CRE - Indigenous Youth Advocacy Week 2022 - Final Report

Indigenous Youth Advocacy Week Final Wrap-Up Report July 2022

Centre for Indigenous Policy and Research, CRE Megan Lewis, Director of Indigenous Policy and Research megan@canadianroots.ca

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Table of Contents Section 1: Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 3 1.1 Who Is CRE.................................................................................................................................... 3 CRE’s Guiding Principles ............................................................................................................... 3 Impact of Budget 2019 .................................................................................................................. 3 1.2 Program Overview ....................................................................................................................... 4 Section 2: Demographic Data ................................................................................................................... 5 2.1 Participant Demographic Summary .......................................................................................... 5 2.2 MP and Senator Demographics ................................................................................................. 7 Section 3: Summary of Meetings ............................................................................................................. 7 3.1 Overview of Meetings .................................................................................................................. 7 Theme 1: Receptiveness & Follow-up.......................................................................................... 8 Theme 2: Interconnectedness of Issues ..................................................................................... 8 Theme 3: Defensiveness & Uncertainty ...................................................................................... 9 3.2 Closing Engagement ................................................................................................................... 9 Capacity-Building Sessions........................................................................................................... 9 Advocacy Week Meetings ........................................................................................................... 10 Support and Logistics .................................................................................................................. 11 Section 4: Impacts & Next Steps ............................................................................................................ 11 Graphic Recording – IYAW Closing Engagement ................................................................................ 13 Appendix A – Participating MPs and Senators .................................................................................... 14

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Section 1: Introduction 1.1 Who Is CRE Founded in 2008, Canadian Roots Exchange is a national Indigenous youth-led non-profit and registered charity ((832296602RR0001). We envision a future where Indigenous youth are empowered and connected as dynamic leaders in vibrant and thriving communities. We collaborate with communities to provide programs, grants and opportunities that are grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing and being and designed to strengthen and amplify the voices of Indigenous youth.

In the 2019 federal budget, the Government of Canada named CRE as a leading Indigenous Youth organization to take up TRC Call to Action 66 for reconciliation and committed federal funding for a pilot project of $15.2 million over three years (2019/2020 - 2022/2023). Budget 2019 set the goal of the pilot project as ensuring that “the voices of First Nations, Inuit and Métis are heard and to support Indigenous youth reconciliation initiatives.” Funding supports the establishment of a distinctions-based national network of Indigenous youth, helps ensure that Government of Canada policies and programs are informed by the diverse voices of Indigenous youth, and provides support to community events, gatherings for Indigenous youth and reconciliation-focused community-based Indigenous youth activities, etc. Since that time CRE has grown exponentially with offices in Toronto and Ottawa, ON and over 50 staff members (80% self-identify as Indigenous) working remotely from coast to coast.

CRE’s Guiding Principles Centering Indigenous youth perspectives, we have 7 deeply held principles that guide us in our work and in the way in which we relate to each other: • • • • • • •

Reciprocity Innovation Accountability Reclamation Advocacy Resurgence Solidarity

Impact of Budget 2019 Budget 2019 set the goal of the pilot project as ensuring that “the voices of First Nations, Inuit and Métis are heard and to support Indigenous youth reconciliation initiatives.” Funding will support the establishment of a distinctions-based national network of Indigenous youth, help ensure that Government of Canada policies and programs are informed by the diverse voices of Indigenous youth, and provide support to community events, gatherings for Indigenous youth and reconciliation-focused community-based Indigenous youth activities. Here are just some of the impacts Budget 2019 had between April 2019- March 2022, and across 23 unique programs: • • •

1,769 Primary Participants 29,003 Program Beneficiaries Over 34,000 Digital Engagements

CRE In Fall 2020, CRE had a total national economic impact of $13.7 million

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1.2 Program Overview In late 2021, CRE and Deloitte connected to explore the opportunity of collaborating on CREs first Indigenous Youth Advocacy Week. With full support from Deloitte, the Advocacy Week moved forward and launched in April 2022.

The Advocacy Week sought to provide Indigenous youth with opportunities to connect with government leaders and policymakers to share their ideas, visions, and priorities for federal policies on a range of key issues, to be identified by the youth selected to participate. Further, the program aimed to place emphasis that these opportunities must continue to exist moving forward.

During recruitment, Indigenous youth were asked to identify what they would discuss with a senator or parliamentarian if they had the opportunity to sit down with one. In reviewing the applications, we identified the four most common issues raised, which we broadly grouped into these categories: •

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Mental Health and Wellness, including: o The suicide crisis and the need for accessible, effective, culturally appropriate, and culturally safe prevention programs; o Improving access to supports and services in northern, remote, rural areas; o Incorporating principles of disability justice into mental health services and policy; o Addressing the impacts of systemic racism on youth mental health; o Destigmatizing mental health; o Developing mental health supports that address intergenerational trauma & healing; o Improving access to culturally appropriate and culturally safe addictions services as integral to mental health and wellness.

Water, Land, and Energy, including: o Land Back / stewardship / protection; o Connection between pollution, climate change, and physical / mental health; o Waste disposal; o Funding for water infrastructure; and o Food sovereignty Access to Culturally Safe, Quality Education, including: o education quality for Indigenous people across provinces and on-reserve o better education for Canadians about Indigenous history; o improving Indigenous high school success rates; o removing racism from the education system and Indigenizing it; o including mental health supports in educational institutions; o supports for students with disabilities; o developing youth leadership skills; and o improving PSSP and making university more affordable.

Indigenous Sovereignty and Cultural Revitalization, including: o Land Back; o Restoring stolen resources; 4

o o o o o o

Lack of representation in Parliament; Understanding treaties and treaty rights; Reforming on-Reserve elections; Reforming and/or abolishing the Indian Act; Reparations for the harms of colonialism and genocide; and Reparations for the harms of Residential and Indian Day School system

During participant recruitment, CRE staff began reaching out to Ministers, MPs, and Senators working in the areas of Indigenous and youth policy, reconciliation, Indigenous sovereignty, mental health, education, and environment. Efforts were also made to ensure we reached out to each political party and had a wide diversity of regional, provincial, and territorial representation.

In the weeks leading up to the meetings, participants were required to attend capacity-building sessions on effective advocacy, communicating with government representatives, confidence, and leadership. Participants were also equipped with an Advocacy Week Package that provided technical policy information relating to the four policy areas listed above, and MPs and Senators were provided with the same policy package for an idea of what the youth may want to discuss.

Between May 16 and June 2, CRE scheduled 17 meetings with 16 MPs and Senators. Each meeting was 30-60 minutes long and included 3-4 Indigenous youth, as well as one CRE staff as support.

Section 2: Demographic Data 2.1 Participant Demographic Summary In total, 28 Indigenous youth were accepted to the program, while 24 completed it. The majority of participants identified as First Nations, while 3.7% identified as both First Nations and Inuit, 3.7% identified as both First Nations and Métis, 3.7% identified as Inuit solely, and 3.7% identified as Métis solely.

Age ranges of the participants were relatively evenly divided, with nearly half of participants falling between the ages of 22-25. The majority of participants reported living in an urban setting, while 11% were living in rural areas, 11.1% were living on-reserve, and 7.4% were living in remote areas. Across the provinces and territories, the three most common participant locations were Ontario (22%) Saskatchewan (18.5%), and Alberta (11.1%). A full provincial and territorial breakdown can be found in the graph below.

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IYAW saw a range of diverse genders represented among participants, with many participants identifying as Two-Spirit or non-binary or indicating that they identified as a combination of nonbinary, agender, and/or Two-Spirit.

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In terms of recruitment gaps, CRE continues to build its network to better reach Inuit and Métis youth and ensure their full inclusion in our programs. We also continue to work to ensure we connect with more participants outside of Ontario, and outside of urban contexts.

2.2 MP and Senator Demographics Between May 16 and June 2, CRE scheduled 17 meetings with 3 Ministers, 3 Parliamentary Secretaries, 5 Members of Parliament (noncabinet), and 5 Senators. In terms of regional representation, the politicians who agreed to meet were most commonly from Manitoba, British Columbia, or Ontario.

Most of the MPs who agreed to meet were members of the Liberal Party of Canada, while 27% were New Democrats. While we also reached out to members of the Conservative, Green, and Bloc Québécois, none were available to meet, and some did not respond.

Section 3: Summary of Meetings 3.1 Overview of Meetings With recruitment complete and a schedule created based on the availabilities of MPs and Senators, CRE Staff revisited the participant applications and grouped Indigenous youth with MPs and Senators based primarily on the interests identified in their applications. Each youth was invited to attend at least two meetings, and a full list of all MPs and Senators who agreed to participate can be found in Appendix A. Meetings were intentionally structured loosely as a way to encourage natural conversation, as well as to highlight the importance and benefits of having more frequent and informal meetings as a means to build meaningful, long-term relationships with Indigenous youth. While there was no set agenda, MPs and Senators were equipped with a brief summary document providing 7

some technical policy information related to the four most-identified policy areas of interest to the applicants. At least one CRE staff person was present at each meeting to take notes and facilitate if needed. The informal structure meant that youth were free to express their advocacy priorities in a self-guided and unrestricted way, allowing for candid and open communication with the politicians. Below, we have identified some conversational themes or patterns that emerged throughout the meetings with the MPs and Senators.

Theme 1: Receptiveness & Follow-up The majority of the MPs and Senators who participated expressed gratitude for being reached out to and exhibited a clear understanding of the importance of the program, and of ensuring they had clear lines of communication with Indigenous youth to inform their work. MPs and Senators who practiced attentive listening and were receptive and open to talking about anything the youth raised created a calm environment that allowed the youth to open up and be more talkative and candid.

Most MPs and Senators were open and frank that the House of Commons, Senate, and general government processes have a lot of room for improvement in terms of being truly responsive to Indigenous peoples' needs.

This view was shared by the program participants, and this mutual understanding and alignment also helped facilitate dialogue.

Relatedly, a few MPs and Senators made sure the youth knew that they could connect by email afterwards, invited them to participate in more processes on the Hill, and/or committed to specific tangible post-meeting actions.

This fostered a positive feeling in the youth about the event as well as a sense of mutual respect between the youth and the MP/Senator in question.

Theme 2: Interconnectedness of Issues Some of the most fruitful meetings were ones where the MPs and Senators had a clear understanding that their decisions and mandates impact Indigenous youth, regardless of what specific portfolio or area of expertise they happen to hold. This created space for creative and truly intersectional conversations about a complex web of policy issues. During the meetings this took many forms, including: -

Understanding that availability of mental health supports impacts levels of homelessness / housing precarity; Connecting outdated funding models to the phenomenon of Indigenous women in rural and remote areas having to commute to urban areas to give birth or for pre and postnatal care, and further connecting that phenomenon to the disempowerment of traditional midwifery programs;

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Understanding that racism in the health care system disproportionately impacts Indigenous youth and elderly community members; Understanding that language transmission is directly tied to conversations about Indigenous resiliency and sovereignty.

Similarly, MPs and Senators who were able to clearly articulate how the issues brought by the youth directly or indirectly connect to their own work in different ways created a more welcoming virtual environment.

Theme 3: Defensiveness & Uncertainty Youth were quick to identify those MPs and Senators who spent more time listing actions that had already been taken by the government rather than listening and specifically responding to the youth’s questions and concerns. Some MPs and Senators also seemed unsure of why they were selected to meet, and this also made dialogue more strained between them and the youth.

Pushing responsibility for different policy areas (such as healthcare) to other jurisdictions (such as provinces/territories and municipalities) also came up at some meetings – while jurisdictions play a significant role in policy, the federal government always holds responsibility when it comes to enforcing rights, funding models, setting standards, and hold extra constitutional responsibility when it comes to ensuring Indigenous peoples’ rights are upheld and respected, no matter where they live.

The participants were most excited and pleased with their meetings when the MPs and Senators were warm, receptive, attentive, and demonstrated that they had listened intently when the youth were speaking. In keeping with this, youth were pleased when MPs and Senators committed to some kind of follow-up or invited the youth to contact them individually to continue their advocacy conversation.

Participants were most disappointed by the meetings that felt rushed, were cut short, and/or when MPs spent the limited time they had together talking defensively about what the government was already doing in relation to reconciliation.

3.2 Closing Engagement At the end of the program, CRE hosted a closing engagement so that the youth could debrief and share their feelings about how the capacity-building sessions and event unfolded, what impacted them the most, and what we can improve on for next time. The session was attended by all the participants and included graphic recording by Tiaré Jung, which can be found below.

Capacity-Building Sessions Youth expressed that the capacity-building sessions were effective and useful, especially where they centered storytelling, which let them feel connected to the facilitators. Overall, they felt positively about both the range of topics covered within the capacity-building sessions, and the format in which the speakers relayed their knowledge. Post-program evaluation indicated that on average, nearly 90% of all capacity-building session participants were at least adequately

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satisfied with all sessions, and at least 65% of participants felt at least somewhat prepared for their meetings following the sessions.

For future iterations of IYAW, youth suggested having mock MP / Senator meetings would be useful, as a way to help them imagine exactly what being in conversation with the MPs and Senators would be like. Many also suggested creating more structured time for groups of youth to meet in advance of the MP/Senator meetings.

Advocacy Week Meetings When asked why being provided with opportunities to engage with MPs and Senators to do advocacy was important, the youth's answers were both diverse and coherent. Participants expressed the importance of intimately learning the systems they wish to reform and were acutely aware of the lack of Indigenous voices in both houses of government, and particularly the lack of Indigenous youth voices. They also discussed the power that lies in connecting with other Indigenous youth and building kinship across nations, coasts, and disciplines.

Youth were very attuned to their responsibilities as caregivers to future generations and tied their interest in and passion for advocacy to their roles as future ancestors. Doing this work in a collective with other Indigenous youth helped them feel connected, empowered, and inspired by each other, across a range of experiences and backgrounds.

When asked what advice they would give to MPs, Senators, and policymakers to ensure that they are better including Indigenous youth voices, participants encouraged MPs and Senators to pay for their time, knowledge, and consultation, and not request free labour from them. Youth

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also reiterated the need for tangible reparations through the return of land to Indigenous nations (land back). Other recommendations for politicians and policymakers include: • • • •

The House of Commons and Senate creating an advisory circle of Indigenous youth to check in with on a consistent basis; Formalized mentorship programs that include Indigenous youth being assigned to work with standing committees on specific studies; Ensuring to always include Indigenous-led initiatives and projects as a budget line item; Ensure that tangible actions, accountability, and follow-through accompany any words of solidarity – this will help to build trust.

Support and Logistics When asked what youth liked about the structure, supports, and logistics tied to the event, the IYAW participants reiterated the importance of having access to spaces like those provided by IYAW. Participants also emphasized that they would like to see more time to connect with each other and with their small groups prior to their MP/Senator meetings built into the event itself. They also expressed some difficulty in being present and feeling prepared for each meeting, as some scheduling details came in at the last minute.

Section 4: Impacts & Next Steps The aim of Indigenous Youth Advocacy week was to provide space for Indigenous youth to not only meet with government officials, but to do so with tools that left them feeling confident and sure-footed in those meetings. That goal was further supported with built-in mentorship opportunities and networking time in the month leading up to the meetings. Ultimately, CRE wants youth to feel empowered and capacitated to continue working in policy and advocacy, and to help them access those spaces and build their confidence that they belong there. In an evaluation session prior to the start of the event, participants indicated that they were hoping to learn more about everything from traditional knowledge to decolonization to general leadership skills and that they were hoping to build networks and community. Our closing engagements 11

and post-evaluation activities indicate that the program was extremely effective in meeting these needs and also illustrated the appetite for more initiatives that build hard policy and advocacy skills while creating space for connection and community-building.

In asking participants what skills and knowledge they had gained during their capacity-building sessions, many participants identified communication as a significant area of growth, and more specifically mentioned that they gained confidence in taking up space and speaking.

Participants also gained knowledge about how the government and advocacy works, that the sessions were informative, judgement-free, accessible, and conducive to teamwork and connections with other youth.

Participating in Indigenous Youth Advocacy Week left youth feeling activated, connected, and inspired to continue their work in policy and advocacy. When asked at the end of the event why the spaces created by IYAW important, participants clearly asserted that their voices were important and needed in policy and decisionmaking processes. They also expressed excitement and gratitude about simply sharing space and stories with each other and the community-building made possible by the event.

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Graphic Recording – IYAW Closing Engagement

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Appendix A – Participating MPs and Senators

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