Sustaining culture

[00:00:16] Mike Degagné: Good day everyone, nice to see you. Welcome and bienvenue, my name is Mike DeGagné and I was the interim Chief Administrator of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences an Indigenous charity known as Indspire.  

[00:00:35] If you're joining us virtually, we recognize that the following land acknowledgment that I’m about to give might not be for the territory you are currently on. We ask that if this is the case, you take the responsibility to acknowledge the traditional territory that you are on and the current treaty holders.  

[00:00:55] We begin by acknowledging that McGill University, where we are gathered today is on land which long served as a site of meeting and exchange among Indigenous peoples, including the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabeg nations.

[00:01:10] Before we begin, I have the great pleasure to introduce the newly appointed President and CEO of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Yesterday we welcomed Karine Morin to the Federation.  

[00:01:25] Karine has over two decades of experience at the intersection of government and the academic community in both Canada and the United States, most recently at the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), she led the tri-agency action plan on equity, diversity and inclusion and was instrumental in implementing Dimensions a flagship program that guided colleges to advance EDI across their research ecosystems.  

[00:02:00] Over the past 15 years, she has held various senior and executive positions and spearheaded policy initiatives at funding organizations such as Alberta Innovates, Genome Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).  

[00:02:17] Karine holds civil and common law degrees from McGill University, and she also completed a master's degree in law at the University of Pennsylvania. We are fortunate to have Karine's remarkable leadership and expertise to guide the Federation. We welcome Karine Morin as she will give us some welcoming remarks.  

[00:02:52] Karine Morin: Thank you Mike, not just for the introduction, but for your service to the Federation.  

[00:02:58] On behalf of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and McGill University, I have the pleasure to welcome you to the second Big Thinking lecture at the 93rd Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences “Sustaining Culture".

[00:03:16] Today, Janine Elizabeth Metallic, Ryan DeCaire, and Mskwaankwad Rice will draw on their work in language revitalization and Indigenous research methodologies, to discuss innovative approaches to Indigenous language learning and delve into language reclamation efforts. They will be joined in discussion by moderator, Celeste Pedri-Spade.

[00:03:40] Today’s event will take place primary in English, as well as American Sign Language (ASL) and Quebec Sign Language (LSQ). We will also be providing Simultaneous Interpretation and closed captioning in French.

[00:04:01] Interpreters and closed captioning will appear on the screen on stage and on your Zoom screen for those of you joining virtually.  

[00:04:11] In person you would’ve seen QR codes on signs as you entered this room, you’ll select your preferred language and be listening through your earpiece.

[00:04:21] For those of joining virtually, you can click on the “Closed Captioning” button to enable those captions, and you can use simultaneous interpretation by clicking on the “Interpretation” button and select the language you would like to listen to.

[00:04:36] The Big Thinking lecture series at Congress brings together academics and public figures to tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time.

[00:04:44] For Congress 2024, the series amplifies the theme of Sustaining Shared Futures with conversations that help use examine what we can, what we should or what we must do in the face of a vast and complex challenges and how we can bring forth solutions to them.

[00:05:03] On behalf of the Federation and McGill University, I thank the series leading sponsors—the Canada Foundation for Innovation and Universities Canada.

[00:05:14] Thank you all so much for joining us today, and to begin this conversation I invite Celeste to join me on the stage, over to you Celeste.  

[00:05:33] Celeste Pedri-Spade: Thank you so much. [...] My name is Celeste Pedri-Spade, I am the Associate Provost of Indigenous initiatives here at McGill, and an associate professor in anthropology. It's an honor to be here today, to moderate this panel of brilliant and inspiring Indigenous academics and practitioners who are committed to supporting the revitalization of our original languages.  

[00:06:20] This is something very personal to both me and my partner who is also Ojibwe. As we are both the generation who grew up with parents and grandparents who were punished for speaking - as my grandmother would say – for speaking “Indian.”  

[00:06:38] Despite the fact that first speakers of Anishinaabemowin surround us, it's been a struggle for a family to remain connected to our language and to the people and places that hold these languages.  

[00:06:49] I'm so grateful to be among these three people who embody fierce commitments to Kanien’kéha, Anishinaabemowin and [...] because the local and regional languages that have been spoken here on this land, only the trees and land would remember when those were languages that were only heard.  

[00:07:13] And this morning my partner reminded me every time we speak in our languages here, it's an act of survival, of defiance, of endurance and of hope of so many things because when we speak in and about our languages, our ancestors recognize us and they hear us, so it is an act of love and appreciation for everything that they went through and what our people continue to go through.  

[00:07:37] So Miigwech Ryan, Miigwech Mskwaankwad and Miigwech Janine for being here today. I will go through a really brief biography of each of you and then turn it over to you to introduce yourselves, as you would, and they will deliver 5 to 7 minutes remarks and then we will follow up with questions.  

[00:08:00] First, to my left, Ryan DeCaire who was born and raised in Mohawk territory. He is a Mohawk language practitioner, teacher and learner and is currently an Associate professor at the Department of linguistics at the Center of Indigenous studies at the University of Toronto, as well as an instructor and curriculum developer in Oswego, otherwise known as six nations, Ontario. His work focuses on adult language requisition, Indigenous language revitalization and specifically on adult emergent programming.  

[00:08:42] Mskwaankwad Rice is a linguistics PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota. He is interested in all things Ojibwe and it is his work in language reclamation that has led him to study linguistics formally. He is interested in syntax and semantics for their import as tools for demystifying complex Ojibwe grammar as this can help our learners pick up the language.

[00:09:17] Janine Elizabeth Metallic holds a PhD in educational studies and is tri-lingual. She currently serves as an assistant professor in Indigenous education in the department of integrated studies here at McGill. She values the language lessons she learned from her parents, family and community, which serve as the foundation for her work. Janine has significantly contributed to the field. She is dedicated to mentorship as she guides several Indigenous PhD students in Indigenous community-based research. With that, I will turn it over to Ryan to start us off.

[00:10:18] Ryan DeCaire: [speaking Indigenous language].  

[00:11:12] Greetings everybody. Thank you for taking the time to be here. I want to give thanks to the Federation for inviting me today. I am also known as Ryan DeCaire . I was born and raised three hours north of Toronto. You said seven minutes? I will do the best I can.  

[00:11:49] I thought it would be great to come here when I saw the topic around sustaining culture. I often think about sustaining language. Language can be used as a proxy for culture.  

[00:12:04] It's through the use of language a culture is maintained and sustained. You notice that when you learn a new language, like an Indigenous language. You start to grasp the culture.  

[00:12:24] What does it mean to sustain language? Some people use revitalize. You hear the word safe a lot. When I think about safety, when do you know a language is safe? Generally, to me, when you have a speech community who uses the language as a primary language in their everyday lives and there is no need for external inputs in order to ensure it is self-replicating over time.  

[00:12:59] People are using it every day as part of their speech group and they are creating new speakers of that language, there is intergenerational transmission of language. Then the language is safe. Then you think about, can our languages truly be safe?  

[00:13:18] When are they truly sustained? You realize it cannot really be. That conversation happens in Québec with French and English. This idea French can never be safe when you have a dominating language of English.  

[00:13:33] No matter how safe an Indigenous language is, there is always a worry that there is a dominant language that will always bleed into your community. There is a famous linguist here at McGill, Fred Genesee, found that if you want a language to survive in schools, you need more emphasis on the less dominant language. 80% toward that, 20% toward the dominant language because you hear dominant language everywhere.

[00:14:14] If you seek to revitalize language, if that is your goal, the way I described, in my opinion, my life, my character is pragmatic. It's like building a house. When you think about building a house, you want good materials, a good place for that, you want to make sure you have enough material. You want to figure out how long it is going to take to build that house.  

[00:14:49] The situation for most Indigenous languages across Canada is when you look at the vitality of them, most of them, a large majority of speakers are 60 years old or over. Some less than that. Some more. That means that the parent generation, so those raising a new generation of speakers, usually don’t speak the language.  

[00:15:04] If you expect the new generation children to bring back the language, that's not going to happen. It's the ones who are raising, molding those children. We are in a challenging situation where we have to reproduce highly proficient speakers of a language so they can pass it on to a new generation.  

[00:15:24] The house analogy, we can look at it ecologically. Let's say you want to restore plants in an ecosystem that are native. You want to plant them and they will thrive. Make sure there are other plants of the same character that will reproduce themselves over time, so later you can let go and it will continue on its own. That's the ideal goal.  

[00:15:49] What is a language made up of? What is a speech community made up of? Speakers. You need to create speakers. Just like creating a house, what do you need to create a speaker? Not just speakers but people who speak to each other. A speaker is no good if you just talk to yourself. You need to talk to each other. You need to want to be around each other, right? What does it take to create a speaker at the end of the day? This is where my work will come into play.

[00:16:36] How do we create speakers? We've noticed over the last 40 years, we've been revitalizing language. I'm trying to continue that as best I can. When we need to create new speakers, we need to create highly proficient adults so they can raise new children.  

[00:16:53] What we notice, when we look at the structure of our language, we realize it takes time. Our languages come from a different culture and structure linguistically. We've created adult immersion programs that are focused on creating speakers of adults who don't speak the language, who didn't speak it as children.  

[00:17:25] We learned in a full-time program, immersive in the language, they follow a simple to complex strategy, first language English speakers, it takes approximately 3000 hours of contact to become at least the level, we call it advanced-low, which is to be proficient enough to raise new kids in the language.  

[00:17:52] Compare that to learning Spanish if your first language is English. Research has been done in the U.S., that takes 750 hours to learn that. French, about the same. If we compare our languages with European migrant is, we are always going to fail. Putting in the same amount of effort, we will always fail.  

[00:18:14] It's trying to perpetuate this notion within our communities, if we are not going to put enough time and effort and money into creating new speakers, we will never going to get what we need. That's why my work in creating new adult speakers is geared toward a creation of a speech community with the capacity to re-create what we once had, as was spoken about with our grandparents when they were young.

[00:18:53] Celeste Pedri-Spade: Miigwech

[00:18:59] Mskwaankwad Rice: I am Bear Clan as well. I brought slides to help me not go over time. Feel free to tell me if I am taking too long. I will take a couple minutes to talk about who I am and what I do. My name is Mskwaankwad Rice. That island is next to Perry Sound, Ontario, that is where I am from. I am Bear Clan as well.  

[00:19:48] I am a learner and new speaker in Ojibwe. I am currently a linguistics PhD candidate at University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  

[00:20:13] I am Anishinaabe first and foremost, and I am a linguist and the reason I study linguistics is for language reclamation. I use it as a tool for that. I am a generally Indigenous coded, cisgender male of Anishinaabe and Eurocanadian heritage. It is important to state these things in colonial frameworks and academic spaces.  

[00:20:36] I state this to be accountable to my communities and my nation as well. I use linguistics as a tool to help figure out the complex aspects of Ojibwe grammar. Indigenous languages are very complex, as Ryan knows, as a learner of his language.  

[00:20:15] I studied Spanish as well. Spanish is a lot easier to learn, coming as an English speaker. In my work, I take a learner centered approach. What that means is, as a learner, I understand what's hard about Ojibwe. We run into various grammar patterns or different verb forms that every learner trying to learn it, we hit roadblocks.  

[00:21:33] I study those things. What is going to help us speak better? I then translate these findings to functional lessons for learners and teachers in order to pass the language on and create a lot of adult second-language speakers who are able to raise a new generation of first language speakers.  

[00:22:00] Examples, I've used my linguistics knowledge to give presentations for the Eshki-nishnaabemjig and Anishinaabemowin Teg immersion program and conference.  

[00:22:24] I'm happy about this title – Verbs just wanna have ‘-ban’. It's my favorite title. Ban is a particular verb suffix called the predorate mode if you’re using linguistic terms. All learners have a hard time figuring out how and when to use that so I translate that for other learners.  

[00:22:42] I work with fluent first language speakers. Documentation is an essential part of my linguistics research because our time with our elders and speakers is limited. I make sure to document all these things.  

[00:23:05] Other things I do is I help establish the immersion program directed for adult learners who need extra help. You need immersion environments to practice language. I do that almost every summer. I have a podcast with a colleague of mine, Jessica. It is called The Language. We talk about things related to Indigenous language reclamation generally because there's a lot of things that go alongside it. A lot of baggage you have to deal with when picking up your language.  

[00:23:043] Here's a QR to my academic website with papers on it and some of the nonlinguistic academic things I have done is write about issues I have run into in academia, as a predominantly white institution and institutions with legacy of white supremacy, I ran into some difficult things. Thinking linguistics is innocuous and it doesn't have a history like anthropology digging up graves and stuff like that but it does have a history and it is something I ran into in my academic career.  

[00:24:23] I had to write about those things. I didn't want to. I didn't want to have to sidetrack and not write about fun language grammar stuff.  

[00:24:24] I also helped University of Minnesota create a handbook for prospective Indigenous students because most native students who get into are doing it for their languages. We run into common roadblocks in academia so we want to help support those people.  

[00:24:57] To close, these are my grandmother's, my late grandmother's. The one on the left is my dad's mom, Eileen. She left us in 2018. She was one of my first teachers and supporters. Her younger sister on the right, she just left us recently. These are the last two first language speakers in my family. It is sad and tragic that they are gone. I am happy I have the time to work with them. The work I do I acknowledge them as my family and teachers. Inspiration for me to do the work we do in language. I hope I didn't take too long.

[00:25:51] Celeste Pedri-Spade: Miigwech. Turn it over to you, Janine.  

[00:25:58] Janine Metallic: [speaking Indigenous language]  

[00:26:45] So I just want to say greetings and welcome. My name is Janine Elizabeth Metallic. For those of you who don't know the area or are new, I situate myself using this map, often in a classroom setting with students.  

[00:27:16] I am an assistant professor in the Department of integrated studies and education, so I teach courses on Indigenous education and research methods. I situate myself so students and colleagues know where I come from.

[00:27:34] Using this map is a way of demonstrating that although I live in a remote area, a rural area, it is still within driving distance. Also to talk more about where I come from is important. It's a community bordering on the borders of so-called Québec and so-called New Brunswick.  

[00:28:02] That's where I grew up and learned the language as a young kid. I prefer this image actually because it is an aerial view of where I was born and grew up. That River, if you're not familiar, this a traditional area for us where we get our food, salmon fishing, which is going on right now so I wish I could be in the community right now because this image would be full of fishers on the river and in celebration we’d be sharing that food.  

[00:28:54] It's sometimes hard to talk about my language journey in a short period of time. I will describe how it was for me growing up. I am a first language speaker of my language. It was not a popular decision at the time for my parents to teach their children the language.  

[00:29:24] It was a time during which there was a lot of policies regarding integration and assimilation especially in schools. My parents had to make the difficult decision to decide whether or not to teach us the language but in reality, it wasn't so difficult.  

[00:29:46] My grandparents were quite instrumental in making sure we kept the language as our language in the home. I went to school off reserve and attended a public school with mostly non-Indigenous students. My parents at the time were interested also in sending me to a French immersion. [speaking French] My name is Janine Elizabeth Metallic, I speak French as well. I like to tell the story of my brother and I attending French immersion then coming home and having to speak in our language exclusively, except when they wanted us to perform.  

[00:30:40] My family and relatives got a kick out of us speaking French. They would make a stand straight and saying things like oh Canada! Now looking back I think, how colonial was that? [LAUGHTER] Exactly.  

[00:31:02] What it did give me and my siblings was it afforded us the opportunity to have many choices in what we did in our schooling and work. If anything, it helped preserve our identity because we know who we are. We are who we are first because we speak the language. This is how I relate to everyone else in the language.  

[00:31:30] Going to French immersion from grades 1-12, I ended up being able to speak in the language, but it was also a time when there were other things going on. When it came time to go to university, I didn't have an idea of what I would do but I saw my classmates applying for university.  

[00:31:52] So I had to make the difficult decision, and it was at a time when there were a lot of things going on in the world. I'm going to date myself right now. That was the summer of 1990, the summer I graduated high school. That was the same summer there were conflicts going on as well. Some of you know about Oka. That was a summer, I was moving from my small community and going to a post-secondary school.  

[00:32:27] It was in the Francophone community. I've had to endure or overcome a lot of these situations where I feel conflicted or torn. I feel removed from my community, but I always remind myself I still have the language with me, and I carry that and I can always go back. That's the image I like to keep in front of me.  

[00:32:54] Fast-forward, I came to university, and this is the University I always attended. I have four degrees from McGill. As an undergraduate, I sat in this classroom. Going from a small community to a classroom like this, that seats about 600 students, was quite intimidating.  

[00:33:16] I remember where I sat. I remember where my prof was. I now find myself in this situation myself. I see myself now as a professor in a situation where I never dreamed to be in. I never thought as a first language speaker, a learner of English and French and other languages --[speaking another language] -- I just want to convey there is this love for language I have.  

[00:33:49] I encourage all language learners regardless of ability or situation to do as much as they can. They also carry it with them. They have it. It's the same message I give to students.  

[00:34:09] I mentor some students in my capacity as an assistant professor. I supervise three PhD students. All three are Indigenous. So I have the amazing opportunity right now to supervise a PhD student in my language. It is such a powerful thing to be in spaces like this no matter how difficult it can be and to connect with someone in my language like that because our language is now being spoken in these spaces.  

[00:34:56] That's how we start to decolonize, that’s how we start to Indigenize. We go back to being our true selves. That's the word used to refer to ourselves. It's really come full circle for me to be back here. In this space. I'm so grateful for people like Celeste, who is working here and people like Ryan and Mskwaankwad, who are here to share their stories. And I hope you’ll have a lot of questions for us and I think I’ll stop there.  

[00:35:47] Ryan DeCaire: It's obvious we are going least wise to wisest.  

[00:35:54] Celeste Pedri-Spade: Miigwech or sharing. I prepared some questions. Before we turn it over to our audience, I can start it off.  

[00:36:13] As a learner myself, I am reminded how our language knowledge is nested within family and land, place relationships. For me, I have always seen it as a collectively held knowledge deeply rooted in physical communities. I'm wondering your thoughts around, what are the big important considerations for institutions like McGill, which are colonial institutions, universities, as they plan how to best support language revitalization work happening within our communities?  

[00:37:11] Janine Metallic: All of a sudden, they are very shy people. The question is interesting especially when we talk about how do we work in these colonial spaces as indigenous people?  

[00:37:24] In the context of the work we do in education, linguistics and so on, I think the best way to support the work is to remember we all come from a place. I think back to the image earlier, I showed of my community. So often I go back and imagine that space. If I close my eyes, I can see it.  

[00:37:53] I think about the people there and my family. 99% of my family is there. I have a couple brothers who married into other communities. That is our home-based. Within institutions like this, we need to remember spaces like these weren't designed for people like us.  

[00:38:22] People like us who work in the Academy are really putting ourselves sometimes in difficult situations. We take the opportunity to make use of resources as we can, as academics, language learners and speakers to make connections back to our homelands.  

[00:38:46] Doing community-based work, work with families, such as language nest or early immersion programs, then write up on into teaching adults. Adults in immersion as well. Maybe I will pass it to comment more about those programs.  

[00:39:12] Mskwaankwad Rice: I don't know the answer to that question. Universities and institutions want to de-colonize now. In terms of language, too little too late kind of deal. Now they want language, now they want to support native people. Whereas 30 years ago when we had many more speakers, that would have been the time to do it.  

[00:39:41] I don't know the answer. In supporting communities and languages, something I've seen in linguistics where university support language people from a community to be able to maintain a connection to their community and return home regularly, even though if they might have academic positions at a university outside their homelands to be able and to be supported in continuing to do language work.  

[00:40:13] Right now it's a lot of documentation. A lot of our speakers are literally leaving us. That's one thing I've seen universities do good in that regard but I don't know how to answer that question so I am throwing that example in.  

[00:40:28] Ryan DeCaire: Thanks guys. Those are great answers. I will try my best. I don't know the answer to that question. I will do the best I can. As was introduced about me, I'm an associate professor at UofT. When I started, before that, I lived in the community, Oswego, six nations, I was spending time between them, and I was working on what many people would call grassroots level revitalization work. Teaching adults full-time.  

[00:41:04] Then I came to the University. I almost didn't because I didn't think it would help the goal of revitalizing the language. I spoke with so many people. You talked about being, you feel like, it's hard to live between two worlds and you are wondering if you are giving up on your community because people kind of whisper that in your ear a bit. What are you doing out there? Why are you giving up on us?  

[00:41:34] People call it brain drain. You have leaders in the community doing this work and they leave the community because it is hard economically to survive in your own community doing language revitalization work, let alone the way the economy now. That being the case I thought this is an opportunity to try and leverage the position at the University to create opportunity in the community for revitalization.  

[00:42:02] No one was doing that at the time. I tried my best to do that. I found it is a challenge to say the least bureaucratically. In many ways, you heard the analogy of turning around an aircraft carrier. It's not like a jet. It's very hard.  

[00:42:31] The reason being I've learned is as her question alludes to, where language will be revitalized is in the place where the people care about in the way Janine talked about loving her own language. A large amount of those people in one location and that is almost always in reserve communities.  

[00:42:54] It makes us think about, if the University doesn't exist there, therefore maybe they shouldn't do anything. That would be one statement. Or how do we facilitate, provide opportunity or support work happening in those communities? Remembering all indigenous communities are very different. They are unrelated completely. They may be poly synthetic but they are still different.  

[00:43:20] The situation in each community is different with vitality. You will have communities in the north where everyone speaks the language. Some in the South where some, nobody is a first language speaker anymore.  

[00:43:38] That means the university can facilitate those communities to connect funding initiatives, hire certain people to help with beginning things. There are a lot of communities experts in this doing well such as the neighbor here. They've been doing this for 40 years. Looking at what they are doing well is amazing.  

[00:44:03] These are leaders in language revitalization worldwide, with elementary immersion, adult immersion, with policy. Looking at how an institution can support that without being the boss. That's the worry.  

[00:44:22] As mentioned in linguistics and anthropology, there's a lack of trust with the University. That takes time to heal. I know you will ask about this, it doesn’t just take hiring one person to get the job done. It takes a lot of work and time to develop a relationship. It's true. It's not one individual. It's community organizations invested in this, such as language, authorities in communities, cultural centers, these types of places doing strong work and developing partnerships with those communities but determining those people are the leaders in that.  

[00:45:06] You can see initiatives happening but they are still hurting for what is required for the revitalization of their languages. This is one of the reasons Canada didn't want to make Indigenous languages official. They saw it as a $. How do we put as much money into these provinces?  

[00:45:36] It takes a certain way of thinking about Indigenous language. My uncle says we should want to have every Indigenous language, there is more than 60, on every cereal box across the country, maybe that is not the approach. It has to be more targeted. To think about it differently then what Canada is used to thinking it as when supporting or officializing Indigenous languages.  

[00:46:00] What it takes to really revitalized a language in the way I talked about before, it takes a lot of those resources. If we don't have resources, we hope we can do it anyway. If the goal is reconciliation and we are talking about institutions who have worked to, for lack of a better word, destroy these languages, we need equal, if not more to bring them back to life or be strong again.  

[00:46:31] Supporting things like cultural centers. They have a capital campaign to build a new center that will house an adult immersion program. They still don't have money to do it. If there is funders that want to put money somewhere, that's one place. I could talk about so many things. We developed this adult immersion program. It's become the leading way to create speakers of Indigenous languages. There is a lack of literature that talks about it. People don't know much about it. There are ways about creating speakers that can use it in their community every day. Thank you.  

[00:47:15] Celeste Pedri-Spade: Each of you touched upon where I was hoping it would go. As academics we work within an existing institutional hierarchy. We have different faculty, curriculum committees, people we hire that have PhD's. Oh well he can make the decisions and help guide us, but how do you bring the people with you that are making you who you are so they can be part of this system and the architecture that's about overall governance and guidance. It means we have to think about this differently. That's what I'm hearing from each of you.  

[00:48:11] You embody all these relationships at a family level and the land but also you mentioned established long-standing organizations that have gifted you so much of your knowledge. How do we create a model where they are with us here?  

[00:48:32] That to me is, perhaps a way in which we think about how do we de-colonize? It's about changing systems and overall governance to create space for the people carrying us.  

[00:49:00] So, with the time we have left, I want to open it up. I don't know if there is a floating microphone up there? I see people. If anyone wants to ask a question? Sorry, it's kind of hard for us to see people with the bright lights.  

[00:40:23] Audience member: Hi. I did my Masters at York University in constitutional pluralism and Indigenous rights. I'm currently a J.D. candidate going to my first year of law school. I am not a good public speaker but I'm trying my best. That's why I'm going to school to learn.  

[00:49:46] What I did learn in my research was that it seems like Indigenous groups, not only in Canada, but all over the world are always getting the short end of the stick. Whether or not that is just in the mention of their rights in international treaties, in regular governance, no matter what it is, it seems they are always getting the short end of the stick.  

[00:50:12] In my research in constitutional pluralism, I've been fighting for Indigenous groups in Canada to get equal rights in decision-making powers especially when it comes to cultural heritage and land disputes. There is a long process one person has to go through with the ethics board to even speak to someone in an Indigenous community to get their perspective first hand. It's ridiculously long. I was denied despite doing my Masters in this topic.  

[00:50:51] Now that I am not affiliated with the University, I'm still researching this, I still want to continue, do you know of any process I could go through to speak to someone about their experiences, if that is even allowed? I hope my question made sense.  

[00:51:14] Celeste Pedri-Spade: Do you want to take that, Janine?  

[00:51:18] Janine Metallic: I will try to answer part of the question. Thank you for sharing about your experience as a student and someone interested in doing research especially with Indigenous people. So long we've heard about Indigenous research on or about Indigenous people. To hear someone say they want to engage with community, I appreciate that so much.  

[00:51:45] In my work here as an assistant professor who teaches Indigenous research methodologies, what I can tell, at as a start, what's important, just like we did in our introductions, to situate ourselves, introduce ourselves, explain our relationships.  

[00:52:08] Relationship is at the base of everything. Engaging in relationship with community is important. The caution, because so often research was done, we call it helicopter research. People fly in, do research, they leave and we never see them again. It's right when you said. You have to plan ahead. It takes time.  

[00:52:43] I will speak for myself, the others can do the same, for myself to do research as a Masters student, I encountered the same thing, because of the institution. Even though I have relationships with people in community and other communities, we still had to overcome these hurdles.  

[00:53:03] Going back to the earlier question, how do we change that? How can universities support the work? I think we need to change policies around research ethics so we take into account the different ways of doing research with community or doing Indigenous led research which is something I am supportive of doing because it takes a different way altogether when something is led by Indigenous people or carried out primarily by Indigenous people.  

[00:53:40] The best way to do it is engaged in that relationship. I hope anyone here will consider, who considers themselves an ally in academia, would try to use your voice to also advocate for those changes so we can also do the work so maybe I can visit home every once in a while or work with other communities. I realize even though we are here we do still have things to overcome. Thank you so much for bringing that up.  

[00:54:20] Celeste Pedri-Spade: Thank you. Should we go to a second question? I'm trying to keep the time here. How much longer do we have? Timekeepers? I think we go to what time? OK. Perhaps we will go on to a second question. OK.  

[00:54:48] Audience member: [speaking another language] Thank you, especially the three panelists. I am a faculty member. I teach Indigenous methodologies and wisdom to graduate students. I worked at several other institutions. 15 years ago, there were conversations about revitalization of languages within institutions, primarily, preferences, the language spoken of the territory, then other languages requested by students.  

[00:55:33] With land-based learning of our language, that's from what you were talking about Celeste, from our blood memory, our DNA, our ancestors, we are immersed in that language of our people and homeland.  

[00:55:47] In institutions though, what I find, there is a request to have them but it is a monetary component to that, where we are asking native people, first Nations, to pay for a language that they are unable to receive in their home territory and homelands with their people.  

[00:56:10] My question is, what are your thoughts on that component? How have we not opened that up to students who are first Nations, to move past that financial component for them to be granted space to learn the language of their people but also of the fact I have had students who have also left because predominantly the small percentage of first Nations students who attend post secondary education are a very small percent, roughly 2% in the room and no longer do they feel safe in those is to learn their own languages, predominantly learned by non-Indigenous peoples?  

[00:56:53] Ryan DeCaire: Happy to answer a little bit. Sorry to take a microphone. I teach at the University and in the community, Oswego, Six Nations and Grand River. Two different audiences. One are a mixture of non-natives from all over the world. The other is people from all over the community. You notice a different, Indigenous students at the University. It feels weird for them.  

[00:57:26] He mentioned the word baggage. It's odd. It's hard to admit you don't know something you feel you should. You notice non-native people picking it up faster than you. Then you have questions about yourself. There are so many things happening emotionally a student has to overcome.  

[00:57:43] The University is not a place to create speakers of a language. Even with other languages, German, Spanish, French. Often there are classes. You can level up. They often depend on travel in the summers, whether into rural areas of Québec to spend time with families or travel to European countries in order to get the required amount of hours in the language to become proficient speakers.  

[00:58:15] Sending them to a university, to learn their language to proficiency, it's not going to happen in the way it is. I teach Mohawk classes in the University. Beginner and intermediate which is beginner 2. If you need 2000 hours in your language to become advanced speaker, which is use it every day in your life, it requires two full-time degrees.  

[00:58:43] You get about 72 hours per course. You need to do that many times. It's not set up to create speakers. What we need to do is offer something that is something people want from those communities. Those can happen in those communities or a partner community. It doesn't have to happen at the University. It happens with education. Education does do that. Teacher training. Still, it is odd for a university to think how are we going to put all that time into a language? That seems like something we can't do.  

[00:59:28] You have to partner with communities doing that work, with the experts, pay them at par with other professors, so it is actually economically viable for those people and create that opportunity in the community. We've seen some communities, that's just one opportunity we could create.  

[00:59:54] However you also mentioned money. The university is going to say - no one is paying, how are we going to make money off that? They are probably not. It's not engineering. It's not a medical school. We are dealing with indigenous languages that the Canadian public should want to invest in just for the sake of the greatness of those languages.  

[01:00:17] It doesn't just make Indigenous people better people. Canada should be about the Indigenous people. That's what makes it unique. There is no Mohawk people in Mexico. That's what makes us amazing. The public should want that. For the sake of their own health and well-being. To make Canada a better place than it is today. I will give it to the rest of the panel here to continue.  

[01:00:58] Celeste Pedri-Spade: One more question, I know we are little overtime. Did you want to say something? OK we will do one more.  

[01:01:13] Audience member: Thank you. My name is Patricia. I am a PhD candidate in curriculum and pedagogy. My research is focusing on Indigenous studies having a combination of Canada and West African Indigenous knowledge. I'm focusing on curriculum reforms, I find it difficult to see the spaces for embedding Indigenous knowledge and language across curriculum. If you're just centering on the language alone, in my area, which is West Africa, Indigenous education is minimal.  

[01:01:52] I was wondering whether you could share strategies on how we can engage in that kind of curriculum reforms and policy changes that could get Indigenous knowledge embedded across programs particularly in higher education, so if I am running engineering, medicine, or any other field, I will have the tip of my Indigenous knowledge?  

[01:02:20] The reason I'm pursuing this is initially I didn't get embedded in my own personal Indigenous knowledge and awareness until I started learning about Indigenous knowledge in Canada. That brought me to self reflection. Now I am pursuing my research to try and to find spaces for myself. Because by learning abou the Canadian Indigenous education, I can situate myself and my own Indigenous space.  

[01:02:53] It is not something common in my territory. I'm wondering whether you could share strategies on how we can engage in curriculum reforms or policy changes that I could adapt to my region and maybe someone else could adapt to their own region and we could all explore our own personal Indigeneity . Thank you.  

[01:03:23] Janine Metallic: I will take an attempt at providing some of my ideas. Thank you for sharing that. I applaud you for your work in doing this important work in curriculum development. It's important as Indigenous people not only from here but from around the world, start to center our ways of knowing, in schools, in other places as well. I don't know if it's possible for me to show a slide.