 My name is Rachelle Cote. I'm an assistant professor at Memorial University in the Department of Sociology. In this department I teach and I do research and I'm a sociologist and so what that means is that I study social inequality and so I have a couple of different areas of research and teaching that I like to do. The one is ethnic inequality and so the two courses that I teach which I think are probably most important to this interview and this process. The one is ethnic relations in Canada and the other course is Indigenous Peoples and the City where I look at experiences of Indigenous Peoples in urban spaces and so that's the teaching that I do and then the research. There's a few things that I work on. Some of it has to do with immigration and again looking at this idea of you know ethnic inequality and so how do people of different ethnicities you know how do they collide in society and what happens as a product of that and the other side that I look at basically really surround issues around Indigenous Peoples experiences in the cities and the one project that I just completed was talking with Indigenous entrepreneurs who live in urban centers in Canada, the US and Australia and finding out a little bit about what makes them successful as entrepreneurs in urban spaces but also how living and working in urban spaces impacts their identity, impacts their relationship within Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and the other project that I work on which I'm particularly found fond of and we're just starting to get really going now is trying to compile and document the Indigenous history of St. John's Newfoundland. It's something that hasn't been done and actually was a product of the course that I teach on Indigenous Peoples in the city as well so that's a little bit about what I do. So the way that universities like to talk about success in courses is in numbers. So how many students do I have enrolling in the course? That to universities is important. What's also important to universities are looking at the average of marks that students are getting in the course. To me I think enrollment is an important indicator of what's going on because if I get more students in my course it means that hopefully I'm doing something right that students want to be a part of but to my mind something that's more important than just looking at enrollment is looking at the number of Indigenous students that I have in my course and what I have seen over the past three years is a rise in the number of Indigenous students and to my mind it makes me incredibly happy to see that given I guess the lack of Indigenous presence on this campus and what I know about how many Indigenous students feel going into courses and feeling like they are not represented and just not wanting to be here and so the fact that I can have more Indigenous students taking this class staying in my class and appreciating it makes me feel really really good about what I'm doing. The other measure of success that I have for this particular course is looking at the change in students from day one in September up until the end of the course which is you know depending on the year either the end of November or the end of December the majority of my students are white they are from in and around Newfoundland and their interactions with Indigenous peoples in this province aren't very great nor I think are they very informative most times and so they come into my class at the beginning of fall with not a lot of information and the information that they do have is either negative or very stereotypical or they come in with the idea that you know Indigenous peoples just don't really exist in this area and that's something that has been I think pervasive for a very very long time in this province and so what I look for in my students is a change not only in the knowledge that they have about Indigenous peoples in this area and in this province but also in a level of empathy and the types of conversations that we can have and so this past semester in particular what was wonderful is that by the end of the semester we were able to have these deep discussions around cultural appropriation around Indigenous social mobility around what it means for an Indigenous person to exist in an urban space and how colonization and how settlers frame in a lot of ways that that conversation and we were able to talk about that and have really really good conversations and that is to me probably one of the most important things that I see as a measure of success in my course is the ability to have students who can leave my class with a greater appreciation and a more diverse knowledge set in terms of the people that are that are living here who maybe are or are not like them. One of the things that I started doing with this course in particular is that because it's a course on Indigenous peoples and their experiences in the city I quickly decided after the first year that I taught it that sitting in a university classroom wasn't engaging my students at the level that they needed to be and I decided to contact the St. John's Native Friendship Center which is now First Light but I decided to get in touch with them and see if they would be open to hosting some of my classes. They were delighted and so that was in the second semester something that I started and the second year I started doing this I had four classes and so the first two classes we talked about I guess no it was the four classes we spent two weeks talking about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and we sat in the boardroom at the Friendship Center. Community was invited to participate that is my my steadfast rule when we do this is that the classes are open to anybody from the community that can be Indigenous that can be non-Indigenous it's really whoever wants to show up they can just sit and listen they can participate in the conversation it's completely up to them but that was what we did the first year so we had two weeks we talked about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission we had members of the Indigenous community show up who had varying experiences with residential schools whether they had family members whether they had been in the residential school system and the level of conversation and engagement and learning that happened within those two weeks was incredible and that convinced me very very quickly that not only was this something that I wanted to continue doing but now I guess my decision is trying to figure how many classes I can get away with having at the Friendship Center without impacting my students too much because the the Friendship Center is at a bit of a distance from from the University and so I need to also be aware you know of commuting and traveling between the two spaces even though I you know I try my best to make sure that it doesn't impact there are other courses too too dramatically but this year I had I think it was six classes at the Friendship Center and so again we had classes where we went we had very good conversations about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission again we had another class where we talked about cultural appropriation and it just worked very very well and so this is something that I intend to continue I think it's been invaluable for my students but I think also for the community as well it's holding class at the Friendship Center has meant that you know it takes it takes and it privileges Indigenous space and Indigenous settings in the learning which I think is one of the most important things that you know as as teachers and as professors that we can do is you know try and appreciate those spaces and ensure that students are getting access to them as well and that the students feel comfortable going to these places too right I don't self-identify as Indigenous and so you know when I hear this term for me you know it's almost like I can I need to sit there and say well you know this has nothing to do with me but I know in a way that it does and so when I think about Indigenous education I think about it in a way of how can we as settler scholars I guess continue to privilege other ways of knowing in our institutions and so when I think about Indigenous education to me I think about my university and I think about my colleagues I don't really have any Indigenous colleagues at this university and so when I think of point number one about what Indigenous education means well Indigenous education means that we need to have more Indigenous scholars and Indigenous professors and researchers in this institution right we need these perspectives we need for Indigenous students to be able to see themselves reflected in you know the professoriate here and the way that things are done even at the administrative level so that's thing number one I think number two when I think of Indigenous education is I guess you know looking at what I'm trying to do in terms of bringing in Indigenous perspectives and Indigenous knowledge into coursework you know when you go to university you are trained and educated in a certain perspective in Western ways of thinking but it doesn't always work so well when you're trying to talk about other groups and it's important to bring that knowledge to the table as well and respect that knowledge and ensure that students respect that knowledge as well and so when I think about Indigenous education to my mind that is I think what we all have a responsibility to try and and figure out how to integrate that into our courses and to sort of bring those perspectives in because they are equally if not more important in in this particular setting because students need to have access to diverse forms of knowledge I mean the other thing about Indigenous education is with this particular project that I have the Urban Indigenous History Project I think that continuing to document and ensure that Indigenous history of cities is written down published and accessible is also incredibly important to ensuring that Indigenous education happens right so with this particular project what what the hope is is that educational institutions, government, community members, even tourists when they come to St. John's if they want to learn about the Indigenous history of this area they will have a resource to be able to do that is that there will be a database where they can go and they can have a look and and see what an Indigenous presence in this area has looked at and looks like and so in that part even when I look over the next 10 years is to have that database available to have that as a resource so that people are well educated and knowledgeable is one of the things that I keep hearing and I don't know if this is a constant across Canada I can't speak to that but what I can say about St. John's is that the average person here doesn't think that there was an Indigenous presence in this area they talk about Indigenous peoples being extinct having never been in this region and all of these other fables really is what I like to call them and so a part of having excellent Indigenous education is ensuring that people have access to good information that can then be taken to teach students you know young kids have this as a part of government programs have this so that community members have a resource that they can talk about you know their own history in this area I think is incredibly important as well so I mean you know I think that that's probably a part of it too in a way here in this university one of the things that is currently happening is I have colleagues other settlers scholars because this university doesn't have a lot of Indigenous professors yet but I see I guess an increase in the number of colleagues who are trying to integrate Indigenous knowledge into their courses I think that that that's a good thing and you know obviously there are always ways of doing things better I'm sure that in my courses there will there will always hopefully be evolution and innovation happening but I think that it's a good start I think that it's a good start that you know at this university we have Catherine Anderson who has been going in consulting with communities on how to indigenize this campus I think that that has been a long time coming and so I think that this is a good first step but I think that there is more that can be done obviously I think that with this university we we need to be doing more I say kind of cheekily that I'll be out of a job but you know for various reasons obviously you know I don't necessarily want that to happen because I do love what I do I love my teaching I love my research I love the people that I work with I love the partnerships that I have formed you know with with the Friendship Center and you know with with other places here in St. John's but also you know in Australia and in the US and other places that I work so yes I love my job but you know my vision at least for for this university and for this area is to try and ensure that this university has indigenous colleagues that that are here doing the research and the teaching that they love to do and that and there is an indigenous presence here that at the administrative level at the governance level we can perhaps see evidence that indigenous perspectives and indigenous knowledge are being integrated into the way that this university is being run that we can see indigenous knowledge and indigenous perspectives in in the teaching that's being done here and that we have other settler scholars who are just you know integrating these types of things into the courses that they teach and at some point in time and I don't know if this is going to be in the next 10 years but it would be great if it is is that this idea of holding a course at the Friendship Center is just second nature that this isn't something that is a big production that is something unique that it's just you know something that's done because that's just that's just what you do that's just the way that it is so yeah that that's what I would love to see I don't know if that's the way it'll happen but it would be great if it did I guess that's what I am right is I am an ally I've never talked about myself in that way um I have always strived to build ethical partnerships in in my work um but it's always been about partnership for me and it's always been about I guess taking a back seat in a way um so I have my my sets of knowledge I have my research tools I have the learning that I have I have my areas of expertise that I know about but when it comes to I guess working with indigenous communities I have always taken the position that I don't know anything and so for me I guess being an ally it is respecting that there are people out there that know way more than I do and wanting to learn about that and really truly fashioning a partnership and ensuring that everybody is on equal footing and that the knowledge that other people have is equally respected along with mine and I guess also offering the tools that I have um for you know whatever purpose the community feels they need them for and so at the end of the day there is nothing that I will do that isn't focused on what the community wants and needs for me that's that's really I think that at the foundation of being a good ally I'm excited about changes to let's say the way that research partnerships are being interpreted and so there is a lot more focus right now on indigenous rights and indigenous sovereignty around data um so it might or may not have something to do with education but I think that it's important change that can potentially impact the indigenization of this university but it's also a way of showing that indigenous communities do have buy-in in terms of what universities are doing and I think that that's an incredibly important step and that is something that you know my my university right now is um is trying to deal with and also trying to develop guidelines around this idea of how to create you know ethical research partnerships with community and if you want to take that into you know the indigenous education space you know it has applications everywhere is that this all needs to be about the formation of partnerships and it's a hard pill for a lot of university researchers to swallow in some ways you know we have been educated that the type of knowledge that we have is the test like it's it's the standard it's the gold standard for the way that knowledge is produced and the way that knowledge is consumed so when we talk about partnership it's a very different way of conceiving um I guess the way that education can happen that the way that research can happen and everything else but I see I see shifts happening and that is something that not only excites me but it makes me really happy and it makes me think that you know the future um is there's going to be good things that come out of that