SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Quay Let's Talk Education, a podcast where Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices from across Quebec come together to share knowledge and experiences related to education. In each episode, you'll encounter new perspectives that we hope will enrich your practice and deepen your connection to your communities. I am one of your hosts, Stacey Allen, and in this episode, I was truly honored to learn from Ganyagahaga elders Neo Yorga and Odisna Ganra, as well as Daniel Johnson and Tanya Arquela from Sir Wilford Laurier School Board to talk a bit about the land-based learning day they host at the Ganawagi Blog House.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

So say go, everyone. Thank you for our guests for joining us for another episode of Quay Let's Talk Education. I'm your host, Stacey.

SPEAKER_05 1:05

And I'm I'm Daniel Johnson. I work for the Swarford Laurier School Board, and I'm a personal development animator in pedagogical services.

SPEAKER_04 1:13

Neil Yerna Sawyer Patton. I am Danyongehaga, commonly called Mohawk. That's not our name. And uh I'm Wolf Klan. I'm a faith keeper at the Longhouse.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

My name is Ojit Zagarda. I'm a bear clan. And she's my boss. And I also work within the longhouse as a faith keeper. And really what that means is we do everything we can to keep our ways alive. Cut wood, sweep floors, do whatever we have to do so that our ways never end.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

And I'm Tanya Arquila. I'm a teacher, and I've been taking some classes and webinars, indigenous education, land-based learning, and it's a great passion of mine.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

I heard about this land-based learning day, and I was hoping that we could speak a bit more about that today on the podcast.

SPEAKER_05 2:12

Absolutely. We can do that. But before we begin, we have some tobacco that we want to give to thank our elders for giving us the time and their energy and their stories to help us grow and to build a better, more compassionate world. So, yes, land-based learning day. So the idea came from one of our Indigenous teachers, Michael Rice, and was brought to our student leadership team and said, What are we going to do? How do we take the truths we're learning about of Indigenous history and the history of Turtle Island and the history of Canada? And how do we turn it into meaningful reconciliation? And the idea of getting out of the classroom, away from the neon lights and away from the bells, and go on to the land and be quiet and listen and be with elders would kind of change the perspective of our students. And we had begun to see that when we started with the blanket exercise. And so many of our students were going through that activity and event and learning experience, learning about the, you know, three, four hundred years of history of how indigenous culture and peoples were systematically eliminated over time. And if we haven't done the blanket exercise, everyone should experience that and learn that history through storytelling. And so the land-based learning idea was a natural next step. We worked on the strategy of it, where we were going to have it. And then can we build connections and relationships with elders who can guide us through it? And so we decided to have the first one on the school board property up at Arundel. And luckily, um our elders came and shared with us that day. And we had 250 students from elementary and high schools there. And it changed us, changed our perspective. It changed our practices in school, and it changed how we saw ourselves as active participants in reconciliation. So as we move forward, we realized that we were really on the wrong land. It was not the ideal place. I remember you telling me that. To be having land-based learning day, we needed to come to the indigenous community. And so now we are building this land-based strategy for as many schools as can come. But so anybody can come and learn on the land at the longhouse in Ganawake. And maybe we can create a model that can be used all across Quebec and all different regions as schools are building meaningful relationships with indigenous communities.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Mylan, thank you. You mentioned the importance of having the day take place in Ganwagi at the Longhouse. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about the significance of holding the day's event in Ganouagi on that special sacred area.

SPEAKER_05 5:10

Can you talk about the significance of being in the longhouse?

SPEAKER_04 5:14

Yeah. I'll try to do this really short because I'm sure Tsitzagarda has something to say. But yeah, I was well, first of all, thank you. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you for coming and doing this hard work that finally we've been waiting a really long time for this to happen. It's not just about us, it's about everybody, it's about life. It's not about just human beings either. So to come to Ganawaga is where we are, where we what is left of what we can say is our village. Originally, our our village was in on the island, Montreal. And um, we have that history of the time that the people when Champlain and that other guy showed up and made everybody sick, and then we had to leave because of this sickness that was left in order to survive. We divided into three communities, and we're the the one-third that just crossed the river. So here in Gonewaga, we made several moves to get to this spot. As I sit here, I'm looking outside our window, and the leaves are flying just like birds. It's amazing. Uh, and so I understand. I really never got land-based learning. I don't understand that concept. I have to ask Daniel, what is land-based learning? And all it is is being attentive to what's around us, besides human-being manufactured things, just being out there and seeing the power of nature, the beauty of it. And I'm just sitting here looking out my window, and I it's amazing. I saw a leaf fly from one side of the yard all the way to the other side. And and, you know, what when do kids see that? When do when do people, what does anybody, maybe sometimes they go through their life and they never see that. Certainly in the city, you know, I feel bad for them because it's hard to even find grass. A lot of places they're just on cement. They have no contact with the earth at all. And that has to happen. Uh, J Zagarno will tell you about that part. He's telling people all the time how to reconnect with the earth, who we consider our mother, because she gives life. If we if she didn't do her job, there would be no life. And so that the earth is feminine. She is a mother, she's a mother to all of us, and all the things that we can see outside it when we walk out the door. And so that is land-based learning, and to just get the kids to go out and to be in the trees, or you know, to to sit in the snow and uh just you know, understand the power of nature, the beauty of nature. Your turn.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

See, wow, you know, it's just this is a new kind of topic, land-based learning to to me. You know, I'm 70, going to be 75 years old. But when I was a a young boy, a young kid, and we lived on a farm just down the road here. And we didn't talk about land-based learning. We were we were on the land. My parents were farmers. We carried hay, we worked with animals, we raised pigs, we delivered calves. And when we were young kids, we were always out. We never were in the house, we didn't have electricity, we didn't have a television or telephone or any of that. And we were out. That was our what we did. After school, we went out and we climbed trees. We were running in the bush. We went to the swamp and we made a raft and we pretended we were on a big boat. And we half of the time we fell in the water and we came home soaking wet. And people before, you know, they they take uh in the spring, they'd take a frying pan and make a fire, campfire in a bush. They'd find, sometimes they get hungry, they find frogs and and they eat frog legs and and things like that. You know, we always grew up on the farm. We cut ourselves with a knife. We didn't run to the hospital, we healed ourselves. We took care of ourselves. And uh, you know, uh today, look at the world we live in. Young uh young people, even in our schools in the village, the kids are out at recess or lunchtime. What did the teachers tell them now? Oh, you can't go in the bush here, you can't climb trees, you can't run in the bush, it's dangerous. There's animals out there, even here. You know, don't go out there, it's too dangerous. That's life. And as kids the way we're growing up, we grew up out there. It was just part of our world, you know, and now we're we've taken that whole part of their world away from them. You know, when I uh when I was when when Neo Yerda and I were had our first child our children, we we came back from uh Detroit, Michigan. And we I went to school there, and I came back and we moved to Gundawke. And then I said, and we had a home in the village. And then I said to her, well, I got we got land here, so I want to build a farm. I want my kids to see what I saw, you know, and and so we I we built our homes ourselves, cut, did whatever we had to do. We did all our work ourselves, you know, because we really didn't have any money. We were just young and starting out, and we were never too afraid to try something. And then so we built the farm. Our kids were always in the trees here, just like we were. When we had uh cattle, the boys would come and when I'd have a cow giving birth to a calf, they'd be standing right there. And I and as I and the hoofs and the nose are in a good place, then I would help the cow to deliver a calf. We did all of those things, you know, and and we saw all of that. You know, we carried hay, we did uh we did everything. We s we cut them hunting. I took them hunting, I took them and we went went moose hunting. We did all of those kinds of things, you know, and and so that's to me, I do not understand this land-based learning when really that's the way I grew up, and we didn't call it that. But in the end, now, you know, in our later years as we began to understand, we never talked about culture. We didn't talk about culture. When we had children in our 20s and our children were young, we said, what do we have to give them? We didn't know our language, because education, however, they did is convinced our parents, well, don't teach them your language because they want they have to be like the world around them, or else they're gonna suffer. So we we suffer because we didn't have our language. Well, then you know they tell us, you know, all the different, all the different kinds of things. You know, we said, what do we have to offer them? So we went back to longhouse ways, to traditional ways. We learned about the ceremonies, we learned about the songs, we learned about the teachings and the stories, and our children grew up in that. And so now we we built a longhouse and and we conduct and we run all the ceremonies with the people around us. And our children can grow up in that kind of environment where there is no other way for them. Our children were our children, our grandchildren don't have an English name because they don't need one. Because in our children, even our sons, we when we were first growing up, we gave them English names because some of our parents said, well, they have to have a name like that. But we never called them by their English name. We called them by their Mohawk name. And they didn't even know that was their name. They they thought everybody, all the other kids were saying, what's your what's your mohawk name? You never knew there was a difference. But you know, like that's all of these things we try to teach our children. We we always planted corn. We tap the trees and we we try to do all of those things that we talk about in our ceremonies. She's tapping me, but you know, like our what is our ceremonies all about? What is what is our ceremonies all about? It's about life. And from the time now, just when this snow is ending, now we're gonna open the gardens and encourage the gardens to come back. Now we're gonna plant the seeds and encourage the seeds to grow. And all summer long as they're growing, when the strawberries are ripe, we give thanks to strawberries. When the beans are ready, we give thanks to the beans. We have bean ceremony. When when the corn is is uh has milk in it, it's not completely ripe yet, finished. So we call that the green corn, and we have a ceremony to give thanks. When the corn has matured, I'm talking about the old corn, not the modern stuff that the farmers sell. You know, I call that plastic corn. But you know, we all our ceremonies, all our ceremony is about food. Because you know what? If there is no food, there is no life. And all the things that work together, if uh in our in our teachings, what it tells us is the only thing Creator ever asked us when He made human beings. He gave us His mind, his fire, He put it in our blood, and He gave us His breath, and He picked up the living earth, and He said, This earth is your mother. The only thing I will ever ask of you is to give thanks. So how we do that is in our ceremonies, in our songs, in our speeches, in our words. And that's what it's all about. So when you look at that and you live by that, that is land-based learning. We we plant the beans and the corn because we know that if that corn doesn't we corn needs human beings to survive, the old corn. You need it to put it in the ground, to nurture it, to to repick it and to store it, and then to replant it. Because you know, if you don't store it and take care of it, then the corn won't grow next year. And then food will end. That's what that's what it's all about. It's life.

SPEAKER_05 15:22

I almost think we should need to change the name. Like land-based learning and ceremony. Because that's really what it is, right?

SPEAKER_04 15:29

That's actually nature.

SPEAKER_05 15:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

It's just the world.

SPEAKER_05 15:33

But it's not one thing, it's complex.

SPEAKER_03 15:35

Well, I I think it's just changing our perspective. We think of land the way that it is now, people think of land as a resource, not as a relative. And we need to think of exactly what we can get from it. And it needs to be a reciprocal relationship. And we need to be, like you said, grateful and thankful. And we need to understand how the land and how we and the animals all live together. And this is what I think our children need to learn. And these these ways need to be uh re-established. This link, this disconnect has to be connected. We need to reconnect to to the land, to the earth and to indigenous ways of life.

SPEAKER_05 16:22

And challenge our understanding of what we think we know.

SPEAKER_03 16:24

Exactly. Because like you said before, we're at a imbalance right now. And the only way to get that balance is is to learn and to change our perspectives.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

We travel all over to cities and to conferences and government offices and and people say, Can you do this a hondagariwadeck? With these words which come before all else, because it's very important. We love to hear it. But, you know, for a lot of times they only like to hear it. They don't really understand what it really talks about. And then I asked them in the in that I said, I we call we look at the grandmother moon as our grandmother, and the earth is our mother. Everything that comes, everything that life comes from is female, and the women, the moon, the earth, and all of the different the corn is female, and all things come from life, and it's tied with water, right? You were before you were born, and then you you were in your mother's womb. You were living in a world of water. And then when it was time, you left that water world and came into this world, and you took your first breath, which is life. You know, and and creator, all he ever asked of us is to give thanks. And that's who we are. My friend he used to say, Sagoganyukas Tommy Porter, he said, his grandmother, she stopped, she was old, she's passed on a long time now. But he she said to him one day, they're standing on the porch, and she says, Sehiara, remember, she said, when Odaguru, what I told what I tell you, she said, long time ago, when the ships came across, all of their soldiers with their blue blue coats and their blue suits, they had guns and they were hunting us down to kill us and destroy us. She says, Sehiara, remember, she said, one of these days they will be searching for us again. And this time they will understand that they have lost their connection with the earth. And now they're gonna be coming to our peoples and they're gonna be saying, help us to understand what our connection is to the earth. And the all of these modern millionaires and billionaires and governments and everything, everything's about power and domination. Everything is about, you know, the earth dominating the earth. Man will have dominion over the earth. Where does that come from? And that's what they say. They take the earth, it's just whatever you can take from her. And does anybody ever give thanks? And so what I tell people, they said, When was the last time that any of you, women and men here, went outside at in the nighttime when the moon was above our heads? And when of what when did any of you ever go out there and say, Grandmother, I love you? I thank you for my life. When did you ever put your hands in the earth and say, My mother earth, I love you? And and that's when it becomes real, and not just words.

SPEAKER_04 19:34

And when they open their eyes in the morning, that's the first thing. When you when you open your eyes in the morning and you're breathing, to stop for just that moment and be thankful that you've been given another day. Kids have to know that. You're breathing. The all of the natural forces have provided what you need in order to continue to live and to be thankful that you've been given that chance to see another day. And then at the end of the day, you say thank you again for whatever it was that went on today that you enjoyed, that maybe you worked really hard, but you managed to have that experience. So it's always being thankful, but it's more than being thankful, it's being supportive of what is there, so that it continues. It's just like kids. When you praise kids, they flourish. If you ignore them, we don't know how sad and sick they can become.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

There are two things in the world that uh none of us can evade, I guess. One is that we're born and the other one is that we will die. Those are the two realities of our world. And the reason why we have death is that because at the beginning of the world the creator, when he picked up the earth and says, Give thanks. Well, they're pitch people, they're just like they are today. They were forgetful people, and they began to put themselves in front of everything, and they forgot to give thanks. And that's in those days they said they used to live forever. They didn't know death or sickness or pain or sorrow. And the creator now was hurt to his heart because he saw that human beings they forgot the most important thing. And so he found a being that has no face and no pity and no heart. And he said, You will now carry the teaching to respect life. So he gave he gave him a stick for everyone that lives, including you and I. And on that stick it is marked so many days, and when there's none left, he will give it to the one who has no face. But he hides that from us how many days we have to live. So it says, Every day when you open your eyes and you take your first breath of the day, you should value that because the creator allowed you another day to live. It's not a given.

SPEAKER_05 21:57

This is why land based learning day. Is so important. It gets students outside their comfort zone, outside the cement brick walls of the classroom, and into the longhouse. And so when students arrive, the idea is that you learn history first. You learn the creation story. You learn about your connection to the earth. You learn the stories that bring you to one mind and help you sense that bigger community that you're a part of. And then as you move throughout the day, you begin to learn more culture, experience more, maybe through music, uh, through storytelling, through art, and have lunch. And then by the end of the day, the last hour is the most important hour. It's when the students kind of exactly what you're saying, they put it all together. They work on in school teams with leaders to develop their reconciliation plan at their school. And it's it's not a one-day plan, it's a multi-generational plan. If we're to understand that reconciliation will take generations, then we have to start somewhere. And so we're inviting students to start here. And so as they come back year after year, they bring the same plan to improve it of how they're going to create opportunities of reconciliation within their school community. For some, it's a green club. For some, it's Truth in Reconciliation Orange Shirt Day. Um, for some, it's a walk with uh the Downy Winjacks donation. It's it could be anything, but it has to be steps forward. And then when they return, the next group of students from their school community return to the longhouse. Well, then they can begin that story again. They can reignite their connection to the land, to the community, learn culture and history and language and improve on that reconciliation plan.

SPEAKER_04 23:46

They kind of have to coming to Gonewaga, they have to see what we've had to endure because there is a lot that has been done to this village to make it, I guess, disappear, make it unwell, make it livable almost. We have the seaway, which I hate because when I grew up, I was in the river all the time. Now we have no connection to the river, and the people think ordinarily the population thinks the seaway is such a fantastic thing, and I hate it. It's a crime zone because it took away our lives as children. Charlie grew up on the farm, so he didn't really experience the river as much as I did. For me, it was every day, and all the families would go to the river. Everybody in the village knew how to swim. And I can remember sitting on a little dock when I was just little with a towel on while my parents were there. I remember moments, and that that'll never be in my kids' memories because they could never do the same thing. The the river was taken away. The traffic is around us. We got bad news just the other day. Charlie's tapping uh maple trees. Last Thursday we were told that the maple trees have a high level of lead in the sap and that he should not use it. How tragic is that? Canada turned everything into a commercial product. Tobacco, they changed it into a commercial product and it's harmful. Maple syrup has always been beneficial for us. It was what saved our people a long time ago, because at this time of the year is when everybody would be very hungry, the food supply would be low, and there would not be animals yet. You know, we'd have to go far to find them. And so they say that uh when the people went out, they had to find something to eat. And it was a child who saw the squirrels tasting the dripping sap from the maple tree. And uh, and so they the people went there and they collected some of that. And that's what saved them and gave them the nourishment to continue into the spring so that they could feed, they could have food. But um, you know, that it drips right at the time when people would be starving. And now, you know, what's gonna happen? We we can't have that's one of our ceremonies is encouraging the trees to to open the the wata, the maple tree to to run sap so that the men can go out and collect it. And then we have a ceremony and we drink that as part of the ceremony because we know that it has the nutrition and the minerals that we need at this time of the year. We've always known that, but the scientists have only come out maybe 20 years or so, maybe not even that long, I don't know. And they're calling maple sap perfect food because it has all kinds of nutrition in it. They're only just realizing that. And our people have known that for who knows, we we can't say how long, but it's now got lead in it and we can't drink it. How sad is that?

SPEAKER_02 26:59

I think like you know, everything that you could talk for a thousand hours about all the different directions that we can learn and feelings that we have, and how we can make, I guess a good word is connection back to this earth. You know, and uh in some cultures in we have ways of doing that. We we had lost that for a long time, but some of us went back to work with the Anishnabi people, and they taught us to they they took us back out and we fasted. And we and we sat on the ground, we sat on a mountaintop by ourselves for four days, four nights. And we put our we gave up food and water, and we we uh we said now we put our hands into creator and creation, what do you want of us? You know, their songs they say, Creator, whatever I ask of you, you will give. And whatever Creator asks of us, we will do. So if you go, you know, everything we everything is given. We don't have to ask Creator for anything. He gives us the wind and the sun and the earth and the grass. Everything is given. We just have to use a mind how to use it. But now when you have a vision, when you have a dream that is powerful, then that's your gift. And so that's what the creator asks you for you to do. And that doesn't mean until you to pick up this and until it's you get tired of it, it means for the rest of your life. And it may mean that in your vision you're gonna go and learn and you're gonna continue and make sure these things will continue. That's your gift. Or you'll help people. Maybe you might have a gift of medicine to help people. You might be able to see and vision, but we don't know what those things are. But but you know, it's like that's one of the ways that our people made connections. And I'll just tell you one story about a young man when we were doing that years ago. He went up on a mountain and he was sitting in a different place. And then uh uh one of the characters the people watching over him went to see him in the morning and he was shaking and he was all upset. And he said, I have to leave, I have to go. He said, I can't stay here. I'm scared. And he said, What are you what what are you scared of? He says, When I close my eyes, I see a big ball of worms. And they're like this a ball of worms in front of me. And I close, I open my eyes, and the worms are still there. And I can't escape it. I'm afraid, I'm afraid, he said. So the the elder that worked with him, he says, Well, what do worms do? Worms they aerate the soil, they are the gardeners of the soil, their leavings make the soil rich. And they're the ones that are making the soil alive. So he says, You know what those are telling you? You have to reconnect yourself to this earth and to life. So you have dreams and visions in all many different ways. You know, maybe the kids that will come from from the schools, they may not have they may not have that kind of experiences, but they can we can still talk to them about this earth. There's nothing that's stopping any one of us from going and sitting out there on the grass and just connecting and feeling good with our mother. You know, you gave us tobacco a little while ago. So what is tobacco? When Sky Woman came from Sky World, she brought with her life, and she brought with her a daughter and a who gave birth to a granddaughter who gave birth to creator and giving birth and now she died. And when they put her in the earth, they covered her with earth, from her mind grew the sacred tobacco. So tobacco carries our ta our minds and our teachings and everything who we are. When we want to ask, we ask in tobacco. And that tobacco has power. You know, people say, oh, Indians are there they they would talk to the stones. Well, yeah, we do. But we talk to the spirit of the stones and we do it in tobacco. We talk to the animals and we give it in tobacco. You know, when I when I used to go hunt moose hunting, and I take the life of a big, big bull moose. And what would happen, what was the first thing that I would have to do? Because I would I understood that. Before I took the first action, I took tobacco out and I had a pipe, or I just had tobacco, and I put it there and I said, Thank you, my cousin. Because I had to take your life to feed my children. And I give thanks to you. And one of my friends used to say, and what you say is, now I offer this tobacco to dry the tears of your families who you will leave behind. So, but they understand that we have this relationship with the animals would provide us the food we need, but we have the responsibility to give thanks. And so, like they have two th two words for animals, right? With the the one you are free, the wild ones. And gotzana, which means that they're almost, I guess, like our slaves. We have a rope around them and we're tied, they're tied to our hitching post, and we tell them when to live and when to die and when to eat and when to drink. That's what we that's what the cattle and animals that we have are. And who gives thanks to them? Those are kind of things that people need to hear and need to understand. Next time people take a bite of a Burger King, who gave thanks to the animals? And how were they treated? Anyway, I'll stop talking.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Thank you. When you're both speaking, it reminds me of a conversation I had with Loretta Robinson. We were talking about ways to make connections to school, and she was bringing up recycling. And she said, you know, I tell my students it's not about recycling, it's about your relationship with the world and how you're giving thanks and taking care of the world. And when you're speaking, it's reminding me of that teaching that she was having with her students and the connection and being able to have the time to see our relationship and nurture that. When you're talking about the world being a mother, like I'm a mother, so I'm thinking about my children, you know, and how I care for them and how they care for me, what that relationship is like, and thinking about the world in that way. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 33:57

They say for us, we're we love our kids, we love our grandchildren, but we have to think about the ones that we're never we'll never see them. You know, how will things be for them? Are we doing enough so that they'll enjoy life and not struggle? And that's what to me, when I recycle, I'm washing plastic, and I have a ton of plastic around the corner. I'm washing it, and uh, and that's what I I think about is you know, this has to be somehow used again because what I hear is that there's a giant plastic island in the ocean, the size or bigger than France, and the ocean gives us oxygen along with a lot of other stuff. And what are we doing to it? Because it's turning that giant plastic island is a dead zone, kills whatever goes into it. So we have to take care of this plastic.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Even uh, you know, plastic. You talk about like when she was just howling about the winds that was coming and circling here, and they're gonna get stronger. And maybe we're gonna get lucky and the gr and the thunder will come tonight. But they say the grandfather they call them our grandfathers, the thunder beings. And what they had they say a long time ago, there were huge serpents that lived on this world. And the creator could see they couldn't live with human beings, so he drove them under the earth, and their bodies and their remains still and their spirits are still driven under the earth. And the thunder beings, their responsibility is to keep them serpents from rising. And if they ever should rise, they said their breath would burn the skin of our mother, and burn our breath in a thick and burn our our own skin. And so you people will say, Oh, that's only a story, right? It's a child's story. But no, it isn't. And they now we understand what they're talking about. See those those serpents that live under the earth, people now, especially that guy in the south now with the orange hair, his uh his his motto is drill, baby, drill. Drill holes in the earth and pull out all of the oil. The oil is the remains of those serpents. And what do we do? We bring them to the surface now. We put it in a big pot and we boil it up and we make gasoline and fuel and plastic and everything that invades our world. What and sure enough, what is it doing? It's called acid rain, global warming, it's called smog, it's called asthma. It's called when the sun is not blocked, is blocked or not blocked, and it's called skin cancer. And all of these things, it's called drought. And all of these things now the earth around us is burning because of what these serpents that came to the surface will do. So the other thinking is, you know, again, as I said before, we need to make a change in this world. So we don't we we leave those serpents where they should lie and find another way.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

This is what we need to hear, this is what our children need to hear, and this is what's going to hopefully change. That's the disconnection in education. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hearing relationship, you know, a lot. That's coming up. Connection, relationship, and that's what we have to build.

SPEAKER_05 37:27

So your first question is what what is land-based learning day? Well, you're in it. This is it. This is land. We're having it right now.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Maybe to wrap up, what are some of the changes and things that you're seeing in the students that are participating in the day?

SPEAKER_05 37:42

Uh, it's a total shift. We see students that had a desire to learn, because there's there's a couple categories. Students that had a desire to learn really drink it in, and they become uh change makers in their world. So so one of the students that helped us write this land-based learning day and now ceremony strategy, she gave a TED talk, and her TED talk was about the culmination of her experiences with the with elders and with indigenous culture and how it changed how she saw life. And she's non-indigenous. Uh, and so that's huge. But that's one story. At another school, they planted uh we came to land-based learning day, planted a white pine tree and in memory and honor of the children and dedicated it to elders sharing with them and imparting knowledge. And then they said, Well, what's next? Well, it's our green club that's next. We're going to talk about consumption, exactly what we've been talking about this afternoon. Consumption, our habits, the impact of those decisions each of us make as individuals on our school, on our school community, and on our world. And so we want to change that. It's not just about picking up the compost, it's way before we get to the compost. So they're seeing things on a multi-phase level and on multiple levels and inserting themselves as a catalyst for change, because that's what we're telling them. You're coming here because this is a generational project. There's healing that needs to happen, but it has to start with listening. Listening and then learning and then doing better. And if we can help students progress from those to those three categories, from being a spectator to a participant to a stakeholder, well, then the possibility is unlimited. We can change the world.

SPEAKER_04 39:28

And and part of their education, like for us, we use symbols a real lot because people are so forgetful. Um, you have to have reminders around you all the time. And so you have noticed that many of the young, well, of all ages of Native women are wearing ribbon skirts, especially decorated. And Jeet Zagarna, when he does opening, he acknowledges them for that because that skirt is their connection, our connection to the earth, because we women, we are connected to the earth. So that skirt is our connection. It's a reminder to never forget that connection. The earth has all these colors and all these designs, and so they put that into their skirt, all the colors, all the designs. And then there is the great tree that you had asked about the white pine. That for us it's the it's the tree of peace that we were taught long time ago. You know, we're we went through hard times, bad times too, but we were lucky. The uh ancestors, the creator sent teachers to us and taught us about the desire we we have to find a way to use a reasonable mind to solve our problems instead of the way it's going. And that in order to solve a problem, everyone needs to have a reasonable mind. We have this great thing in our heads that we hardly use, but it's the very thing that can bring peace instead of war, instead of the way we're managing difficulties and whatnot, troubles, the use of a good mind. So that tree is the reminder of our ways, which is to strive for peace all the time. That's the ultimate. You can't find a better life than to have a peaceful life. And so when we see a tree, especially the white pine, we're instantly taught about what was, you know, that peacemaker that came to us to help us to continue. Our long house, you know, it's a symbol of the connection of the Confederacy. It's long. Generally, they say it's from east to west, but from east to west, uh the Ganyonge people are here, all the way to the west side are the Seneca people, and in between are the five nations, and then the Tuscarora came in because they were chased away from their land. In order for them to survive, they had to leave, and so they came to stay with us. So some people say five nations, some say six nations, but there are five lands. I was told by an elder when we describe what how to say that, she says five lands, because the Tuscaroras did not bring, they did not have land. They it was taken from them, but we have five lands. There are just so many symbols. We we should really sit down and think about them because for us, you you go through a day and you look at something and you're reminded right away, even in the way you move, because you're mindful that you want life to continue. And so even when you're serving or stirring your coffee or your soup, you're doing it in what we consider the direction of life is counterclockwise. When we dance, it's counterclockwise. When we set the table, when we serve, when we when we go and stir a coffee, or you you want your mind to always have that consciousness of working for life to continue. So you use a lot of symbols in order to help you through in the day.

SPEAKER_02 43:16

And that's not a symbol. It goes back to when Skywoman did her dance on the back of the turtle, counterclockwise, and she danced in a cycle of life. It's uh, you know, reminder us of us how life began and life continues.

SPEAKER_04 43:32

And we go the opposite way when we're working to bring our ancestors for a ceremony. That you go the opposite direction. So everything is like you're you're just being mindful all the time that you want life to continue. You're part of helping life to continue.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

I think you know what one of the things that young people and people should understand is we Can only our people, what little we know, can only talk about what we know about our world. We can only share what we know. We're not gonna we're not trying to tell non-native people, white peoples, or black peoples or Asian peoples how to be their people. They have their own ways. And I tell people the creator made you beautiful when he made you who you are. So why would we want to be someone else? And why would somebody, you know, what right did they have, those ones that came across the ocean in those ships, to say to native people through their governments and their priests, throw away everything that you are and become us. Who made them God? See, and that's what we need to tell people. Every nation and every people have are born special, and they they all were given the same instructions about this relationship. And I'm not talking about the modern world. Go back to all the old cultures of every people, and we're the same. The modern, and I don't want to hurt nobody's, but modern religions are only like 2,000 years old. And where does that we're in those a lot of those ways? The earth is not our mother, the earth, you have dominion over her. Go back to the, you know, when we have a friend from uh from Namibia. He comes to visit us all the time. He works with the United Nations. We sit and talk about our culture, and he says, You and I we're the same. It's as if I'm talking, I'm listening to my people talk of our stories. They may describe the land a little different, but the thought is exactly the teaching. It's the same. So every nation is special. And what we need to get back to is honor that special being special. And then what she talked about, five nations. We have five nations, six nations, Iroquois confederacy, those are all terms that was given to us. What we say is you're people of the long house. And when five nations or six nations put away their weapons of war and accepted a way of peace and relate and working together, then we became people of one long house. That's what we talk about, Rudinusuni. Classes might come to the long house. That's only a building. It's a building that is a physical representation of a bigger concept of how five nations came together under a way of peace.

SPEAKER_04 46:42

The beginning of Hundaguni Wadeqwa, it's always uh we begin with um acknowledging the people. And usually that's because you have people listening to you. So you want to respect them that they're there, that they're paying attention. But actually, and part of it is we're acknowledging all the people of the world. And and I taught kindergarten, and we used to teach our kids about all the people of the world, and and we'd have them name all the different people in the world, because part of that is hoping that the creator made things that way and it continues. We have no right to even think to eliminate any of the original people of this earth.

SPEAKER_05 47:30

I don't know how you feel, Tanya, but I think and we've talked a little bit about this, but that this idea of land-based learning day and doing it authentically might be the most dangerous thing in education because it can change everything. It can change everything, the way that we understand history, but also understand each other and build relationships, which is the foundation of the classroom. So I think it's not just necessary, it's the next step for our school communities.

SPEAKER_03 48:01

I believe, yeah. I think it is that it's the first step. And exactly for all of those reasons that you you spoke about, the the symbolism, what it represents, and just we need our children need an opportunity to learn and to experience um all of the stories and all of the teachings and to actually be there makes all of the difference. I think it's an incredible opportunity for the children, for our students, and an important first step in reconciliation. You want to use that word. I like reciprocity and relationship. And yeah, so I think that's uh it's a very important first step.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

You said it's a first step. Um what we're told is uh what our old clan mother used to say is uh they she says uh an Indian will never grow up. And what she means from the time you're born until the time you die, you never stop learning. And so you can have a land-based program. But those young, that young boy and young girl, now when they leave your school system, what will they continue with? They leave that behind, say, oh well, I learned this is what I learned there, so I don't need to take it with us. See, we we face the same thing in our school with with a lot of kids and the language in immersion programs. So a lot of the kids they come, they go to immersion and they learn. And then when they graduate, they say, Oh well, I I always only had to do that when I was in school. I don't when I'm home, I don't have to speak. Somebody convinced them that there's only you only speak in a certain block of land, a certain compartment of your home. You know, it's not real yet. Where you see young people where it is real, they're speaking, they're learning their language, they're talking to their children. A lot of kids that we taught when they were in nursery, they're grandparents now already. And they're speaking to their children, and they made it real in their lives. And then there's a lot that you talk to them, oh, I don't understand what you're saying. I lost it all. They didn't understand the gift that they were given. Same thing with these the kids that will come to a program, the information and the in the stuff that we talk about, they need to understand that's a gift of learning. And it and you know the the only thing they need to do is just like I said, going out and putting your hand on a tree and saying, I I thank you for life. The gift is the same thing because you put your hand on that gift and you make it grow. And then what happens is that the power of that gift. Now you're gonna have children. What will you teach them?

SPEAKER_01 51:03

I want to thank you all. I'm so uh grateful to hear and learn about this Van the Land, both as an educator but also as a parent, like thinking about the next generation and all the youth being able to have that time and that experience on the land to hopefully learn to say thank you and see the connection relationship we have with the land and each other to get to know each other better.