[Witness spoke in Cree, interpreted as follows:]
I want to talk about myself and about my own journey towards education. I shouldn't really be bragging about myself and my own education, but when it comes to it, I went to school on the reserve. I grew up going to school there. Then I went to the nearby town school of Ernest Lindner. I also went to the University of Saskatchewan. The other school I went to was a residential school.
At all three institutions that I went to, not once did I ever see a first nations person work there, or any females work there, or even persons speaking the Cree language or talking about family relationships, family kinships and raising good families. When I went to university, it was same thing. Even though it was called the Indian teacher education program, I never saw any languages being taught there, or Indian ways of knowing, or Indian knowledge.
If you want to see how to teach children in terms of learning languages, then you have to include Cree, Nakota, Dene and even Blackfoot. If we can combine all those languages together at the university, then you'll be able to see the success rate. Here, you won't be able to see any high incarceration rates. You won't even see any poverty if all the first nations people can work together in terms of education. Even in the homes we would be able to overcome the poverty and even family violence.
We would like to see, and my dream is to see, these women, our matriarchal lineages, teach in those schools and teach in those institutions so that we can have role models. First and foremost, we need to have role models in those schools and in those institutions.
In terms of policy-making, we have to include first nations people to have some say and to have their foot in there. If we were able to put role models here in the House of Commons and on the standing committees, or even on school boards, then those first nations people would be able to speak on behalf of their first nations people.
My dream and my goal is to be able to see first nations languages taught in the schools and the universities.