“I just want to acknowledge this territory, the land that we’re standing on, my relatives the Coastal Salish people, from the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish peoples.
I’d like to acknowledge the AISES people who all worked together to make this happen, the sponsors and the people behind the scenes, the people organizing and managing all of these things, to bring all of these wonderful students together. For all of us, the work that you do is so important.”
— Jeannette Armstrong, University of British Columbia Okanagan
“(I’m) overwhelmed but not surprised at just the amount of energy, being with the kin, being with fellow nerds, it’s exciting. It fills the cup. It fills the cup.
It’s an incredibly exciting time to be Indigenous, to be an Indigenous STEM person. The demand, as we’re seeing booms in certain areas in terms of innovation, science, technology, resource development, to get Indigenous participation more meaningfully in those industries, there’s huge demand for that. For perspective, for leadership, it’s incredible. Indigenous people are just picking and choosing what opportunities and jobs align with their careers and values at greater rates than they ever have before.”
— John Desjarlais, Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists
“This one has had such a diversity of content…lots of choices. The students are pulled in different directions, wanting to see two sessions at the same time. That’s the sign of a quality conference, that you have so many interesting things going on.
Americans think of us as this “foreign country.” The culture’s not that different. So many of our nations straddle the border, at the same time. That line was imposed on us. I’m Haudenosaunee where we straddle the border, the Ojibwe straddle the border. In the end, we are all one big family.
The students I’ve brought here really have noticed it already that this is an interesting conference. One of the PhD students was, ‘This isn’t like any other conference I’ve ever been to.’ No, it is a special one. There’s this combination of the academics going on, the talks where we’re talking about bringing our whole selves to work, bringing out whole selves to research, bringing out whole selves to what we do as Indigenous people, is important for the students to see because when you scatter back to your own universities, that’s not always present every day. AISES is such an important network for students who need to find their people, especially in STEM.”
— Melanie Howard, Queen’s University
“What I’ve enjoyed is reconnecting in person…I’ve seen a lot of evolution in some of these people, people doing really great research and pushing the envelope of essentially creating space for Indigenous knowledge within STEM. Everywhere, we see an increase in the volume of work but also in asserting the rightful place. I’ve seen this, it’s influenced my life and my research. When I see the folks here, I just feel this overwhelming sense of pride and inspiration, in the individuals but also as a collective.”
— Danilo Caron, University of British Columbia
“It’s absolutely amazing, the chance to see the Indigenous STEM community in Canada come together like this. I was at the (conference) in 2018 and met everybody for the first time. The scale to which it’s grown. I think we’ve doubled that size now. The opportunity to see people who might be the only person in the program, the only Indigenous engineer at the university that they’re aware of, to meet suddenly a roomful of others, that’s the real power of this. The feeling that you’re not alone in the program.
(About the 2018 gathering…) I saw it on Facebook, I think it was. I thought, ‘ok this is cool, I should really do this.’ Hesitated a little bit because I didn’t know anybody. And then bought a ticket and showed up. It was the most welcoming experience that I’ve ever encountered in terms of something like this, walking in cold and being embraced. It was really good.
Ultimately, it’s about the network that we’ve built. It’s about the peers we have and how you interconnect and get to know each other over time. It’s a community that we’re building. The value of that is everybody goes through similar struggles. I do believe that one of the unique things from an Indigenous perspective is oftentimes when things are not right, and it feels you’re not in the right place, it’s easy to fall off. But if you know that others are experiencing the same thing, then that community can keep you in or help you figure out what’s the best path for you. So, I think that’s the real value of it. I hope that's what it grows into across the country.
AISES has been amazing. AISES has really supported it. When we saw what they were able to do in the States and then seeing there was an opportunity to bring that to Canada, that made all the difference.”
— Dennis Esperance, Enbridge