Season 1, Round 5: Highlights

What are the decisions to be made?

The video covers a wide range of topics, primarily focusing on environmental issues, education, and indigenous rights. Claire and Shantel discuss the infiltration of fossil fuel industry narratives in education and the outdated standards for special education, respectively. Kevin, Lorne, and Alex emphasize the importance of sustainable land and water management, criticizing current practices and advocating for habitat preservation and green governance. Vanessa introduces the principles of Chinese medicine, highlighting its historical context and diagnostic methods. Jules and Gabrielle address the cultural and spiritual violence inflicted by settler colonialism, stressing the need for ethical participation with indigenous life ways. Karrie Lynn shares a personal narrative about the impact of residential schools and the binary thinking imposed by colonial systems. The conversation underscores the urgency of addressing environmental degradation, updating educational standards, respecting indigenous cultures, and rethinking societal values.

Claire Kraatz | For Our Kids Team Organizer | Educator | Environmental Activist

In a couple of months, a report will show how the fossil fuel industry has infiltrated our classrooms. This is not new because the climate crisis is so extreme now. It is harmful to students to be offered that kind of education.

Shantel Sherwood – Hold My Hand Alberta Founder | Disability Education Activist

Shantel: Everything depends on your admin and the reason that is is because there are no updated standards for special education. That has yet to be done since 2003 with an amendment in 2004, I was part of the fight to end seclusion rooms and restraints. It’s horrific, it’s traumatizing. We need to remove that from schools. No, there’s no space for it, well they put them back in and reinstated. Edmonton has some of the highest uses of seclusion rooms in Alberta.

Claire: It recommends that all schools set up green governance committees including students, teachers, parents and parents. We don’t have to wait for the UCP. I’m tired of waiting for the UCP.

Shantel: I would like to see our province, educators, and everybody on that step of “What’s next? What’s creative?” Let’s try some things. Let’s get crazy versus what the UCP is doing, which is “Let’s go 20 years back” because that never worked, anyways.

Heidi Bergstrom – For Our Kids Alberta, Area Lead | Financial Planning Analyst

I would love to see provincial leadership value kids as kids, not just see them as future adults. I’m in rural Alberta. Putting myself out there as a tree hugger can be a little bit scary sometimes, but I have never had anything negative come towards me from that.

Kevin Van Tighem – Writer | 40-Year Canada Parks Leader | Conservationist

It was not a problem with forest management In Jasper National Park, Jasper National Park spent 30 years reducing fuel around that town and it wasn’t a problem of mountain pine beetles. The forestry industry loves us to freak out over mountain pine beetles because it allows them to throw away the rule books so that they may log even harder. Mountain Pine Beetle spread is a product of climate change. As our winters get milder and our summers get drier and the trees get more stressed, mountain pine beetles will do well. We’ve got to stop living as if there are no consequences to doing whatever we want. Since my primary focus for the last few years has been on water security.

Lorne Fitch – Writer | 50-Year Fish and Wildlife Biologist | Conservationist

Lorne: The problem with the status quo is that quo has long passed its status. We’ve got to stop ignoring the evidence and use that evidence to help us understand where we need to go, particularly with Eastern slopes and as Kevin said, the primary importance of eastern slopes to Albertans and a reminder to us that we’re a headwaters province and that we’re also responsible for two other provinces downstream from us.

Alex: In terms of land preservation and preventing these mining operations, be it gravel, be it coal, be it oil and gas or general expansion of communities or what have you. We should also have an equal or greater focus on habitat preservation and restoration to ensure that some of the most unique and vital habitats are maintained and preserved.

Kevin: We came together around a piece of this landscape that we value and care for and we fought for its future. Well, that’s a people becoming the best of what they can be. That is, Albertans no longer just calling ourselves Albertans, but being Albertans need to take responsibility collectively to know our neighbours and to work with them to give us a better future.

Lorne: We have treated the eastern slopes like a warehouse to be ransacked instead of a place of investment. And we’ve created a land use footprint that contributes to flooding and drought and the loss of ecological indicators like native trout. Unfortunately, because we don’t often recognize these things, we also have created a phenomenon of shifting benchmarks where many think that nothing has changed. We’ve got to invest in things that aren’t necessarily the things of the past, but the things of the future, every little bit doesn’t count unless you do every little bit.

Colin Smith – Cooperative Solar Developer | Land Lover | Bioregional Organizer

Colin: We still have a lot of intact and potential to keep the web of life held together. We just need a shift in our priorities from endless growth, more money, and more jobs to what a regenerative economy looks like. How do we trade our values for wealth? That’s financial versus wealth. That is the beauty of the natural world and all of the abundance it provides.

Jenny: The province does have a nomination process for sites to be put on timelines. I think there is an opportunity for certain regions to get organized, the ones that are of high priority, that is the Eastern Slopes local in the community hall, what is the landscape that we want to preserve and what is the landscape that we want to return to? Its normal state. Our thoughts are trying to help empower those communities to help have difficult conversations with their neighbours and with their representatives to try and make sure that we start making decisions on the landscape. We are the headwaters for not just Saskatchewan and Manitoba, but even down to the Mississippi, a really big portion of North America’s water that we’re responsible for.

Vanessa Ebertz – Doctor of Acupuncture | Trauma Specialist

If you are thinking about Chinese medicine at all, we need to think of it as its own unique complete system of medicine. So we use Chinese medicine to treat, prevent and also to diagnose disease, but from a Chinese medicine perspective. So some things will be very similar to how we see things in Western medicine, but many things are quite different. And that just comes with that. It’s been around for 2000 years plus. And so back then we didn’t have technology to help us diagnose things. We had observation as our main tool and when you have a giant population, you can hone in on what the trends are pretty quickly. There’s been some benefit to how this originated and how it’s come to be as we know it today. Truthfully, it’s only been in the West since the 1970s. Richard Nixon went over to China to reestablish some connections and get some trade happening and oddly enough, one of his journalists ended up having an appendix attack, had to go into the hospital, and had his appendix removed, but while he was there getting his treatment, he also received acupuncture for pain relief and just overall general healing.

And he was just impressed by it. He came back and wrote an article for the New York Times about key components of facial diagnosis specifically for Chinese medicine, recognizing those elements. We’re going to look at your jaw and we’re going to find out what’s the state of your jing. What’s the state of your essence or your constitution? How much fortitude were you born with? I think I mentioned you can build that. Some people are put into politics or they have to be the face of something or they have to deliver news to mass audiences or whatnot, and they have to be the courageous, I’m strong, I got your back kind of feeling. Some people’s face shapes will change over time based on what’s required of them as they go through life. Lillian Bridges was the lady who is the, I guess you could say she’s the godmother of a facial diagnosis.

She comes from a long line of people who did this, sadly she’s passed away now, but she was always really good at quickly pointing out key features in people and saying, here’s when this arrived. If you look back to 1982, you’ll see whoever’s image change and it’ll be because something significant happened. So she cites the one lady who she saw in her office and the next time she saw her, she had a dimpled up chin and the dimpled up chin shows a state of fear. There was fear and shock and it hit the kidney area, which is your water element. And so she asked her what happened and she had a massive car accident, right? A major trauma. We also can note that Donald Trump has a very dimpled chin.

Jules McCusker – Creative Director | Writer | Indigenous Educator

My philosophy on how taking and replacing us with someone who’s not who we are is a form of violence. The idea was that when you try and misrepresent yourself as a part of our communities, it causes a rift and creates a ricochet effect. And that ricochet effect is a form of violence.

Gabrielle Weasel Head – Professor MRU Indigenous Studies | Kainai First Nation

Gabrielle: The problem is when they come into our lands, into these lands that have been gifted to us to care for by a source of life and they come here and everything is free for all. Not only are the lands appropriated, not only are lifewise appropriated but our very identities are appropriated and the agenda of settler colonialism is to erase and replace. Erase Indigenous lifeways and replace them. And the law is very narrow in terms of how it defines violence, but there’s spiritual violence, there’s emotional violence, there’s mental violence. Psychological violence. When we are misrepresented in that way, that violence has taken place and what are the ramifications of that violence? The perpetuation of stereotypes now, and this constant placing of Indigenous people in the past, at the heart of this is materialism and the value that is placed not on relationships but on material wealth, who is most at risk of being duped by Pretendians are members of settler society. White settler society.

Jules: The term capitalism. A capitalist was a person who collected heads and this is profoundly appropriate for this particular conversation because that’s what they’re doing. They’re taking our place, they’re taking our head, and this is where violence comes in. This is the core essence of it. Materialism is born out of this long romantic relationship with capitalism and capitalizing on another person’s misfortune. You’re seeing a lot of natives being upset because we are watching ourselves being replaced by non-native people, people who do not have our learned experience, people who do not have our family history. They’re claiming to create communities and they’re claiming that they belong to specific landmarks and places and they’re negotiating for deals, for mining and resource extraction and it’s on our territory.

Gabrielle: Rather than adopt. I think we need to think about how are we participating ethically with Indigenous lifeways, with Indigenous ways. If I know who I am, if I know where I come from, if I know my stories and if I’m ethical with myself, I will be ethical with other people. So if I don’t know where I come from and I am confused and I don’t have the appropriate capacity or there’s no community capacity, never mind community capacity, national capacity for youth to figure out who am I? That question is huge. I mean it’s like who am I? Where do I come from and why does it matter? Reducing Indigenous culture that being Indigenous, it’s so easy to figure out. All you have to do is take a course. There is no choice for us in who we are as Blackfoot. This is who we are. There is no choice. Choice the way it’s thought of in Eurocentric culture that is imagining or that’s been made up. This idea is that you can choose your identity. That’s a privilege. That’s a privilege right there. This is also about racism as well and its violence and this idea that you can take aspects of Indigenous culture and Indigenous ways of being as if they’re garments to be dawned and garments to be put on and then represent yourself that way.

Jules: Probably the reason why the analogy of the Two Row Wampum is the way it is, is that you have your road to go down and we’ll have our road to go down. We’re rowing two boats at the same time and we’re going on a long course together. We’ve been at this philosophically for 400 years now. We’re not coming up with answers, but we’re going to need to come up with answers fast.

Gabrielle: We are continuing to move even further backwards because now more than ever, we’ve had more kids in the child welfare that are Indigenous more than ever. We have more indigenous people who continue to die every day. Where are the conversations about land? Are we talking about that? Are we returning to that? And I heard this from a brilliant First Nations from Australia who says it’s not necessarily about land back. It’s like everybody returned to land. We need a return back to land.

Karrie Lynn Sparvier – Peace Officer | Two Spirit | Waywayseecoppa First Nation

My birth name was Gary Sparvier but I am from the Waywayseecoppa family. That’s the traditional name, my name, how I came about to get the name. I’ve had that since I was five and a half years old. I’m a 60’s scoop and a residential school survivor. Years after I was taken away at one month, I was in five different foster homes. I attended six years of residential school starting at five and a half years old. It was in residential school that I found out that I was different inside that I had both a boy and a girl of me born, [I was] assigned male at birth. I went to a Catholic residential school and the Sister Superior took me as a “pet project” to convert me to being right-handed. And they were very unsuccessful with me. And part of the punishment for continuing to use my left hand is they did what they some call pet coating. They put me in the girls’ uniform and made me sit on the girls’ side of the classroom because we were segregated between boys and girls.

Eventually, I moved into the girls’ dorm and lived as a girl for five and a half years. And I realised very quickly after that happened that it was not wrong. First of all, you mentioned the word binary. Binary thinking stems from a way to control the masses. Starting in the Dark Ages and the Renaissance. It was a way the churches and the rich used to subjugate and keep the word poor and weaponize religion, weaponize religion. And in that is binary thinking. Only males and females marry for procreation to get more followers of the church is the ultimate goal. And the rich, the economy, right to keep the rich.