community planning and the development of other models. And we also talked about the responsibility of planners to look at their own privileges, settler privilege, and to look at the impacts of colonization within the framework of reconciliation and in Canada the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's work, but also just sort of on an individual basis and to really think about how the work they do as planners could positively impact Indigenous communities and the importance of planners taking a decolonizing approach when they're working with or for Indigenous peoples or on Indigenous lands. In my opinion, the success of this program rests on feeling confident that when planners go out into the world after taking this course, they can respectfully engage with Indigenous communities knowing how to put their technical skills to use without replicating the colonial or paternal structures of the Canadian government or other colonists of the past. And I would also really hope that when they go out into communities, they have at least a basic understanding of the Indian Act and its impacts and current pushes towards self-government and the revitalization of Indigenous practices so that even if they're non-Indigenous planners, they know how to support that revitalization within communities rather than import their own Westernized idea of what makes for good planning. I think beyond that as well, the success of this program is demonstrated when these students individually look at their settler privilege or their white privilege and think about how they move through their personal life and move through the world. And hopefully they come out of this course feeling better equipped to have respectful and informed discussions about Indigenous topics with that greater understanding of the history and the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada and why we are where we are today. So one of the assignments in this course was that students had to do a reading reflection three times. So one in September, one in October and then one at the end of the course at the end of November. And these were encouraged to be self-reflective. So the students engaging with the readings and then reflecting on their own personal responses to them. And I really saw how at the beginning of this course particularly non-Indigenous students were just really overwhelmed with their lack of knowledge and their lack of comfort with these topics, their fear around saying the wrong things, you know, their fear of maybe their own ignorance and how that might come across and just a lot of trepidation among the students. And then as the reading reflections progressed and obviously as the course progressed, I saw these same students starting to develop more confidence with the subject material, but also really grappling with their own their own lack of knowledge in the past. You know, some reading responses were like, wow, you know, I grew up next to this community that we talked about in class and I didn't even know that they had a treaty and now I understand why this happened and this happened. And then by the end of the program when it came around to final presentations, I think we really saw the students have a really beautiful amount of understanding and competence, but also I want to say like empathy or respect. So I think we went from a place of fear and trepidation to by the end of the course, the majority of the students had much greater respect for Indigenous communities, had a greater understanding of why Indigenous peoples might be you know, protesting pipelines or asserting their rights and title and their right to plan their own lands. And so, yeah, it was a nice demonstration of their improving awareness over the course of those few months. One of the challenges of this program, I think, is that it is only one course over three months and so when you're getting students who are at a master's level, they've already gone through their elementary, their secondary and their undergraduate education and so when students have gone through all of that education and are in their 20s or 30s and have not had the education previously about Indigenous history, about the settlement of Canada, about the Indian Act, you know, about pre-contact Indigenous peoples, it's a big task to try and bring them up to speed over the course of, you know, just a few months. And so I think, yeah, that was one of the greatest challenges for me was trying to figure out how to present comprehensive enough information that students would have the big picture of how we got to where we are now, but also like deep enough on certain topics that they could have that kind of professional competence, particularly around planning and land management. In the short term, I think I know the program is successful because I can see the progression of the students thought process and their understanding and empathy over those three months. In the longer term, what I would really love to see is, you know, stories of these same students going out into community, whether they're working for Indigenous nations or, you know, working for municipalities but fostering good relationships with neighboring Indigenous communities or maybe even working, you know, in regional, provincial or federal arenas and interfacing with Indigenous communities and talking about Indigenous lands. If I hear stories of those students come back talking about, you know, successful initiatives or good impactful relationship building or ways that they're better able to support the revitalization of traditional Indigenous planning practices, I think that would be the long-term goal of a program like this is for those folks, even if they're non-Indigenous, even if they're a non-Indigenous government or seats of power for them to have that deep understanding of how to truly support and empower our Indigenous peoples and kind of get out of the way and decolonize the systems and processes that our communities have to work with to assert their jurisdiction over their communities and their lands. This question of what is Indigenous education is such a good question. My undergraduate degree included a minor in Indigenous studies and this was always the question, is Indigenous education about Indigenous topics and issues or is it for Indigenous students? And I don't think there's a tidy answer to that. I certainly know that as an Indigenous student, when I had opportunities to be in rooms full of other Indigenous students, there was a different feeling of safety and empowerment and confidence that came out of those gatherings. So I definitely think that space needs to be made, particularly in Indigenous education programs for Indigenous students to gather and feel that solidarity. That being said, I think that education about Indigenous topics needs to pervade all other subject areas and be available to everyone, even if they're not Indigenous. And so in a program like this, obviously, we had a majority of students in the classroom non-Indigenous with a handful of Indigenous students as well. And I think that sets up some good conversations and certainly for the non-Indigenous students, they're encountering all kinds of things that they've often never talked about or never thought about before and there's so much value in that. And so, yeah, I think it can be both education for Indigenous students and education on Indigenous topics. I'll add a little more to that. I also think that Indigenous education needs to be really, truly grounded in principles of Indigenous epistemology and ontology and knowledge and philosophy and worldview. So I don't think that only having an Indigenous instructor or including some Indigenous content in a course necessarily counts as Indigenous education in the way that we would want to see it take place. And so I think that instructors need to think very deeply about how to avoid replicating colonial structures in the classroom. And this is a big challenge because the classroom is set up to be a very uneven power balance. It's set up to distance students from the natural environment or from community. You're in an artificial environment with artificial lighting. It's set up to be sort of a one-way flow of information with the idea that the students are kind of empty vessels and you're filling them up with this knowledge. And I think when you grow up in an Indigenous community, it's not like that. The education process is you definitely still have knowledge holders passing information on, but there's a lot more hands-on learning. There's more activities on the land or really engaging with topics in a tangible way. You're putting your knowledge to use right away. It's not abstract necessarily. You're theoretical except in how those theories get applied for the benefit of your community. You know, when you're learning, I think in an Indigenous context, it's always with the goal of improving the lives of your community members, your family, your people. And of course, you're also taking care to make sure that you're speaking from your own truth, but not speaking on behalf of everyone or assuming that there's one way of seeing the world. And so I think that when trying to do Indigenous education, instructors need to take a lot of time when designing the course and thinking about how they can bring in some of these deep, important principles of Indigenous knowledge transmission, despite the constraints of, say, a post-secondary institution. Without wanting to generalize, it's really important that many of our Indigenous peoples, particularly young people who may have lived on reserve for their whole lives, particularly in rural areas where there aren't a ton of education or employment opportunities, that those folks receive excellent capacity building and skill building opportunities. I think we have such great needs in our Indigenous communities in all areas, you know, especially in British Columbia, as we move towards self-government for so many of our nations. There are needs for people with skills and knowledge in economic development, in resource management, in planning, in communications, in administration, in finance, in social work, in health, in education, in all of these areas. And so it's imperative that we prepare this generation that's up and coming to take on those roles so that it's our own people leading our governments. I think this is compounded by the fact that in so many of our communities, the median age is so low. So in my community, our median age is 19. So that means we have this whole crop of very young people coming into the workforce in the next little while, just as our needs for skillful, knowledgeable people is at its height. And so I think Indigenous education can really fill the gap by, on the one hand, understanding maybe the unique context and needs of Indigenous students. I know the University of Victoria a number of years ago ran a program called the Nonget, a research project that I was a part of. And they did innovative things to improve the success of Indigenous students, such as mentoring. So if you were a new Indigenous student, you would get paired up with a returning Indigenous student to kind of mentor you and be your buddy while you were there, so you wouldn't feel so lonely. I think there were also grants made available as well as accommodations for students to return home for funerals or for holidays or for important events, food fish, so that they didn't feel quite so cut off from home. And then also there were designated spaces on campus and designated events where Indigenous students could gather and just talk about their challenges and their successes. So on the one hand, I think that kind of thing, that kind of atmosphere is something that Indigenous education programs can provide. On the other hand, I think also that Indigenous education programs can enhance the skills and capacity of folks by showing how traditional Indigenous practices like let's take lands management as an example. An Indigenous education program can show how some of the traditional land management practices of a particular nation or in a particular area can be aligned with contemporary best practices in that same field so that students don't feel like they're having to abandon everything they might have learned from their elders or their families or out on the land, but instead they can find the vocabulary, they can find maybe contemporary tools or contemporary examples to help them modernize that knowledge and apply it in the modern context and receive credit in their industry for doing so. I think our Indigenous cultures hold so much knowledge about how to do anything well and in a way that suits our nations. And often we run into challenges where our ways are not validated by educational institutions or by the government. And so Indigenous education programs can really serve as that bridge, validating traditional Indigenous knowledge but also incorporating it with contemporary non-Indigenous best practices in a way that really serves the people and the students well. I would love to see a recognition in educational institutes of the value of Indigenous knowledge and ways of doing and being. I think that's something that's been missing for a long time. So it's not just about bringing Indigenous students into the academy and training them up in the Western tradition so they can bring, you know, colonized knowledge home. Really it's got to be about providing a forum for Indigenous students and Indigenous communities and knowledge holders to revitalize their own knowledge and education and processes within a supportive atmosphere and where appropriate sharing that with the world. I think that climate change maybe is a really great example of an area where yes, science, you know, Western science and non-Indigenous environmentalists and folks do a lot of good work to prove that climate change is happening, that it's detrimental, how it's impacting different areas. But when it comes to knowledge about how to live well in these areas sustainably, how to respect the land and work with it without just completely wiping out human populations, Indigenous peoples are really the only cultures, the only peoples that have done that successfully for millennia. And so I think it's vital that educational institutions be a place where Indigenous knowledge about how to do that, how to live sustainably, how to work within caring capacities, how to build communities that don't harm the land, that that knowledge be brought into all education programs so that those lessons can be shared and hopefully we can repair some of the damage that's been done under colonization as Indigenous knowledge and practices were kind of pushed to the side all over the land. I think what I would also love to see in 10 years is that Indigenous students rather than feeling trepidatious about post-secondary or rather than having these situations that I've encountered that my friends have encountered where you have a non-Indigenous professor who says something ignorant or hurtful about your people or your history or having students who say things that are hurtful or ignorant about your history, having assignments that don't take Indigenous worldviews, Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous experiences into account. What I would love to see instead of that is Indigenous students feeling like education is a safe home for them and whether it's distance learning in their own communities or traveling to go to university or college that they feel like education is a place that is supportive and nourishing and empowering them in their own identity and a place for them to bring their own knowledge forward and share that with the world as well as learning from other knowledge holders, Indigenous or non. And so I think breaking down some of the stigma, some of the racism, some of the colonization, the colonialism that's built into educational systems so that it is a wonderful, welcoming, supportive place for Indigenous students.