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EPISODE 2

Centering Indigenous Knowledge: Lil’wat Principles of Teaching and Learning

In our second episode, we are in conversation with Dr. Lorna Wánosts’a7 Williams, one of the leading Indigenous woman educators and scholars in Canada who has long championed decolonial education, the centering of Indigenous knowledge systems, and the revitalization of Indigenous languages.

Transcript

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Safa

You are listening to the Unsettling Knowledge Inequities podcast, presented by the Knowledge Equity Lab (housed at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Critical Development Studies) and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). 

Safa

Throughout history, education has been used as both a site and tool for colonial and imperialistic endeavors. Globally, countless diverse knowledge systems and languages have been systematically targeted, dismantled and delegitimized by ruling powers who have used their version of schooling as a vehicle for assimilation. In the context of Canada, residential schools are a prime example. They were government-sponsored religious schools that were designed to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. 

However, education has also been used as a site and tool for decolonial praxis – or as Paolo Freire teaches us, as the practice of freedom. 

Today we are in conversation with Dr. Lorna Wánosts’a7 Williams, one of the leading Indigenous woman educators and scholars in Canada who has long championed decolonial education, the centering of Indigenous knowledge systems and the revitalization of Indigenous languages. 

Dr Williams is Professor Emerita of Indigenous Education, Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria and Canada Research Chair in Education and Linguistics. 

Lorna  

Kelh wa7 alap nsnukw’núkw’7a. Wánosts’a7 nskwátsitsa. Lhk’u Líl’watula wa7 es nsnukw’núkw7a. El tsawna wa7 lhkan eltsawana ti tmicw sa ki Singhees a, ki Esquimalt a; muta7 i wsanc a.

My name is Lorna Williams. I am Lil’wat, from a community called Mount Currie. I currently live here in Victoria on the lands of the Lekwungen speaking people, the Songhees and the Esquimalt, and the W̱SÁNEĆ. I’m Emerita from the University of Victoria.

Safa 

Growing up in Mount Currie, attending a residential school, and later witnessing and being part of her communities fight to establish the second band-controlled school in Canada in 1973, sginificantly contributed to Dr Williams decision to becoming an educator and her approach to teaching and learning. 

Lorna  

I grew up in my home community. Right now it’s called Mount Currie, where the Lil’wat live. I grew up in the part of our community that was the first community that was built. Prior to that, our people lived throughout all of our territories. But when the government began to assert itself on our lands, they wanted us to become stationary in one location and a spot was chosen for us. And the people built a community there and that’s where I was born and grew up. I grew up in a monolingual household, we spoke only my language. I did hear other languages, because my father and my uncle helped the new settlers that were moving into our valleys. And also my aunt used to look after the priest who used to come to do mass and she’d feed them and so I’d heard other languages in that way. But when I was just turning seven, I was sent to residential school in Williams Lake, which is quite a long distance away from our homelands. And I was there for four years. During that time, I lost my capacity for my own language, as well as the English that I had learned in grade one. And I mentioned this because that was a significant part of my upbringing. But what I also want to say is that because I lived in that part of the village that was the oldest part, I lived surrounded by our elders, our elder people who most of them had never been to school. And so they were still really strong in our traditions and in our life ways. And I think that that made such an impact on me, because they’re the ones who helped me to regain my equilibrium and to regain my spirit that was broken during my time in residential school. And helped me to learn from that experience. I think much of that has informed what has happened to me in my life. I became an educator. I began my life with my mother thinking that I would join her in her profession, which was a healer. She was a healer for our community, and an amazing and incredible organizer. She prepared me in both areas, I think. So I wanted to go into medicine, but because I had challenges with mathematics, I couldn’t and my community of Mount Curries was the second community in Canada that took over the band controlled school and took over our school and after pressure from, at that time, it was called the National Indian brotherhood, now it’s called the Assembly of First Nations. There were leaders there who really advocated for schools. And because education was always the primary institution that asserted English identity, and attempted to destroy our Indigenous identity. And so we knew the power of education, we knew the power of education to take away language. And there’s a beautiful story that many people don’t know. But in the late 60s, there was a group of 12 year olds, who were ready to be bused to the neighboring white community to attend public school. And this group decided that they didn’t want to be bused to the neighboring white community, they wanted to stay in our community for school. And so they told their parents, if you want us to get an education, then you have to do something, you have to be able to keep us in the school here, because we’re not getting on that bus. And that motivated their parents to begin the journey to thinking about making a commitment to educating our own people, the kind of education that they needed, that our children needed. And we knew that they were not getting it in the public school. Because our people at that time were naturally segregated in the school. And they were put into modified programs that would prepare them for labor jobs, and would keep them out of universities. So there was no choice. There was an assumption that we couldn’t learn. And these 12 year olds decided they didn’t want that for themselves. And their mothers and fathers took up the challenge. And that was a preparation, I think, for the opportunity that came for First Nations communities across the country to take, you know, to take control over their schools again. When this was happening, I was just beginning my career and I’d already been to university for two years. So I was asked to teach, to be a part of this movement, which I took up. And then we started in 1975, we started a teacher education program, because we had two teachers in our community, my sister and another person, and we needed more trained teachers. But we didn’t want to go to a university to be trained as teachers. Because we knew that what we would learn would be how to colonize our own people, as educators. And we wanted to figure out how to be able to teach what we needed to teach without further colonizing our people. And so we wanted to design a teacher education program. And at the time, nobody wanted to work with us, you know, because they thought our ideas were so outlandish. And because what did we know, we’re native people. But there was a new president of a very new university, and she’s made a commitment to – at that time, it was called native education. And so we took her up on her commitment and made the proposal to her, to their university. And we were very fortunate because there was a dean of education that was willing. And they had just hired a young – at that time- woman to head what was then called multicultural education. So it was an opportune time. And they agreed to work with us. And we developed a teacher education program in my home community. We wanted, as part of that teacher education program, you know, a large part, as I said, was decolonization – even though we didn’t know that name then, that word then. But the other part of our program was our language, because the people had said: there is a change happening and we need to be able to keep our language alive. And the school needs to be a big part of that, because children are spending so much time in the school. And so we built into our teacher education program a way for us to be able to teach in two languages – English and Lil’wat. And also to be able to teach biculturally, to teach both cultures. Because the parents at that time also said that they wanted their children to know who they were, what their history is. But also they wanted their children to be able to make choices in the careers that they chose. We knew at that time that we needed to learn how to do things that were not part of our world. And so we needed to know that. So that was a big task that we were taking up. But we were very optimistic and energetic and we thought that we would be able to do that. And so that’s where I learned to become an educator, in my home community. And I think I probably began that role earlier in that I was working with young people and as is traditional in many Indigenous cultures, probably in all Indigenous cultures, the community members really support young people to carry out, you know, what is in their imagination and what is in their dreams. Many members of my community did for me, to be able to help me, to guide me and it led me to this role as an educator.

Safa 

Dr William’s personal journey of learning english and losing and then relearning her mother tongue of Lil’wat directly informed her understanding of the relationship between language, identity and power. 

Lorna  

I always remember this story about going to my first day of school in my home village. So this was, you know, I was six years old and going to grade one. And my brothers were bringing me to school, and I remember us running and skipping and they were teaching me. And so they taught me the word “yes”. And so I was practicing yes. And they taught me the word “no”. And I was practicing the word no. And then they said, there’s this word “maybe”. So they taught me maybe. But then one of my brothers stopped and he looked at me, and made me look at his face and he said, when the teacher does this with her face – and he squinted, he kind of opened his eyes wider and he said, when she does that, you say yes. Then he said, when she does this with her eyes, and kind of squinted, and he said, then you say no. Then he said, if you’re not sure, then just say maybe. And, you know, and I think that that was probably my big lesson in how language works. And, you know, in our culture, observation is really, really – it’s taught so that people observe and, like, it’s one of the abilities that we are really taught from a very young age, because our lives depend on our ability to observe. So that’s a relationship then, you know, that I learned between language and intent and how to read situations. And when I went to residential school, and I was not able to use my language, and I was attending school with children from many different Indigenous linguistic backgrounds. But we were taught mainly by French speaking teachers, because the nuns were French speaking, they weren’t English speaking. And then after residential school, I ended up in the hospital for four months, where I was surrounded by English speaking people and learned English. And so at a very young age, I came to understand the relationship between sounds, the sounds that we produce and that relationship with culture and with cultural ways. And then when I went back home, the people who were around me decided that ,you know, like they were going to help me relearn my language. They didn’t tell me this, because that’s not our way. They set it up so that I was led to wanting to learn. And I began the journey with my next door neighbor Wis, and I always tell this story because I used to go to the other end of the village to babysit my brother’s children. And Wis, my next door neighbor, was always babysitting her grandchildren. And so I got my mother to teach me, to teach me how to say, are you babysitting again Wis? And so I remember in my, in our kitchen, my mum was, I was asking my mom how to say it, to tell me how to say it, and so I was practicing. And so when I walked by her, I said to her:  Wa7 lhkacw ha hem nukún’ alk’wilh Wis? And so she responded to me, and then figured out what it was that I was doing. And so from that day, every day, as I would walk by, I would say this sentence, and she would respond, but she would respond like in different ways. And which then motivated me to learn how to add to what I started out with. And that’s how I began again to remember and to be able to use my own language. And then the other, you know, the other people in my village realized what I was doing and wanting to do. So they would support me and help me and encouraged me in just all kinds of ways to keep going. So relearning my language, and the process of relearning it really has helped me to understand when people are recovering and revitalizing their languages.

Safa 

As Dr WIliams mentioned earlier, the process of establishing Mount Currie’s band-controlled school involved designing a decolonial curriculum – which centered Indigenous practices and oral traditions.

Lorna  

At that time, Mount Currie was still – because of where we’re located, even though we’re not that far from Vancouver, it was difficult to get into our valley. And so that, in a sense, protected us from assimilation. It slowed it down anyway. And so we still practiced our oral traditions. And so in all of our gatherings, and at that time, we were still doing winter gatherings, getting together to tell stories and to sing and just spend time together. Because, you know, at that time, television hadn’t taken over yet. And so our oral culture was still a big part of our village life, our community life. So we built that into the life of the school. And so when the children came into the classrooms, we had an opportunity to have them sit and share together and to talk and to connect with one another. And we encouraged storytelling, we also built into the program many opportunities to be on the land, and to do the community activities, like the communal fishing and communal food gathering. And so those too are opportunities for storytelling and just getting together and to really promoting our identity, who we are, and our language and all of our cultural ways. That was kind of naturally built into the school program.

Safa

After some years of teaching in Mount Currie, Dr Williams transitioned to working in universities and later the Ministry of Education. 

Lorna  

I was always involved in universities, like throughout my whole career. We had our agreement with Simon Fraser at that time, the new kid on the block of academia, but in our relationship with that university, it all took place in our home community. I spent very little time at the university itself. I also did lots of work with UBC and was trying to create programs for Native students. I moved in 1984 to Vancouver to start my master’s degree. And then I was hired by the Vancouver School District to be their consultant for Indigenous education. And during those years, you know, I had quite an active relationship with the universities and colleges. I went to the United States to the University of Tennessee to do my doctorate, and then came back to British Columbia. And I was the Director of Indigenous Education for the Ministry of Education for the province for three years before I took up a position at the University of Victoria. I had always wanted to end my working career at a university full time. And I wanted to be in the Faculty of Education so that I could attempt to make changes in the way that teachers were prepared. Because at that time, teachers didn’t ever have to learn anything about the Indigenous peoples of Canada, unless it was in their interest. I knew that if the experience of our children in schools, whether it was in band schools or in public school, that it really depended on the knowledge of teachers. That was my reason for agreeing to apply to join the faculty at UVIC.

It wasn’t an easy path. Absolutely. By the time I joined the University of Victoria, it was 2004. And in this country, there had been the Royal Commission, that was tabled in1996. And even though Canada tried to suppress that information, just the fact that it happened, and that there was a conversation about the relationship of Iindigenous people and Canadians, you know, and that Royal Commission had a research arm that was so powerful. And I think that it really helped to educate people, and to bring some ideas into the conversation. So that by the time that I joined, there were things that had happened, you know, even though it may not have been complete, but you know, that we were now part of the constitutional discussions. And those were hard fought changes and shifts in our relationship with Canada. So I was entering on some strength to be able to do this, and the university itself, I realized I wanted to do something. And again, just like when we started the school in Mount Curries, the teacher education program, you know, I was coming to the University of Victoria at a very good time. The Dean of Education was somebody who understood really, in a deep way, colonization and decolonization. He’s somebody who had worked with Paulo Freire, he worked in Africa, in Tanzania. So he had a really good understanding. And we could talk about my aspirations of what it is that I wanted to do. And also, I think that the University of Victoria was always a place that was willing to engage and to go into areas that were new and based on I think, social justice. And so for example, the University of Victoria, the Linguistics Department, many of the people in the Linguistics Department, were working with Indigenous languages. And in the 70s, they started a program, you know, to support Indigenous communities with language and the language work. Those, you know, programs that they initiated were really, really helpful and made a big difference in our communities. You know, and they were doing the same with community development, public administration. And so there was some support there, there was some understanding, and that’s why I chose to go there, even though, you know, the university and Victoria itself are very white, conservative – but you can see that there were people who were really committed to change and to social justice. And so when I started there in 2004 with, you know, the responsibility of developing Indigenous education, there was a program that they were involved in that I had to administer on language, it was called the Developmental Standard Term Certificate. And that was to support Indigenous people in the communities on the North Island, preparing them to work with language in their communities and in the school system. And so there was a partnership between the Faculty of Education and the Linguistics Department for that program. And the university was also working in collaboration with the EN’OWKIN Centre in the Okanagan, to develop a certificate in Indigenous language revitalization. And so this would have been ,you know, the first effort looking at revitalization of a language and those kinds of courses would not be offered anywhere else, anywhere else in North America. Maybe in Hawaii, at that time, there was, but not here. And so I was going into a good place. But when you’re changing an institution, when you’re asking an institution to change its practice, and when you’re asking especially a university that really has evolved in society, global society, as a closed system, you know, that only the elite can enter, that’s a huge undertaking – to bring the knowledge systems, to bring certification to people who were always perceived by society to be less than – is a huge challenge, not just for the university that I was in, but across the country. So I was working with the DSTC and figuring out how to be able to do that. You know, that program had many shortcomings, but it was a really good stepping stool. It also gave me an opportunity to work with and to get to know the people on the island, because it was a new community to me. So in the first years it was learning, it was learning the university, learning the academic life, learning the relationship between the university and the varying Indigenous communities on the island. And we were talking about making changes with teacher education, because Budd Hall was the Dean of Education, and had this background, he and the Dean of UBC got together and they asked Joanne Archibald, who was at UBC and myself to co-chair a task force on Indigenous education, in the faculties of education. And so we met with educators at other universities, but also Indigenous educators, but also educators from our communities, and the leadership in our communities to discuss Indigenous education in the faculties of education. And we did some research on what universities at that time were doing and what was lacking. And we developed a report, worked with a Ministry of Advanced Education to include some Indigenous courses in the preparation of teachers. And we began that work at the University of Victoria, we created a course, designed a course. And then it became a requirement for all universities. And that was a challenge, you know, because some universities, you know, and people in our faculty felt that we were already including Indigenous knowledge in what we were teaching. But we wanted something that was much more formal and robust than inclusion at the whim of the instructor to include Indigenous knowledge. So I think that that made a huge difference. 

Safa 

In addition to designing a course on Indigenous Education – which became a mandatory requirement for all teacher education programs in the province of British Columbia, Dr Williams further worked to challenge hierarchies and Western approaches to teaching and learning in academia. 

Lorna

And then around that same time, I designed a course called Learning and Teaching in an Indigenous World, because I was trying to test whether our Indigenous ways of teaching and learning could have a space at a university. Because university teaching and learning are so controlled by time, by stratification, by credit and status. And so I proposed this course and it was accepted for us to offer it by the Dean of Education and by also at that time, the Director of Teacher Education and by the Provost, and so it had good support. I wanted to bring in Indigenous instructors to work alongside me because I wanted them to be able to teach in the traditional way. And I designed the course using teaching principles from my language, from my world. And I incorporated those and explained them. And the people who came in as Indigenous instructors in the courses, I encouraged them to find those same concepts and principles in their own languages. And to follow those and to live them and to practice them. And then I opened it up to all students, but I wanted the first set of students that would take the course, I wanted them to be from the teacher education students. But because of the way that teacher education is set up in the province, because this was going to be an undergrad course, you know in the earlier years, that was a huge challenge. Because students are encouraged to take courses from other faculties and from other areas before they commit into teacher education. Anyway, so there was that challenge. And then I wanted, in the course, I wanted to include undergraduate students, graduate students, both masters and PhDs, faculty, and community people, both Indigenous and non Indigenous, so people from the communities. And that was unusual. But in our traditional Indigenous ways, the natural way in which we teach and learn is in community. And it crosses age groups and people who have different, you know, who carry different knowledges. And we always include, you know, the older, more mature students with younger students, who work together, you know, because both benefit each other. And that was unusual. You know, it took the support, again, of people who were in positions of authority to be able to do this. You know, the Dean, the Head of the Teacher Education, the Provost, and others. So because I had graduate students and undergraduate students, you see, I had to have agreement with the Dean of the Graduate School and because their system of stratification, credentialing and grading are different from undergraduate and so – so there were lots of challenges. There were lots of opposition, sometimes quiet, but sometimes vocal against such a course. But there was also, I saw some real quiet support right from the very beginning, I had faculty, you know, because I invited faculty to come either as team members or as students, as learners. And I had faculty from across the university who participated and learned and one of the things that has really touched my heart is that even today, many of those faculty continue to use the principles, the Lil’wat principles of teaching and learning. I hear about the papers that they write, and the presentations they make, and the projects that they do that incorporate the use of these Indigenous principles of teaching and learning.

Safa  

Beyond the support she received from certain allies within the university and within Canada for her groundbreak work, Dr Williams was also in community with global Indigenous leaders, educators and decolonial scholars. 

Lorna  

When we started our teacher education program, we had this idea that we weren’t going to colonize our own people. And so we had to understand what that meant. And so at that time, we were reaching out worldwide to find out what other people were talking about and what they were saying. And so we were studying, we studied Paulo Freire’s work, we studied Fanon, and many others. You know, and as a small community, we were really fortunate in the people that we came to work with. And at that time, people were interested in finding new ways. And so, you know, we were finding out what other people were doing. So for example, I remember Julius Nyerere in Tanzania knew about our school, and sent some of his people to our school to learn what we were doing. And so it’s through those kinds of relationships that we came to know what people were doing in the world. I remember there was a group of educators from Cuba, who came to visit our school. And so we were learning what people were doing, because we were trying to understand what had happened to us, you know, why were our people considered to be less smart than others? Why were our people limited when they went to public school? And we knew that our people were very capable, but there was something that school was doing. And so we were searching. And so for example, one of the, I remember one day that I found these articles on my desk. At that time, I was the Director of Curriculum and Language for our school, for our community. And so I was reading these articles. And even though the language was so difficult, so challenging, this man was writing about what can happen to people when they close up because of trauma, or because of separation from  their language and culture – that it has direct effects on learning, and what those effects are, and what we can do about them. And so even though it was challenging for me, I realized I was reading about something, from other people’s experience, that really was relevant to our situation. And so I think that, you know, during those years, we were searching, we were searching to understand our situation. And when you search, and when you open up, we always believe that opportunities for learning do come. And so they did. There were people from – Indigenous people at that time, you know, in the 70s, 80s, 90s, that were trying to figure this out. Remember I was telling you about, at that time, the Head of the National Brotherhood that was called the AFN, he was a man named George Manual. And he spent a lot of time in our community and our community really supported his work. And he’s the one who opened up, I think, our opportunities to meet with Indigenous peoples around the world. And it’s through those conversations, and the academics like Freire and Fanon who I think really helped us to figure out where we needed to go. They were my educators, and this man who I was studying, his name was Reuven Feuerstein from Israel, who was working with children who had been affected by war and separation from their families and from their cultures. And so we were in search and learning.

Safa 

Earlier, Dr Williams mentioned the Lil’wat principles of teaching and learning. Here she describes two of those principles.   On a side note, Dr Feuerstein is the man that Dr Williams is pictured with on this week’s episode cover. 

Lorna  

There is a website that you can go to where I have those listed, but there are some concepts that are kind of like –  that form the foundation of a teaching and learning relationship that I had learned, you know, when I was growing up. One of them that I use is the concept of celhcelh.  It’s called celhcelh.  And I remember growing up that I would hear this term from the older people as they would watch young people. And so what they would comment on was how they observed young people who were able to act on their own to contribute to the community, you know, to contribute to whatever the community was doing. And so if there was a gathering, for example, they would notice when a young person would notice that there needed to be more wood. And so they would go, and they would go and fetch the wood, nobody told them. So this is really important – that people act to contribute and to be a part of, without being told, without being instructed or directed. That was an example of a person who had learned their own abilities, their own gifts. And they, you know, they came from a group of people who recognized those gifts and helped that person to hone those gifts. So in a sense, it’s this idea of being self directed in your own learning. And you need support to do this, you need encouragement to do this. But in our way, we don’t teach explicitly, we do it by guiding, do it by mentoring. And so I built that way of practice and teaching and learning into the course. And another concept that I teach early is called kamuxwkalha.  And kamuxwkalha is when people come together, to learn together, to work together, to do something together, to make decisions, they don’t do it immediately. Because you need to be able to create an energy flow amongst people, so that you’re learning together, or you’re figuring something out together. And you can’t do that if people are nervous or worried or afraid. You do it by finding the energy flow between, you know, amongst people, and so that you’re caring for each other and you’re open to one another. And because in the Indigenous world, people bring different ideas, different views, different experiences, and different ways of understanding the world. And different gifts, different strengths. And so you need to be able to be free to hear what those are. And so you need to create the space to be able to do this, and to pay attention to each other. And so for example, in one of the courses, in one of the early activities, the group was supposed to share and work together on mat making. And so there was materials that were brought in. But the students come in with this idea that I have to be first, you know, I have to get in there and get mine, and never mind anybody else. And so, of course, they can’t achieve, you know, everybody didn’t get all the materials they needed, you know, because there was so much commotion and stampeding for people to get what they needed. They destroyed the material and didn’t look after each other. And that was a really good learning opportunity for the class when they reflected on, you know, on what happened, what they did and what their actions produce. And so those are two of the examples, and you can hear more at that website.

Safa 

Throughout her career, both in academia and beyond, Dr William’s has always encouraged incorporating multiple knowledge systems. Her approach to teaching and learning has always been holistic, in collaboration with community, and incorporated multigenerational, multimedia and multidisciplinary strategies.  

Lorna  

All people have their way of learning and teaching so that a society can continue. And you know, what is evolved at what we now call university is one way, but all people, you know, have developed their ways. And so in this course, that’s what I was trying to demonstrate. So for example, the first course that students participated in was carving a poll that was going to sit in the Faculty of Education. I brought in a master carver, an elder at the time and a younger carver to work with me because I didn’t know how to carve a pole. And so in this course, or in these courses, we didn’t use books. We didn’t use articles. I asked people to leave their computers away, to learn from each other, to learn from stories, and to learn from doing – just as we would do in our communities. And oftentimes, and I guess that’s been one of the challenges, you know, that I’ve really had to think about at the university, because so many Indigenous people, not just First Nations people, but Indigenous people have learned to leave their knowledge, their whole knowledge banks behind – like, when they enter a university, they enter a school door, they shut off the knowledge that they have accrued through their cultural ways. And so what I was trying to ask people to do, is to bring those knowledge bags with them and to open them in the academic environment. And you know, that was a huge challenge. On the outside, you know in the work that we do away from the university, it’s the same thing. People have their knowledge systems, we need to be able to respect those, we need to be able to invite them, but not also to close down what we’ve had opportunities to learn in academic settings.

Safa  

In recent years, Dr William’s role has changed but her motivation to lead and advocate for more equitable knowledge systems is unwavering. 

Lorna  

Well, I think that I’m retired now, and working in the community. And so I feel like what has changed for me in this last little bit is my role. Although I still do lots of work, a lot of my work now is really supporting and mentoring the new generation of scholars. And so I do quite a lot of work with new faculties, people from the communities and young people who are just starting out, that’s where I spend a lot of my time these days. I think probably in today’s world, more than ever, we need to be able to look at the primary teachings in the Indigenous world, in the caring for all of life, caring for life with our water, with the air we breathe, with the plants and the animals, and one another. What we’ve learned in the Indigenous world, to sustain that life is going to be even more crucial in these coming years. And so, I encourage all young people to really look within the way that they’ve grown and lived, to learn those teachings and to bring them forward. We need it. We need it to care for each other. When we think about how people are hurting and hurting each other. We need to be able to again, learn to care for each other and be cared for each other, not just the humans but all living things.

Safa  

As Dr Williams beautifully articulates and reminds us, we all need to re examine how we enact care in all our relations.

To that end, the Knowledge Equity Lab invites you, our listeners, to join us in fundamentally reimagining knowledge systems and building healthier relationships and communities of care that promote and enact equity at all levels. 

 To learn more about the Lil’wat principles of learning and teaching, please visit the link provided in the show summary.

Safa

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