Practicum: Indigenous Research Project

Hello, everyone.

My name is Sydney Thomas and I chose to do

my practicum with the 0 cc, or the more commonly

known as the Outdoor Council of Canada based on indigenous

research. Okay, I started out with a plan and worked

with Francois Langer, who is currently the executive director of

the Outdoor Council Canada, and developed a research plan and

regular times in which I would meet with him, which

varied anywhere from once a week.

Sometimes it was bi weekly, depending on if help or

support was needed.

The point I divided up my hours so that I

would have a plan into research, creating general recommendations and

creating a plan for the document that I wanted to

create, which was going to be the summarized version of

my research, which I'm going to get a little more

into in a little bit.

And I also left some wiggle room for my research

project in case I need some extra time for some

things or in case something went wrong.

So what was my original plan?

So the end goal was to develop 2 to 4

general recommendations for the Outdoor Council of Canada and I

plan on having an outline?

Um, that was general.

So it could be further developed by somebody else if

they wanted to, but just a general outline with the

focus on promoting inclusive outdoor programming from an indigenous perspective.

So as I kept going along, I realized that I

did not have the authority to give recommendations.

52 hours is not a lot of time and was

definitely not enough time for me to be educated enough

on some of the challenges that indigenous peoples face, um,

to be able to give recommendations.

So as I discussed this with Franz, I changed my

plan to more towards compiling research and explaining the concepts

and, uh, context of these concepts related to indigenous issues

and how they related to the outdoor sector.

Uh, moving on, Um, why did I choose this?

So I could have chosen a lot of different things.

When I had my first meeting with Franz, we discussed,

um, a bunch of things and he kept asking me

kind of like the 20 questions kind of thing where

I was fully narrowed down to what I want, and

what I realized was how interested I was in um,

indigenous cultures and ways of life in Canada.

Um, so I was interested in that area and also

being Canadian, I wondered.

Okay, there's a lot of, um, things that we as

Canadians struggle with but indigenous peoples.

A lot of them struggle with the same issues on

a whole new level, and yet they should have the

same rights and freedoms as us.

So, um, that's kind of complicated.

Definitely something I really wanted to dig into.

And, of course, indigenous ways of life and ways of

knowing very, very relevant to the outdoor sector, especially in

terms of interpretation and how we're interacting as guides in

often on indigenous lands are in and around their territories.

So having that knowledge is really important, Um, my learning

outcomes, uh, there were so many.

So I don't want to bore you with the details.

So I just listed a few here, uh, to learn

about effective and efficient research methods.

I also wanted to learn how I could do self

directed research from a self discipline point of view and

improve upon academic writing, which is, uh, constant constant goal

with university studies.

So the 0 cc I already kind of mentioned these

guys here but just wanted to go into a little

more detail here.

So the 0 cc.

Is the Outdoor Council of Canada, with the purpose of

being a quoted here.

An umbrella organization, the 0 cc, basically attempts to address

structural barriers that hinder, um, the success of the outdoor

sector and programs that are ran in this area.

They do have membership, and the membership is 0 cc.

Members, um, can pay $25 to be a member.

Um, annually.

Uh, there's also a membership available for businesses or organizations

who want to join as well.

That membership is a little bit more expensive, though, so

members who join, what do they get?

Um, they get a community of outdoor practitioners.

They get access to that community as well as access

to multiple other things like resources and documents, uh, templates,

all related to outdoor issues and outdoor programming, as well

as pro deals and access to employment opportunities that are

not released to the public.

The mandate or the goal of the 0 cc.

Is basically so that the true value of outdoor activity

can be reached the quote here.

I'll just quickly kind of speaks to this.

When our work will be done, outdoor programs and their

staff will be recognized for their true value.

The unfair risk perception associated with outdoor activity will be

eliminated. Provincial and federal governments will invest to develop the

sector and other unnecessary barriers, such as unreasonable insurance premiums

will be removed.

So moving on to my next part here, which is

just about goals, of course, any practicum, you're going to

develop some goals and things that matter to you personally.

I wanted to improve my communication skills, both written and

verbal, which is critical and extremely important to any research

project. I also wanted to acquire a deeper understanding of

additional issues and learn how to create a professional document

I'd never created.

Anything for that was going to be put out to

the public, a whole new level of responsibility and standards

that need to be adhered to, uh, in terms of

how does this all relate to our degree to health

and physical education?

Um, I kind of want to talk about here about

the 2015 framework for recreation in Canada, which has five

big goals.

Um, two goals here relate directly to what I chose

to do with my practicum, which is inclusion and access

and connecting people to nature.

In terms of myself, I wanted to broaden my perspectives

and, uh, cultural beliefs and engage in unconditional, positive regard,

which is really important and to broaden my understanding.

Like I said, indigenous history and the issues and challenges

that these people have faced is not all that different

to modern day indigenous challenges and examining the past and

going over and over.

And how can we change that?

It's, um, research is so much more often about the

researcher than it is about what you're finding, uh, kind

of back to what I was talking about.

Going to go about the two goals in the recreation

framework in Canada.

Uh, inclusion and access and connecting people with nature.

This project contributes to these two goals in providing indigenous

perspective and non indigenous perspective.

Um, here I have access to business opportunities, access to

other cultures through indigenous tourism.

These things are oh really important and really valuable to

our sector and connecting people with nature.

Um, spirituality and land stewardship are the two points I

have here because these are two things that are really

important. And land stewardship, especially, is about so much more

than just saving the land for the sake of saving

it. But that's a whole other topic, so I won't

go too far into that in terms of the future.

Um, for myself, I want to become an educated outdoor

professional and educated outdoor professionals.

We work often in indigenous territories like I previously mentioned.

And, uh, being more educated on these topics can help

me be more aware of initiatives like increasing indigenisation programmes

at post secondary institutions.

A great way to do this is through indigenous knowledge

centers, which are both critical to quality and decolonization and

provide a recreation environment where all people feel welcome.

That is, of course, back to the inclusion and access

thing. Yeah, in terms of Well, okay, what did I

find? Uh, there's a lot of things I found, um,

one thing that was really interesting that, um, Franz told

me in one of our meetings, was that okay?

The research I've done is a mile wide and an

inch deep instead of an inch wide and a mile

deep and this is very true.

The more I started to dig into indigenous culture and

indigenous challenges in Canada, I realized just how many micro

issues there are within that.

And it's I could have spent this whole research project

on just lack of access to clean water on reserves

like there's just so many issues that these people face.

And I barely even scratched the surface and it really

blew my mind.

I also learned that indigenous issues while they our indigenous

issues and I use the word issues here.

And it's not so much issues as more challenges they

face in their day to day lives, and these challenges

in order for them to overcome its It's not necessarily

one person or one group of people's responsibility.

It's the responsibility of indigenous Canadians and a non indigenous

Canadians, which is the spirit of reconciliation.

The idea that we can mend these broken relationships built

on broken promises from the past.

Some of the major themes I noticed I'm not gonna

go too into detail on all these, but these were

the main ones, which is Whites want land, and it's

always seemed to be about land.

Whatever the issues are, you can usually chalk it down

to that.

Um, in terms of history, there's been a lot of

alienation from both sides and a lack of willingness to

cooperate, which also goes hand in hand with sovereignty.

Here I have mostly lack of, and what has caused

a lot of these issues and challenges is different philosophies,

different cultural beliefs, different cultural values.

And they often clashed, resulting in broken promises and economic

comparatives in terms of being able to provide for their

family when there may not be employment opportunities where they

are, which is a whole another topic removal kind of

goes along with alienation.

This idea that not everything you have is you have

easy access to, and removal complicates that even further removal

from, um, your culture access to your medicinal herbs.

Um, this is all things that indigenous people have gone

through in the past.

Few securities in Canada with the arrival of settlers, which

healing from history.

I've kind of gone into this with all the other

points I previously listed, and I remember wondering, Okay, this

is great and all, But how does it relate to

the Outdoor Council of Canada Well, let me tell you

many micro industries within the GCC they represent various, let's

say, niche sectors.

I have a couple listed here indigenous tourism, adventure based

tourism, outdoor summer and winter sports, etcetera.

We could go on forever.

They do their work often in indigenous territories or near

them. So being respectful and, um, in digitizing the work

that you do is really important to, um both your

customers people you're around.

And it's generally just the right thing to do.

Um, in terms of interpretation, um, most job descriptions that

fall under the Outdoor Council of Canada kind of umbrella

that I talked about earlier interpretation and interpretive storytelling, especially

in guiding jobs, is huge and really important.

So integrating indigenous storytelling can further develop and add even

more value to the interpretation and storytelling that is already

going on in these areas and in terms of knowing

more about indigenous cultures and indigenous livelihoods.

By doing so, the 0 cc.

Um can create recommendations for the outdoor sector, but they

can't do this without research to back it up.

Mhm. In terms of going forward, indigenous tourism needs to

be continued to be supported from Canadians and all levels

of government, and we need to educate ourselves.

Common frustration voiced by non indigenous scholars is lack of

knowledge, training or confidence to incorporate this knowledge.

So educating yourself is really important.

The 94 calls to action raise awareness about this.

If you're interested in this, I encourage you to look

more about it.

You can see here some of the categories that this

falls under, and that's what I have.

Here are my references for both my images and my

text. Thanks very much for watching guys, and I hope

you have a great rest of your day.

Practicum: Indigenous Research Project

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