In my opinion, I think the mining sector has led this. One of the early jobs I did was to go out and recruit and train my fellow Dene people in the Northwest Territories. We did that by doing really hands-on, practical, community-based training. Cameco did it in the eighties and nineties to build up their workforce, partnering through multi-party training plans with educational institutions, provincial governments, federal governments, and the companies. Take pre-employment welding as an example. You take welding machines out to the community and maybe you do an aluminum welding...leave some skills for fixing boats. Or there are concrete programs where you lay a slab of concrete by the elders facility.
I think the mining industry has been involved in this a long time, and really it's because you tap into the tactile learning and visual learning that a majority of indigenous people have. I had an instance where I took 12 Dene and Inuit people down to Tucson, Arizona, for three days to learn how to drive a truck. The first day was all book learning, and I thought, oh my God, none of us will pass this at the Caterpillar facility. During the next three days, I had these Texans and southern Americans saying we were the best damn truck drivers they'd ever had.
When I asked my cousins and friends why they thought that was, they said: Well, once you show us once, it's visual. We know how to do it. It's like hunting. It's like being out on the land. Grandpa shows you once and you'd better learn how to dress a moose or you're out of luck.
In training, it's the practical and the tactile that are very important.