Reflection Questions

1. As you start to consider building an ecosystem of support for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students at your institution, consider your own ecosystem of support.
   • What does your ecosystem of support look like? This could be for support in any area of your life, including physical, mental, and emotional health, financial security, and professional and career development. Think of all your potential resources: employee plan benefits, trusted family or loved ones, counselling, medical or naturopath therapies, paid sick leave, mentorship and professional development, peer support, and support for any traumatic incidents, including sexualized violence.
2. How and when do you seek support from this ecosystem of support?
   • Do you seek support regularly or only during periods of stress and difficulty?
   • Do you seek different support for professional and personal needs?
   • When seeking emotional and mental health support, is there a focus on strength-based approaches and reciprocity rather than a deficit-based approach?
3. What have you learned from the ecosystem?
   • Remember that the premise of the ecosystem is to build a thriving and supportive space. Reflect on how your experience with the people, places, spaces, and opportunities have supported you and can contribute to and illuminate the support you provide to peers or other people.
4. As you consider your role in “growing the berry patch” to support Indigenous students at your institution, consider your own lived experiences, your existing knowledge, and actions you can take to contribute to safer learning spaces at your post-secondary institution.
   • What knowledge and skills can you draw on?
   • What knowledge and skills do you need to work on to grow this berry patch?
   • Then, ask yourself: “What’s next?”

Reflection Questions

Reflection Questions

1. Who has been a witness to your life stories and experiences? What has this meant to you?
2. If you are a survivor of sexualized violence, who has been there to receive your disclosure or been a witness to support you and your journey through it? How has having a witness affected you, your story, and any healing?
3. How have you been a witness to others’ experiences and disclosures?
4. What lessons have you learned from being a witness?
5. What hopes and fears do you have about being a witness and specifically receiving disclosures of sexualized violence?
6. What steps can you take to deepen your knowledge and skills around being a witness?

Reflection Questions

1. How can I engage with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students to learn more about their needs for programs and services without putting additional labour on them?
2. What are tangible ways that I can work with my post-secondary institution to offer services and programs that support students and survivors and also contribute to reconciliation with local Indigenous communities?
   • It may be helpful to create a map of the connections between the resources at your institution and in your community. Mapping out existing resources will help you consider how your institution can start to create an ecosystem of support. You could also co-create a map with Indigenous students, staff, and faculty that shows what resources they would like to see at their institution.
3. How can I work with my post-secondary institution to carry out this work? Keep in mind that this is not a rhetorical or theoretical question but a constant call to action and framing your professional and personal work in a manner that is inclusive of other perspectives.

Reflection Questions

1. Review the Embedding Project’s Becoming an agent of change [PDF]. This guide asks the question: Where and how do privileged insiders become agents of change, challenging institutions for broader societal benefit? The guide breaks down how the journey to become a change agent often unfolds for individuals. Where are you in this process? Are you:
   • Experiencing uneasiness?
   • Questioning current systems?
   • Acknowledging complicity?
   • Reframing your role?[caption id="attachment_41" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Becoming an Agent of Change [Image description][/caption]
2. What steps are you ready to take to either “disrupt” or “transform” the systems in which you work? How can you support and provide safe spaces for people working to disrupt and transform how we support Indigenous students?
3. In this video, Jewell describes the importance of building spaces where First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students can rebuild connections (to themselves, family, place, and community) and receive support.
   • What steps can you take to begin developing these spaces and the programs and services that will sustain them?
   • How can you include the voices and experiences of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit as you do this work?

Reflection Questions

1. What assumptions and beliefs (also known as unconscious biases) do you have about gender identity and roles? How do these affect the support provided to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students, particularly those who are Two-Spirit?
2. What steps can you take to broaden your perspective and deepen your knowledge of all 2SLGBTQIA+ people?
3. How can you include the perspectives of 2SLGBTQIA+ people across the ecosystem? How might these intersectional identities have differing needs or levels of impact as survivors of sexualized violence?
4. Read the Indigenous Gender Based Analysis Plus (IGBA+) Toolkit. Use the seven guiding principles (included below) to analyze the berry patch work that has been, is, and will be done at your institution.
   • Note: The Toolkit includes a table on page 36 that lists each of the seven principles and questions related to each principle. Consider working through the principles and related questions with colleagues and students, then share your findings with others in your sphere of influence in your professional and personal life to advance the discussions and work about IGBA+ at your institution and community.

Reflection Questions

1. Are there any on-the-land educational programs at your institution or in the community?
   • How can you begin developing a relationship with people involved in this type of learning?
   • Are there ways you can support and help grow these opportunities?
2. What spaces, places, and experiences in or around your post-secondary institution can you engage in to deepen your own relationship with the territory?
   • Consider organizing regular meetings, class lectures, or walk-and-talk peer support sessions with intentional time spent finding your place within nature.
3. What artisan skills are practised at local Indigenous communities in your region?
   • Can you develop relationships with practitioners and offer them paid opportunities to teach at your institution?
   • Can you support First Nations, Métis, and Inuit artists by purchasing and displaying their work at your institution and at home?
   • If you're an instructor, how can you empower learners to present alternative forms of assessments that showcase their personal growth and expression? For example, beadwork, weaving, writing a play or poem, painting, or collage could all be used as alternate forms of assessment.

Reflection Questions

1. Information, resources, and training on trauma- and violence-informed care are often available at post-secondary institutions as well as through community organizations.
   • Where can you learn more about trauma- and violence-informed care?
   • Once you’ve identified resources, what plan can you create to start and then deepen your learning?
2. As professionals, we carry a metaphorical medicine basket.
   • What medicines will you bring with you? (Consider attributes such as patience, curiosity, and humility.)
   • What medicines do you wish to add? (Consider things such as deeper knowledge of local culture or protocols, opportunities to meaningfully engage in self-learning, etc.).
3. You are encouraged to research and learn more about the impacts of intergenerational trauma.
   • Consider if people such as Elders should be involved in supporting students who experience intergenerational trauma?
4. First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities have their own unique knowledge and healing practices.
   • What practices are currently available at your institution or in the community (smudging, visiting a Sweat Lodge, etc.).
   • If you are an instructor, are there opportunities to incorporate these practices into your learning spaces in a way that becomes sustainable for your learning ecosystems?
   • How can you work with students and community partners to identify other practices that can be incorporated into the ecosystem?

Reflection Questions

1. Read the blog post Speaking for, speaking beside: Thoughts about consensual allyship.
   • Reflect on ways an ally ends up speaking “for and over” the voices of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit survivors of sexualized violence.
   • What specific steps can you take to ensure you are practising consensual allyship?
2. Download and read the Indigenous Ally Toolkit [PDF] created by the Montreal Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy Network. Then answer the question: How can I be a good ally? Focus on the here and now: your specific institution and community, the projects you are involved in, and the work you are doing.
3. Have you started thinking about how you will remunerate work by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit community members who contribute to the ecosystem? Does your institution already have a system in place, or will you need to create one?

Reflection Questions

1. Do you see the resilience of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students, including survivors of sexualized violence, recognized at your institution?
2. Reflect on your own knowledge and learning about First Nations, Métis, and Inuit.
   • Have you been focused on the (very deep) trauma to the exclusion of their resilience and thriving?
   • How can you balance your journey so it better reflects the strength and beauty of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students?
   • How can you highlight the successes of not just the Indigenous learners at your institution, but also the successes of the First Nations on whose land the institution has been built?
3. Are the history, joy, persistence, and dignity of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities reflected in the lived environment of your institution? How can you contribute to a culture where this happens in a deep and long-term way?
4. How can you work with local communities and your institution’s administrators to create spaces that better reflect the history, traditions, and culture of the First Nations on whose land the institution has been built?

Reflection Questions

1. Consider how your institution responds to calls for change. Does your institution foster a culture that’s open to change and new ideas? Or is the institutional culture more resistant to change?
2. Download the Wise Practices [PDF] handout for guidance on supporting First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities in meaningful ways.
3. How can you become an agent of regeneration and sustainability while respecting the cycles of growth and change?
4. Tending and sustaining the berry patch is the work of many people over time.
   • How can you provide support (including monetary support) to sustain the work being done by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities in building this ecosystem.
   • What practices can you use to ground yourself, remain open to the voices of the Indigenous people in the community, and work respectfully alongside them to build this ecosystem?