Funding Year:
2023-24
The Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources and the Collaborative Environmental Planning Initiative have been working closely with Dr. Elder Albert Marshall and his late wife Murdena since UINR’s inception. One of the guiding principles in UINR’s mandate is Two Eyed Seeing, and for twenty plus years, UINR and CEPI have worked alongside partner organizations in showcasing our work in the natural resources fields, our work in and around the Bras d’Or Lakes, through that Two Eyed Seeing guiding principle.
We knew that there are other organizations doing great work with Two Eyed Seeing, but we also know that it was becoming sort of a ‘buzz word’ – and the trouble with trends and buzz words is that they are often used without being in the proper context. So what we really wanted to do with this conference is bring people together who are doing great work in Two Eyed Seeing, bring them together and celebrate everything that Two Eyed Seeing is about and the leaps and bounds its come over the decades. We initially planned for this conference to have a packed agenda with back to back speakers and when we put out the call for presentations, we were hoping for enough presentations for sessions for two days. The response was overwhelming – and we didn’t really want to turn anyone away! We didn’t put any other ‘theme’ on the conference other then Muiwatmnej – lets honour it, lets celebrate it, lets showcase it – and people did! We had so many presentations, what we ended up doing is breaking down sessions so that there were three concurrent sessions happening at the same time, in an effort to fit everyone in.
It was also not only an opportunity to showcase the great work happening, but for our partner organizations and others to learn about what everyone else is doing at the same time, and glean ideas and potential opportunities for their own organizations, community groups, classrooms and businesses. The Collaborative Environmental Planning Initiative is built on collaboration, which is a way of doing things largely championed in its early days by the late Charlie Joe Dennis, who believed that more could be accomplished by working together. This unique organization brings together four levels of government – the Mi’kmaq, Municipal, Provincial and Federal governments that live and work around the Bras d’Or Lakes and its watershed. One of the positive outcomes is that people really enjoyed this, from deputy ministers to Mi’kmaq Elders, and there were new partnerships and relationships formed as part of this conference. There was as much discussion in between sessions and at meals, and after the conference, as there was in the presentations themselves. We also recorded all of the sessions on video, as a lot of our conference attendees expressed regret at not being able to participate in every session, thanks to our effort to try to squeeze them all in.