I was the champion of our indigenous student recruitment program that started three years ago. I didn't know much, but what I did know was that the earth—mother earth—and water are sacred, and that's at the root of most first nations culture. Caring for the earth and having the earth provide was quite apparent to me. We pointed out that there are a lot of jobs out there, very well paid jobs in agriculture, whether they be in agronomy or agricultural science.
We saw an opportunity as we had first nations near several of our research stations in the west. We started the program because it seemed intuitive. We looked into the university system; there were students in the programs, so we were pulling indigenous students from those programs into our summer jobs and they got experience. They might have been in biological science, not thinking about agriculture, but it got them turned on to agriculture. I'm happy to say we have now bridged five of those students and they're employees in the department.