#SenecaProud

Pat Perdue  00:01

Hey, I'm Pat Perdue, and I'd like to welcome you to Season Two of the Seneca Proud podcast. This is a co-production between my company Ycastr and Seneca College in Toronto. Seneca College is a really great school. And what we uncovered in season one of Seneca Proud is that there's a Seneca spirit. And that comes from the really great people that Seneca attracts. This season we'll be featuring some of those students, staff as well as faculty to not only learn what they do here, but also a little bit about who they are. So, join me on this journey of discovery, as we meet some of the people who make Seneca College, such a special place to teach, work and study. 

Welcome to Seneca Proud Season Two, where I get to introduce you to some of Seneca College's amazing family of staff, faculty and students. So, if you haven't already, subscribe, and download and let's go meet some of the super inspiring folks here at Seneca. I'm Pat Perdue, and I'm glad you're here today. 

Welcome to another episode of the Seneca Proud podcast. I'm Pat Perdue. This is a really special episode because our guest Peggy Pitawanakwat is the co-ordinator at First Peoples at Seneca Resource Centre. And she has held that role since 2011. Let me tell you about Peggy whom you will soon meet. Peggy has over 30 years of experience working in Indigenous communities in various areas such as education, justice and social services. She believes in creating a supportive community welcoming Indigenous people to a place of learning where activity and growth nourish personal wellbeing from Indigenous culture and tradition. Peggy is a former Chief of the Wiikwemkoong unceded First Nation on Manitoulin Island. In fact, she was the first ever female Chief. She is Anishinaabe from the Odawa Potawatomi and Ojibwe nations; she is from the Thunderbird clan. In this episode of Seneca Proud, Peggy takes us on a guided tour of the first pupils at Seneca’s resource centre known as Odeyto at Seneca Newnham campus. Odeyto which is an Anishinaabeg word meaning the good journey is on its surface an amazing place without any context at all. It's incredible. As you will discover, it is warm and comfortable and filled with symbols and references that are all designed to create a safe familiar surrounding for students who are Indigenous. And that's just on the surface without any context. But of course, there is always a context. Before Peggy and I recorded our conversation, we chatted on the phone briefly. And I asked if there was anything I should read in advance of our interview. And she recommended a book called Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga. I read it. It brilliantly describes the very real and unbelievably tragic backdrop against which this wonderful place Odeyto exists. Take it out of context, Odeyto is incredible. Taken in the context in which it lives Odeyto and the work Peggy and everyone there does, including and perhaps especially the Indigenous students, it's pretty miraculous. I'm so grateful to Peggy for taking us on this wonderful tour. And I'm honored to be able to share it with you now. 

Our guest today, Peggy Pitawanakwat, guiding us on a tour of Odeyto.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  03:32

When people arrive in Odeyto, this is generally where we start, right at the front door, we welcome you right here. And when we go through our orientation to the space we explain, Odeyto is a word that reflects the good journey. And then we talk about the land acknowledgement. Because when we go from territory to territory, we want people to know which territory that they're in, and what are the historical references to the land.  

 

Pat Perdue   03:55

I wanted to ask you about the land acknowledgement. Is that something that we want to do in this conversation? 

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  04:01

Absolutely. So that's the first thing that we do when we start our tours. We acknowledge that Seneca College is on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, and it's this particular First Nation that signed Treaty 13, and that's the Toronto purchase which ceded and opened the land for immigrants to come to the Toronto area. When we go to the other campuses that are further north, King campus in Peterborough. It's a different treaty. That's the Williams Treaties. So, depending on where we are, it's important to find out, what that land acknowledgement is from territory to territory. So always important to do. The other thing that we do when we start here is we acknowledge that because we're in Mississauga, so the New Credit First Nation territory, and they're part of the Nishnawbe Confederacy, we follow that particular custom within our practices here. We also honor the Haudenosaunee practices because of our namesake Seneca College, so we want to honor that as well. If we look at the drums that are hanging in front of the window, you see the seven sacred gifts on them,

 

Pat Perdue  05:01

These are the drums that hang in front of the window and the outside hold that people pass every day.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  05:07

And the drums turn because they're on material that allows them to spin. And they're turning as students are walking by. And if for some reason we miss an Indigenous student, and they're coming on campus, and they're not aware that this is where we are, then they can relate to that cultural object and understand immediately this is Indigenous space. 

The first one is the first sacred medicine. And the first sacred teaching is truth. We're using the Indigenous language, the Anishinaabeg language, and the second sacred gift, which is also referred to as the seven grandfathers and so on. Well, some folks will also say the seven grandmothers. For the second one is love, a good one. The next one is humility, and then the next one is bravery, and then honesty, and the next one is wisdom and respect. So those are all of our seven sacred gifts. And some people will also say they're like Ten Commandments. 

 

Pat Perdue  06:15

Are those values and teachings that you would draw from in decision making and behaviors throughout the course of a day?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  06:21

Absolutely. They're incorporated into our principles of practice. They're incorporated into our strategic planning. They're very important during the core of the way that we view moving forward in our planning and services. In this cabinet here we have some of our cultural objects. And these cultural objects also hold some of our traditional arts; like the bark and quill and sweet grass boxes. Those are traditional arts that have been around for a very long time. And it's important for us to also talk about before the beads came, we used the porcupine quills so this bracelet here was part of a traditional regalia. And that particular bracelet is all natural porcupine quills dyed in berries and roots to give them color. And so that looks like beautiful shades but they're not beads. They're porcupine quills. And then of course the birch bark work; the teepees, the canoes, and then some of the soapstone carvings as well as the woodcarvings, and the Tamarack birds. Tamarack birds are specific to the Cree Nation in the far North. That was a gift to us. And then there's a beaver medicine bag. And up here we've got the sash representing the Metis.

 

Pat Perdue  07:32

This is the very top shelf that we're looking at?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  07:34

Absolutely. And this is one of our student’s. And that particular design is not necessarily the most common design that you identify when you look at Metis sashes. It's for this particular one here and the other cabinet that's red. This one is a family pattern for one of our Metis students that are attending studies here at Seneca. He didn't gift but he wanted it to be present while he's taking his studies in academia here. When there are ceremonies or special events, he wants to be able to pull it and have it present so he can put it on and honor his people. 

And this particular head dress reflects the nation that we want identified, which is the Seneca Nation relating back to our namesake. So if there were two feathers up, then that would be Mohawk. If there were two feathers up and the other feather pointing in another direction it would be another nation. All those different nations have reflections of identifying which nation it is when they're at gatherings.  

 

Pat Perdue  08:39

Got it. And the contents of these, one you identified as being the property of a student and he keeps it here to have a namesake from home. The sources of the remaining items here, I guess, come from a variety of different sources. Is that correct?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  08:53

Absolutely. Some of them have been gifted to us by faculty. And the faculty member, provided these two pieces here. And these are faces that were beaded on to moosehide. And this came from Manitoba. These particular pieces were Museum, grade pieces. And these are medicine bags; this is a Sioux Nation medicine bag. And that's another pattern and in those wood carvings. So many, many things that come from different areas.

 

Pat Perdue  09:29

It's beautiful. Thank you.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  09:31

Yeah, thank you. I think over here, we've got spiritual objects. We've got the two rattles, we've got the buffalo horn, and we've got bladder from the deer and these two rattles. There are two instruments that were given in the beginning of time, and of course, the drum and the rattles, and there's many, many songs that can be played with these instruments. These here are instruments that are part of my personal collection. This deer antler was used to bring in the grandfathers into the sweat lodge. The hot rocks would be put, we call them grandfathers, would be placed on the antler and then we would bring them into the lodge. And we would do the ceremony and the prayers there.

 

Pat Perdue  10:15

And these are items that that have been or are used in daily practice.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  10:20

Absolutely. The other thing that the hot rocks are used for is to create and make maple syrup. The hot rocks would be placed on to the antler and then taken into a vat and then the sap would be boiled down. And then that's how maple syrup would be created. And then of course, the ulu is for the Inuit, we wanted to have that carving tool to represent something from the Inuit nation as well. And the purpose of the ulu is to cut their meat and also tender hides to remove the fur from the hide. All these materials and the sacred objects that are in here are reflective of the three Indigenous groups. You have your First Nations, you have your Metis, and you have your Inuit. And all together they're part of the Indigenous groups. And then in the space, we want to have modern art. We've got two pieces in this space that are. This is Steven Paul Judd, he's Choctaw Nation from the States and he infuses historical reference to contemporary modern art. So, this is a skateboard; it's a Space Invaders game. And it's a take on Columbus's arrival with the warriors at the bottom with their bows and arrows shooting down the animated ships, and he's titled this Invaders, High Score 1491. We all know as Indigenous people, we found him on our shores, he did not find us, we found him. Over here we've got Joi Arcand. She's a Canadian Indigenous Cree female artist. She has her Cree syllabics, their language. And that's what she uses for her art. This is a beautiful neon sign that she's created on two sliders, large syllabics. They reflect the translation. don't be ashamed. And it's illuminated with neon lighting. Although there's that historical past that's difficult for Indigenous people in North America, we need to look at a bright future. And of course, this is our computer lab, we tripled our computer lab station for our students. First Nations, Metis and Inuit students will use this computer lab station. As well, when we have students that are Indigenous from First Nations communities, they will also use this lab. So yesterday we had a group from Pelican Falls, that’s Seneca’s community from the Far North, and they came down to visit Seneca as a prospect postsecondary institution because they were all high school students.

 

Pat Perdue   12:47

And Peggy I'm looking at a bank of 12. How busy does this lab get?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat   12:51

This lab gets very busy when all our students are here. And we also have lap top stations there, as well as plugins on our table.

 

Pat Perdue   12:59

And what I love about what I'm looking at, I'm looking at the labs and the computer stuff. And it looks like a typical resource facility for students with the exception of all of the beautiful art and the images that we're surrounded by to remind us of where we are.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat   13:13

Absolutely. One of the things that the students get personal support from is our spiritual corner here. This is where our altar is. And our four sacred medicines are here, which are all grown in our medicine garden here at Seneca College here at Newnham Campus. So just outside the Western doorway that's where all of these medicines grow; our sage, which we had a magnificent harvest this year, we planted them last year, because we just moved to the space. It's only been our first anniversary here at our new location. And we're like seven times the size. 

 

Pat Perdue   13:48

And I do want to talk about what that change represents, like sure it's a different facility and it's a lot bigger, what are the impacts of that?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  13:55

Well, I think one of the things is it creates opportunities for more of our students to gather together, they can actually sit comfortably in a space to have time to communicate together, plan for activities, look at supports around culture and tradition, have workshops and have speakers come in. We've had film festivals in this space as well where we've invited mainstream and international students to join us. It creates that opportunity to bring the greater College community in, but also the safety for our students to have a space and also for faculty to come in and have the opportunity to engage and find ways that they can infuse their curriculum with Indigenous content. But the medicines are so important because for some of our students, this is the first thing that they'll do to start their day, or if they're going off from residence and catching the shuttle to another campus location. This is a touch point for them to get their day started or at the end of the day. We have all those four medicines available and the burning that took place here by someone earlier. The next person that comes will take that burning of the medicine and they'll put it into this pot. And I'm just moving that in from our abalone shell. And I'm lovingly putting it into the other ceramic pot and then someone can now use this for a fresh smudge. We call this mage and that's when we burn our medicines to cleanse our space, cleanse our spirit or energy and offer some prayers and get centered for the day.

 

Pat Perdue  15:24

You mentioned the sage, what other medicines are we looking at?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  15:27

The sage is the one that's most commonly burnt. But we also have the sweet grass, that's also   common for some people. That's their preference. And then we have the cedar here and we have the tobacco, and the tobacco we grew in our garden. It's not recreational tobacco, because we consider that abusing tobacco, if it's used for recreational smoking. This is used for prayer. And we've got the   tobacco ties, and sometimes we'll put sage in the ties, and they're on top of the buffalo. These ones here are not used, this one here is used. That means someone's offered this for something that they want some help or support for. Or it might be for an offering of thanksgiving, something good happened. And the buffalo was a gift by Professor Jesse Thistle to our Elder Blu Waters. And she presented this as a gift to our space. The teaching behind the buffalo is that the buffalo can carry heavy, heavy burdens. And sometimes we have students that have a combination of faiths. We had a student that is very spiritual in initial Nava Indigenous practices, but also has a parent who has connections to the Tibetan faith. She has her prayer wheel here as well on the altar. We don't exclude students who have strong faith in other areas, but of course, the Indigenous faith is not faith. But the Indigenous spirituality is very important for us in this space. And that's our primary support to the all of our students.

 

Pat Perdue  16:55

And I love how fully integrated this space is. The full person is represented here.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  17:01

Absolutely, absolutely. It's very important to be inclusive, and a little bit teaching. We'll have a teaching here on the smudges, we'll have a teaching here on this, the Spirit Rock. And then we have the Indigenous Education Protocol agreement that President Agnew signed. And this is a promissory to advance Indigenous education. And of course, it was a testament to that, yes. So that was signed in 2015.

 

Pat Perdue  17:25

You mentioned that you had a delegation come. That was yesterday. Is that correct?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  17:29

Pelican Falls, yeah, secondary students looking for where they're going to be venturing next in advancing their education to postsecondary.

 

Pat Perdue  17:36

And how did that go? Like, what did they think of it?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  17:39

We had a fabulous group; we had a group of 24. And they were comfortable, they were calm, they were open to asking questions, but by their body language, and by the questions that they asked, and the way that we were able to engage, we could tell that they were very comfortable. That made us feel so proud, because when we see all of our kids, having each other for support, sometimes when they come into their next level of education, they're the only Indigenous students in their class. I's a very different experience. And we want them to know there's a safe place for them to go in that institution. And there's a place where they can gather and be reflective of other people that represent who they are. We have our workshops that are going on, posted on posters in this area. We have posters that have some of the artwork infused in the College community to represent the Indigenous people as well as our partnerships. These are some student-led initiatives. We'll have a small honorarium for our students, because we want them to have leadership opportunities. I may help to facilitate the workshop sessions with them, but I want them promoted. And I want them to feel that they are leading that initiative, and they are. It's an opportunity to profile them and have other students as well watch them as mentors as peer supports and role models. And also preserving some of our culture and our traditions. Kaylee is doing a workshop tomorrow on beaded earrings. And Caitlin is doing a dreamcatcher workshop in the first week in December, and then Elder Blu does the full moon teachings once a month in our space for our students and Seneca students in general as well as faculty and staff. And then we have our annual student consultation meeting coming up at the end of the month and our holiday celebration.

 

Pat Perdue  19:32

I wanted to ask specifically with some of these they're so interesting. Are they specifically targeted toward participation by the Indigenous student population? Or can the wider student population also participate?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  19:46

It's really important for us to have our traditional arts and our culture presented to our students in the way that they can engage and feel comfortable. Our workshops are open for students to come and go. Some we will offer over a couple of hours, so they can come and go in between classes. That's really important for us to do for our Indigenous students. And because we have a limited space, and our primary service is to deliver services to our Indigenous students, that's our priority. But there's other events, like last week, we had scarf making, we made 60 scarves, and they were with international and domestic students and Indigenous students. Oh, we're going to offer that as one of our giveaways this winter, around Christmas time to one of our Indigenous agencies in the community, who also is there to support us as one of our housing authorities, who has a large building with smaller rooms. We're gonna  make shoebox gifts for them as well.

 

Pat Perdue  20:42

And I'm curious about the relationship of Odayto and other Indigenous agencies in the city in the region.  Share with me a little bit about that. 

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  20:53

It’s very, very important for us to establish a network of connections to our Indigenous community. In Toronto, we're very fortunate, we are very rich with Indigenous services. But when our students come to Toronto, they want to connect with Indigenous services. Although we have a medical centre on campus, not all our students will access that. They want to see an Indigenous Healer, they want to talk to an elder. And of course, we have Elder Blu on campus, but some of them want specific healing. And the elders at Nishinaabe Health can support us with that. So that's something that we will do at my visit. When we first started in 2011, I made it a point to go into the Indigenous community, introduce myself and our services here, First Peoples at Seneca College, making sure that they understand how our Indigenous population needs to access services. We set up a protocol, set up informal protocols with all of them, so our students can access their service. And then the giveaway I just mentioned a little earlier, that's our way of giving back. We can't just take take take, that's an imbalance, we have to give back. It's really important for the general public to look at reconciliation. Even in our core values, we understand even if we take something and it's their plan for us, we still have to find a way to give back. Our annual giveaway supports that opportunity for us to give back. Here's our grandfather drum. This is our large drum because as I mentioned earlier, we're in Anishinaabe territory, Anishinaabe Confederacy practices are what we honor in this space, because the Mississaugas of the Credit, First Nation, are part of that Confederacy. The teaching behind this grandfather drum is that this was a gift from the Creator to men. And as a gift to men, only the men will play this big drum. And those drum sticks and the drum are only picked up by the men. We won't handle this drum, only the men will in the space. But the other half of that teaching is that this was a gift to men, so men will always remember to be kind to women; to always remember that every time that drumstick hits that drum, that heartbeat is the heartbeat of a nation that's reflected by the women, as the women who bear the nation, they nurture the nation. There's always that balance. I love the circular aspect of that story. And that could change from nation to nation. If you go to another part of Turtle Island, they may have a different teaching, and there may be women at the pig job. You always have to check to see what the customs of that particular territory is.

 

Pat Perdue  23:25

And we're looking at this drum. This is not just for show, this is something that's used here.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  23:31

This grandfather came down not very long ago, when we had our big opening for to CITE building, The Centre for Innovation and Technology and Entrepreneurship, our key building. And when he came down, community members came from the Indigenous community to come and drum with Mark Solomon on the big drum. Because Mark is a big part of this space, our Dean of Student Services, and the Indigenous education. We are very proud that we have this drum in our space. And it's so important. And he's housed in a star blanket so we always have a home for them as well. In this space here that we're walking into, we're leaving the old part of the college that had always existed, and we reconfigured it to what we just explained. In addition to two offices, my office as the Co-ordinator, and then Karen White's, our Education Counselor's office. And we'll also be having an Indigenous Professor joining us at some point in the near future.

When we come into this larger space, and it looks like a long Lodge, this is the design support for the features here by Indigenous designers, with Touro architects as well as Gao Hastings. What Brian Porter and Matt Hickey did was they incorporated elements into this space along with our Indigenous Studies Education Council here at Seneca College and input from us staff as well with Mark’s leadership. And we made sure that this space encompassed aspects of our culture and our tradition. So, in the beams, people call them, but we call them the ribs,

 

Pat Perdue  25:18

“The ribs”, oh, I'm thinking of a canoe. 

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  25:21

Yeah, absolutely. It's when you look at the curvature at the top of the building, the concept is a canoe inverted, resting. And the concept for that is that students are traveling from all over Turtle Island to come here to get their academia. Their canoe is resting. Once they fill up that canoe with their academia, they're ready to paddle off.

 

Pat Perdue  25:41

I love it. And then we're again back to the Odeyto metaphor.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  25:45

Absolutely. So these ribs, there's 28 of them. And when you look at these ribs, that represents one complete cycle. At the end of 28 days, then you have a full moon. And then at the end of another 28 days, you have another full moon. And then there's 13 moons in our lunar calendar. So that's reflected in the space.  We have the east and the west, two doorways, and many lodges will have two doorways. Some of our sacred lodges in the Anishinaabe Confederacy have the two doorways. They also have a lodge that this concept enfolds as well. In the east, the door’s painted red. In the west, the door’s painted red. So when the students come in, and they see that red, they know we're honoring murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, that's our color for that, for that honoring.

 

Pat Perdue  26:38

And people might mistakenly assume that it's a Seneca red, but it's not.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  26:41

No, it's not very definitely, it's to honor our women and girls, and there isn't one student that doesn't come through that door that isn't affected by that. We're all impacted, if not directly, by a sister, a child, an aunt, a grandparent, a mother, then it's our neighbor, or it's our cousin, or it's a community member or a member of our nation. We're all touched by that whole impact. It's nice to be able to honor that. And we do ceremonies and we do practices in the space as well to honor that. On the eastern side, we have a white pine just outside. And that white pine was planted by our Anishinaabe when we had our opening.  And the white pine is a custom of the Anishinaabe Nation or Confederacy. I'm not sure if you've ever heard that saying, “bury the hatchet”? That's where that comes from. At a time of disagreements, and when the Nations were having challenges with each other and decided to come to a place of peace, they opened the earth and they buried their weapons. And then they planted a white pine, Peace Tree. And that's a symbol of peace. You know, we wanted that in our space as well.  Over here we have a large wooden table. And this large wooden table is circular, which is very important for us because no one is above or below, we're all equal. And together, we have the strength of each other, if we're doing things together equally. This roundtable is where we do our planning. It's where we strategize opportunities to bring into the space to advance Indigenous education. It's a place where our students can do planning for their activities, where we have our workshops, where Elder does her teachings, and where our faculty come in for school classes. Student classes, and our Foundation for teaching and learning, will come in as well. It's a very important space. And then when we have an Indigenous film screening, we'll fold these two tables together, and then they'll go flat against the wall. The space opens wide up and we'll set up the chairs theater style. And we'll invite all of the mainstream students in as well as our international students and domestic. And it's an opportunity for all of our students to come together as we need to invite people into the space as well. When we move over just a little bit, we've got the four chairs over here. And these four chairs are our comfy chairs. Our Elder is Cree, and Cree, Grandmother is Kokom. So, this is our Kokom corner. And Kokom does all of her visiting one on one or in a small group in comfy chairs, nice big comfy chairs, beautiful leather chairs. They're all each reflective of the Medicine Wheel colors. So in the East is the yellow, and the South is the red and the West is the black and in the North is the white. Layers and layers and layers of teachings, whether it's where the babies are born in the East, the adolescence and childhood in the South, adulthood in the West, and elderhood in the North. And when elders come to the end of their life, they become childlike again. And it's up to us to take care of them becomes the centre of the circle continues.

 

Pat Perdue  29:55

And this is filled with symbolism. You made reference to the red of the doors and people automatically understand that, to what extent is the symbolism, for example of these colors? To what extent is that readily understood or is that more of a subtle, subtle touch?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  30:13

For our Indigenous students, they understand the symbology. As soon as they walk in, they automatically relate to the symbolisms. And they understand that this is a place honoring their culture and their traditions and their customs. But for some of our students who have maybe been adopted, and they're raised in the city, they've seen things through social media or through maybe film, but they don't quite connect to that information. This is an opportunity for them to be in a safe place to ask the questions they need to ask, reconnect, or connect for the first time in some cases, and have them embrace their identity. And we've had students say that this place has had an opportunity to complete them, has had an opportunity to engage with who they are and the deepest part of their soul at a spirit to be able to find understanding on certain things that they couldn't relate to in other places in their life. And this brought a place of solace and brought a place of comfort. And then that strengthened their focus and their ability to achieve academically as well.

 

Pat Perdue  31:19

I can't imagine the profound feeling that that must be.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  31:24

Yeah, that's great, for sure. And then we've got a full-service kitchen that we're really happy that our administration and senior executive support. It's fabulous, with two ovens. Great for Christmas time when you're putting all those birds in. And then sometimes in the Fall time when our students are coming back and they've got moose meat, or food that they're bringing back to share. One of our students has a goose from the far north that'll be joining the turkeys for holiday celebration in a couple of weeks, so they will all fit in there. 

 

Pat Perdue  32:00

All of our listeners are salivating right now.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  32:04

It's really nice to be able to share traditional recipes. We had wild rice this time last year, and one of our alumni who's a caterer came back and she managed to put a really nice spread together for us. We had just a big treat. Just a big treat. Over here in the far corner is the last of our medicine harvest with regards to the sage. The sage did really well in our garden. We have our medicine garden that we started. I started this garden a couple of years ago, but it's really expanded, now that we're in a space here. So out the western door, we have three Cedar trees for past present and future and we use those trees for Cedar tea or if you want to make a Cedar salve if you have skin irritants but mostly for vitamin C from Cedar tea, and people are starting a cold or if they've something with their respiratory. We'll get them to go and take a little bit of tobacco, put it at the bottom base of the tree and then that's the give and take there again, Offering and take someone who makes the tea here. And then we've got the sage that goes all the way around the perimeter of the garden that we've harvested and the sage has gone up to like five feet tall in some places like that sage that's right beside you there all bundled up. We haven't had a chance to harvest that but we've harvested already three times this week. That's a big production to harvest the sage. And then we've got the sweet grass just beside the cedar and the tobacco. Those are all perennial but the tobacco is annual. Every year we take the tobacco seeds to our partner just across the way over here to Seneca urban farmer Ripa Farms. 

 

Pat Perdue  33:46

Yes, as we look at it sort of lit up as the as the sun is setting.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  33:51

All the fish are in the bottom in the storage unit. And this is sustainable Seneca initiative. And the fish are in the bottom and they're tilapia fish. They're kind of like a mild white fish. Very tasty. 

 

Pat Perdue  34:03

They are very tasty.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  34:04

And we had harvest two weeks ago; last week, sorry. And the President hosts that harvest and it's a wonderful opportunity for Indigenous students to participate in. Two years now they've had a chance to go and they have a nice formal setup. It's a really nice opportunity for them to figure out all those forks, what they're all used for. They come back with all their stories, which is great. 

On the storage unit, we'll take the water that they're going to drain out and we'll put that into the garden. Our cedar trees are starting to die at the bottom because our soil quality isn't the best in this area. We're trying to nurture the soil quality backup. So that really helped these trees to bring come back to life as well as our pine on the east side. We were really lucky to get that support from our urban farmer.

And then the other thing we did in our medicine garden was we planted all the pollinators. We wanted to look at, beautifying the garden, but beautifying it in a meaningful way that was sustainable. We are very conscious that the bees are having challenges and we want to create the optimum space to support that health and wellbeing for them as well. And so, we planted all pollinators in our gardens, we have the akinesia, we had the sunflowers, we had the cosmos, we had bee balm, lavender, and we put a little bit of herbs in there as well. And that's what we use for our cooking. It's very purposeful, and very constructive in terms of getting students to engage in having an opportunity to have some land-based learning. And then we even had our babies come over from the daycare, our little kids came over, they helped us in the garden. They helped us with some of the planting, and we let them take complete control over the strawberries. They planted the strawberries all along the windows that come from between D and E building. They just love because they take total claim over our strawberries. If any bit of paper that flies through the air and lands on them, they're coming by and it’s getting picked up.I t's really nice. 

And then we have that one little green space in the centre. And the grass is there. And that's the opportunity for us to sit down with the kids and talk about legends and stories like Nana Bush, and the seven sacred gifts or grandfathers. So those types of things can take place there where we can give teachings on the land. It's really a nice little space that we have carved out here. And when we first moved into space, it wasn't as beautified as it is now. It takes partnerships, it takes collaboration. Our neighbors on this side and our neighbors on that side, we have to work together. And we have the bee colony on this side. And we have the fish farm on the side. Yeah, so we're really fortunate. 

 

Pat Perdue  36:53

And when folks come here, I'm thinking of perhaps Indigenous families and young people who may be listening to this right now in other parts of Ontario. Like you mentioned, the group that came here yesterday, what are some of the common questions or common conversations that you have that you could use as an opportunity to reach out to them? What might you want to say?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  37:13

I think when we look at institutions, we look at them as you know, sterile and not alive in a way a community is alive. But our space here at all that. First Peoples at Seneca works really hard to build that community. But we can't build it in isolation, we need to build it with a greater College community as well. And when you do it in collaboration and partnerships, and you support each other, you get the opportunity to see that community come to life. When it comes to that point, then people in the greater community when they come in, when we hosted ‘Open Doors’ this summer, we had over 700 folks one day. Lots of families came in and understood that they could come back for any of our ceremonies, which they do. 

When we had the water blessing at King campus, which is over 30 kilometers north of the Newnham campus, they came to participate in that ceremony because it's the only time that they get a chance to give thanksgiving back to the water. And the other new ceremony that we introduced was Sisters In Spirit. We would always go downtown to participate and engage with our students and this year, we decided we're going to bring that to campus. This year, we had a red dress that was donated from a non-Indigenous person in the community. And we were looking for a red dress that we could use to profile that particular event. We wanted to have a red dress, and we would have chords on it that we could hang a single earring representing that the other earring is lost and that these are women, our lost, our girls are lost. And to signify that and there that they’re not forgotten, and that we sent prayers off to them. And we did the honoring through that event. And we had the visuals we had poems that the students read and messages of testimonies by families that were directly affected, because you have to understand that this is so significant and so real, and know that it's happening to our own. We did it in the western doorway here because the western doorway is the entrance to the spirit world. So not all of our girls are on to the spirit world. Some are still here. From time to time we hear some really heart felt stories of women or girls who are found, but we know that many, many are not found and are in the spirit world. We try to honor both of those considerations in that particular event. Seneca honors Sisters In Spirit Day and the first time we did that here was on October 14. And then we have the waning time, we just had it two weeks ago. And the waning time is like other cultures of the world, our time in the year to honor our loved ones who are in the spirit world. And we do that by preparing food that our loved ones like to eat or drink, except we don't have alcohol in our space. because we have so many of our helpers and our medicines here. And we prepared all the favorite foods, and then you got to speak to that food and prepare a spirit plate, a little bit of everything that people have prepared and brought forward on that day. And that stays out from sunrise to sunset, and then at sunset, you offer that spirit plate back to the spirit world.

 

Pat Perdue  40:40

And is this a product of the change this new space created last year, or are these initiatives and events that have been always part of this facility?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  40:52

Well, some of these practices have been practices that we've introduced over the last number of years, except when we had our former space, they would have to take turns coming into because it was so much smaller and too small for all of us. Now, we fit 65 People here at our last event. We can all be together. We can do those kinds of things in our new space. And we're so elated that we have this opportunity to really provide meaningful engagement with our students.

 

Pat Perdue  41:25

And there's been so much change in the past, and you've I imagine have seen a lot of change, but perhaps accelerated change in the last few years. Where do you see things going in the future?

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  41:37

I think our students are going to be more successful, I think they're going to have more reflections of themselves through their alumni, I think we're going to be able to profile that connection. And we've already been doing that. We have one of our engineering students that wants to go to Ireland for part of his program. And we have a student who recently graduated and went to Ireland on a prior experience with her program. And we've connected the two of them. She's Alumni now. So, he's getting ready to consider that. We can do those kinds of things now, because we have that history to draw from. That community connection that I talked about building, our alumni still are engaged and still participate at our events and our activities. Sometimes they come back as employees. We have a current employee, Emma Greenfield, and she's doing some curriculum work in early childhood, to support our institution here. And we're really lucky to be able to offer that contract so she can come back and now she's an employee.

 

Pat Perdue  42:40

That's amazing. Peggy, on that, thank you so much for this wonderful tour of Odayto. It's been a very, very special experience for me, and I'm sure it's been very special for our listeners as well. Thank you so much.

 

Peggy Pitawanakwat  42:55

Thank you, Pat, for taking the time to come. 

 

Pat Perdue  43:02

That was great. And that was our tour of Seneca College’s. Odayto Indigenous Student Resource Centre. Such a truly wonderful place. And of course, Peggy Pitawanakwat is incredible. For me as an outsider, I felt as though I not only learned a lot about a Odayto specifically, but also perhaps began a journey of understanding the complex layers of symbology and of context that shapes the experience of the Indigenous student community at Seneca College. 

And if I can speak directly to that community now, to say I have profound respect for you, would be a huge understatement. And I've got some links in the show notes to tell you about. One link is to the artist Steven Paul Judd who we talked about earlier in the show, definitely check him out. His take on pop culture is always thought provoking and often really, really funny. I've also got links to the artist Joi Arcand, who we also talked about how she not only makes wonderful art, but also makes some really great jewelry, which is for sale. I've got links to both her artist’s websites and her jewelry website in the show notes. Finally, I mentioned a book called Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga, I've got a link to that in the show notes as well. If you haven't read it, read it. Or if you're like me you like the audio kind. I actually purchased mine from audible.ca and it was brilliantly narrated by Michaela Washburn. I kind of think this needs to be required reading or listening in every Canadian school. 

Thank you very much Peggy for your wonderful tour, and your amazing insights. And thank you all for listening. Until next time, stay proud Seneca!

 

LINKS

Seven Fallen Feathers

Steven Paul Judd

Joi Arcand