 The name that we commonly refer to it as is the Deepening Knowledge Project. We began working mainly in the Bachelor of Education program at the University of Toronto, specifically at the Ontario Institute for Studies and Education. We later expanded to work in the Masters of Teaching program, which is essentially an initial teacher education program as well. Now the BED program no longer exists at OISI, so most of our work, the majority of it, is in the Master of Teaching program. We just have one year left of the concurrent BED, and we've been doing work, yeah, we've been doing work in that program as well. So the big framework is the initial teacher education program at the University of Toronto. We do a little bit of work in the Masters of Arts of Child Study at the Jackman Institute as well, which is a private school, I think, which is associated with the University of Toronto. The initial aim of the program, from my understanding, this was maybe a year before my time, was that, maybe two actually, was the attracting more Indigenous students to the initial teacher education program at OISI. I don't know exact numbers, but we had a very low percentage of enrollment of Indigenous identified students in the initial teacher education program. So that was number one, and I think what the initial group of people in the deepening knowledge project recognized was that to attract folks to OISI, they needed to make the OISI program, first of all, have more information about Indigenous folks, their histories, their ways of knowing, and their current issues, and just find ways to make the program more appealing to Indigenous peoples. So that was the initial impetus, and then it just grew. It grew into this aim of ensuring that no teacher candidate left the initial teacher education program without knowledge of terminology and current events and histories, without meeting Indigenous instructors, without speaking about residential schools and the 60 Scoop and the Indian Act, and without some degree of confidence around teaching Indigenous education. So what makes the deepening knowledge project an example of excellence in Indigenous education, in my opinion? First of all, I need to tell you who I am. So I am a Italian Canadian woman. I'm a settler and a guest on Turtle Island, both sides of my family originate in Italy, and I'm the first generation on one side of my family to be born and raised in the city of Toronto and on this land. So this is all from my personal perspective. I will tell you that one of the things that really works about the deepening knowledge project is that we are a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous professors, instructors in the B.Ed program, former B.Ed program, and graduate students. And that teamwork, non-hierarchical approach that we had really under the leadership of Dr. John Paul Restoul of the Doe Keys First Nation was so crucial. People felt very trusted and were able to do really good work in collaboration and in relationship. One of the things too that really worked was the centering of Indigenous voices. So Dr. Restoul from the Doe Keys First Nation, we also worked with Dr. Angela Mashford Pringle briefly for a wonderful year and a half before she moved on to other projects. We also worked with Dr. John Doran, John is a magma, from Shibunakati, which is in Nova Scotia, and not only with their presence but also with the presence of teacher candidates who would come through the program here about the deepening knowledge project who were Indigenous and would join in. So I'm thinking of Alicia Arndt and Ryan Neepin, Alicia being Mohawk and Ryan being from the Fox Lake Cree Nation. And they're bringing their expertise, their knowledge, and they're really passionate for working in relationship with non-Indigenous peoples. And so on the settler side, we had folks like Kathy Broadd who at the time that the program began was one of the leaders in the Bachelor of Education program and Nancy Steele who was a well-known social justice educator in the city, was now working at Oisey and took it upon herself to, she was already teaching a cohort of teacher educators in the B-Ed program and took it upon herself to just change her program in her newfound passion and start gathering resources and human resources and you know books and knowledges and changed her cohort to be an Indigenous and fusion cohort for instance. Myself, who else was involved? I mean so many amazing folks, Brendan Burroughs and Usha James, like folks just coming together and wherever they were working in the university at Oisey, they would use their position to think okay you know who, what resources are there in from my position that we can build upon. So Nancy starting her program, Kathy doing that advocating from the top, John Paul you know really overseeing things, helping us with ideas, doing lectures himself, he began those lectures in the B-Ed program. I would be remiss too if I didn't mention the fact that I think that the Deepening Knowledge Project was really based on research. So in some of its first moves as a project prior to my time was that the initial group led by John Paul and Kathy contacted Dr. Nicole Bell and who you know and Dr. Bell created a package of wonderful lessons that were to be inserted into the pre-existing B-Ed courses that instructors who are already teaching them could take up. They were wonderful lessons, we still have them on our website and we still encourage people to use them, but what our research showed early on is that the take-up of those lessons was quite low and what we heard from teachers sorry instructors in the program was that you know there was a real lack of confidence and there was a real fear and so what came out of that then that research was myself being hired first as just a consultant and then later on as the project manager of the project from 2011 to 2016 and I was hired alongside initially Dr. Angela Mastford Pringle and so this beautiful relationship emerged where Angela and myself, another Angela, would go into and this is something Kathy and John Paul really advocated for every single cohort of B-Ed students to speak about terminology to answer questions that folks had and then it developed into this presentation on the Indian Act and as we spoke about residential schools etc. When we first began that work in 2011 I would say you know we'd ask for hands up who has heard in this class about residential schools and I would say about the pens 50 to 90 percent had not of the teacher candidates coming in right and we had a lot of pushback and the research that we did so we then decided we needed to do evaluations right so we had evaluations handed out at the end of every single one of our presentations the research that we did showed us what worked and what didn't and allowed us to change and then when John Doran and I then continued on these presentations showed us what worked and what didn't and exactly what the teacher candidates needed so we were able to respond really really quickly so there's two additional things there that I want to tease out aside from the research another point of I think excellence if you will in this in this sort of education that partnership between and we've written about it extensively in our academic publications as well as my thesis my doctoral thesis that partnership modeling to the mainly in our case non-indigenous teacher candidates the between an indigenous and a non-indigenous person or a settler person myself in this case in front of the classroom working with the classroom whether it be in circle or through lectures and centering first voice you know being the role as the indigenous person in that partnership and for the settler person um you know taking the questions which had maybe perhaps racist assumptions behind them modeling to the teacher candidates what the role again because they're mainly sellers right modeling what the role is of seller educators modeling our relationship is what we found in our evaluations was a huge um a huge piece of the learning for the teachers so there's that and then I think the other piece that we learned was the approach needed to be about kindness and healing so what really worked was when a teacher candidate would say something to us which was perhaps you know in a based in a stereotype which was again racist or just really misguided or ignorant instead of being like you're wrong you know we would really approach them again with kindness and humility and often I would take on that role of saying you know I hear what you're saying indeed that's something somebody in my family used to believe right or this is something I've heard too as a non-indigenous person this is why I've come to know that that is not correct and um we were really able to go in and what we heard from the teacher candidates was that they felt really open with us they felt that they could uh really express themselves that they didn't feel silenced and what we found is that by the I would say the midpoint of our work uh doing those presentations that about in what would the evaluations say it fluctuated year to year between 95 to 98 percent of those who viewed the presentations and filled out an evaluation forum felt that they were inspired to learn more and given the amount of time that we were able to sort of wedge into the program for these presentations right um which was maximum three hours that's a huge accomplishment you know the fact that people felt that their confidence had been raised you know that they they were interested to learn more like it felt really it felt really really positive and now it's exciting that we've met um afterwards many teacher candidates who come back and are now do tell us you know they're now doing really exciting things in their schools and so much has changed in those 10 years that freedom and that trust in our team people really felt that creativity um sorry that they could go with their creativity so for instance john who is migma would partner with nancy who was running the cohort and they would do and he would lead rather the first orientation session on the island which you know he's not from this territory he's a visitor to this territory but he would share some of the information that he had learned um and engage in more sort of like on the land activity with the teacher candidates and you know very little permission needed to be asked for that right because we just had ideas and we just went with them it was a really exciting time this is a really great question i grapple with this a lot i have a newsletter that i sent out to teachers call listen and learn a newsletter about indigenous education and i've come to realize how vague that term is i will tell you that in our earliest work on the evaluations we were getting from those presentations with teacher candidates one of the things we were hearing from the teacher candidates was i don't foresee me having any indigenous students in my classes so this is irrelevant to me and we felt our team had a very strong emotional reaction to that and i think from there we realized what we were talking about was not just education yes education for the benefit of indigenous young folks and i think we incorporated some of that into our work with looking at the work of dr. pamela to lose for instance however in the greater toronto area we know that we don't have a majority of indigenous students and they're not even the second largest group um if we look at ethnicity and so it wasn't that we didn't want to focus on that um and improving the realities of indigenous young peoples in the schools we know that they face racism we know that they face discrimination we know that um their success needs to be prioritized however we also realized that part of what was going to um ensure their success was to ensure that they saw themselves reflected in the greater curriculum and so to do that we needed to have teachers understand that indigenous education was not just for indigenous students was also for all students so for me from where i am again at this point as a settler person um who's worked in this field a little bit i would say that you know indigenous education is education on indigenous content for all and a subsection of that is education specifically to meet the needs and improve the outcomes of indigenous students in a very personal way i see indigenous education coming from a place of healing there's a lot of healing that needs to be done and i see i have a vision where settler folks are taking responsibilities for their part in colonization the past and the ongoing pieces of colonization and i'm seeing a center of centering of indigenous voice and indigenous knowledge as ways of knowing a great example of that i think is natural curiosity which is a resource that has come out of the jackwin institute which began as an inquiry resource on environmental education and then it was pointed out by indigenous friends of that resource and of that program that this really was kind of building on principles that indigenous peoples have used in their own approach to the natural world for since time immemorial and so that program then went back and re-centered indigenous voice in their second edition so what i've learned from you know i was on the board of of that um that rewrite and what i've learned from that experience is that there is so many opportunities to re-center indigenous ways of knowing i think for the benefit of the land for the benefit of indigenous communities but also for the benefit of all of us who have to live on this land together i think what is very exciting and what i've learned from this experience from my colleagues specifically dr john doran is the importance of relationship in this work john always talks very openly about his belief of the need of settler educators to be part of this work and i am humbled by that um i'm humbled by that invitation and i'm excited to continue to listen and learn from my indigenous colleagues over the next 10 years and i hope that others will do so as well i hope that it is not a fad i hope that it is not a trend but i hope rather this process has marked a turning point where this can no longer be ignored and i hope again i return to where i started which is i hope it is done in a very healthy constructive supportive way i think that one of the things that made deepening knowledge projects so successful in its time is that the ability and willingness for those within an academic institution to be creative and to find ways between departments and between offices to make connections so what we need is institutional flexibility and what we need is indigenous folks who are recognized by their communities and that is super important the fact that we include indigenous folks who are recognized and lifted up by their communities to be in these spaces is super is great i don't think that institutions should act as um should act as the the vetting of you know who should speak for community i've seen that fail um so we need real listening to community real partnership with community we need to ensure that indigenous peoples have well compensated um positions within the institution we need i and i um and what i mean by that is whether or not folks have phd's or masters folks who are doing good community work who are recognized in community for their extensive knowledges need to be given positions you know need to be instructors in the in the initial teacher education program for instance you know need to be work you know if they so choose to be working within these institutions um and that's important and i also i think we need to look to indigenous colleagues who have stronger insights than i do about what institution institutions need to do going forward um one of the things that i've heard as well from community is the importance of indigenous languages that is one thing that our program um has not yet fully i haven't seen that fully be embraced by our program and i know for instance that there are teachers out in the greater toronto area who do teach ojibwe and kree and anishinaabe moan classes so okay you know what are we doing to support that and i think so i think we need more vision visioning towards that and more listening towards that um and i think we need more support this is a very emotional task john and i would spend hours sometimes debriefing before and after each presentation we would give it is very emotional specifically i would say for indigenous folks who are often called upon to tell their story and who are often telling and giving information related to real um real like real events that have had real impacts on their lives and their ancestors and as a settler doing this work as well i have felt anger and sadness when we have been met with resistance whether it's from the an institution or whether it's from individual students we have heard some nasty things some of those directed at my my colleagues and so we need support we need really strong teams we need really strong understanding of the emotional and physical toll that this work can take and we need to lift one another up