Blog

The world is a challenging and rapidly changing place right now and all indications suggest that it will remain as such for quite some time. Government leaders are adapting policies and creating new ones to address the impacts imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations, corporations, small and large businesses have all been thrown the same curve ball and adapting where possible to continue serving their clients and customers. It’s as though we are all “boom cats” running on logs trying to avoid slipping under. 

Amidst all the dire news about the trajectory of global and local COVID-19 case numbers and mortality, hoarding of necessities, fights in grocery stores it was a joy to receive a question from a follower asking how they could help remote or vulnerable Indigenous communities. 

We are in uncharted waters these days as countries around the world scramble to respond to the COVIE-19 pandemic. While we are all at risk and all have a role in helping minimize the spread of this virus, some are at heightened risk, due to age, underlying health, geographic locations, or a combination of all those factors. 

As providers of a suite of Indigenous relations training, we frequently are asked if we offer “blanket exercises.” The short answer is “no, we don’t.”

The longer answer is we don’t provide blanket exercises because the courses we develop and deliver provide the knowledge, skills, and attitude or competency-based training that changes attitudes and behaviours and equips non-Indigenous Canadians to have respectful relationships with Indigenous Peoples.  

In case you wondered what I (Bob Joseph) do for a living, here is a 45 minute video of my "Intercultural Presentation" delivered at the Vancouver Board of Trade - Aboriginal Opportunities Forum 2014.  The forum is now called the Indigenous Opportunities Forum.

The theme of the forum, in 2014, was Building Sustainable Aboriginal Relations and the video contains a number of insights designed to help people work effectively with Aboriginal Peoples.  It is a small taste of what you will experience in our online training or open to the public Training Weeks.   

Guest author:
April A. Strickland

Looking for an adventure five years ago, I travelled to a small Inuit community in Nunavut. I quickly discovered teaching Inuit children is a rich, rewarding, and learner-filled experience incomparable to past education I have experienced. Seeing first-hand the positive impact the Inuit culture had on the school was eye-opening. As I returned from my first field trip of berry picking, eating and making bannock on the land as a “Southern Outsider”, I had the privilege of witnessing Inuit students learning in a culturally respectful way.

A widely held belief about Indigenous Peoples is that they were primitive cultures living in primitive conditions at the time of the arrival of Christopher Columbus (1492). 

In an earlier article we took a look at why companies should protect their Aboriginal relations strategy in a recession. In this article we offer a suggestion on how individuals can recession proof their careers.

Indigenous Peoples believe they have held title to their traditional lands or territories from the moment their Creators placed them on that land (time immemorial) and bestowed them with the responsibility to care for it……...forever. But then European explorers arrived, planted flags, and laid claim to all they saw. How was that possible?

As an Indigenous relations trainer, I strive to maintain a positive attitude that we are making progress on reconciliation. There are setbacks but I firmly believe we must stay the course and build on what we’ve accomplished so far, especially since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report and calls to action in 2015, many of which included calls for skills-based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights, and anti-racism.