Review of “Working Effectively with Indigenous Peoples®” Self-Guided Training
Last week I completed the self-guided training version of Working Effectively with Indigenous Peoples® offered by the Indigenous Relations Academy; a very small financial investment for a giant learning experience.
The course is offered to non-Indigenous people who want to understand the history of Indigenous peoples, learn more about terminology and respectful engagement, and genuinely work towards Truth & Reconciliation within the country known as Canada.
My motivation to take this course was having the opportunity to work on three projects within multiple First Nations that helped me realize that the onus was on me to learn how I can be genuine, aware, and respectful in our collaborations.
Offered by Bob Joseph, the suite of videos takes the learner through critical topics that contextualize the closed-minded categorizations and beliefs that led colonizers to dehumanize First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people, thus leading to assimilation and cultural genocide.
By featuring Bob Joseph’s father Chief Robert Joseph’s accounts of residential schools, the learner understands why these assimilation practices, along with the Sixties Scoop led to negative multi-generational long-term impacts. As Robert states, “the experience lasts forever”. I’ll never forget hearing him talk about going to sleep within the residential school where he “heard the sniffles of other boys crying” and the feelings of “abandonment and loneliness” so many children had to feel.
In this course, Bob Joseph does a great job of contextualizing Indigenous Relations within what it means to be “Canadian”, pointing to the foundational legislation of Section 35 (1) of the Constitution Act states: “The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed”, which are also reflected in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). He helps the learner logically connect to how this legislation relates to all the ways we approach effectively working with Indigenous peoples and constitutionally protected rights.
The sections that were most useful to me focused on the history of Indigenous Relations, how we understand and use terminology, practical strategies to integrate into your engagement approach, values-based practices, and the Indigenous Relations Academy’s RESPECT model to help industry and government assess risk level in terms of potential to bring harm to Indigenous groups and lands.
I appreciated learning about where non-Indigenous people need to become aware of how and why things may be done in ways we don’t understand in Indigenous communities regarding timing or respecting sacred lands and practices in the name of cultural survival.
While I have a history degree, I have come to believe that what I thought I knew about the Indigenous peoples of Canada was very much informed by the colonizer and settler’s perspective. It was my responsibility to update my perspective and knowledge on the Indigenous peoples of Canada to embrace my role within Truth & Reconciliation.
I feel now that I can continue engaging with Indigenous communities with a more informed perspective while also recognizing my learning journey will never end.
The Indigenous Relations Academy offers a whole suite of diverse courses on Indigenous Relations to help bridge the gap between many nations that serves the common interests of all. They also offer in-person and online training alongside the self-guided courses, which I hope to attend in the future.
I highly recommend any non-Indigenous person to jump on the opportunity to learn from the Indigenous Relations Academy. I feel because of it, I am a better professional, a better Canadian, and a better human. Thank you to Bob and Robert Joseph for creating a change within me that I hope will create further impact through my work.
Anne-Marie E. Fischer, BA (Hons), M.Ed., blends her passion for the written word with her vocation to create a better world through effective communications, education, and Community Based Research (CBR).
Words for Impact is the culmination of Anne-Marie’s passions, talents, training, experience, and education. This unique company offers grant and proposal writing, research studies, research reports, impact reports, content development, brand development, communications consulting, biography/autobiography (ghost)writing, education and training materials, curriculum development, podcast script writing, journalistic articles, press releases, developmental editing, in-line editing, and fact-checking.
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Learn more about Words for Impact’s services here and past Impact Projects that Anne-Marie has been involved in here. Dedicated to helping you find the right words for the things that matter.