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To highlight the work Creation Grantees are doing in their communities, the Creation Community Grants Team sends out Q&A forms so they can share their experiences creating and carrying out their projects. Today we are featuring responses from Paula (respondent), Stephanie, and Harley of the Indigenous Deaf of Canada Committee.
Community: National
Grant Type: Youth Empowerment Stream 2023
Q: Tell us about your group and project!
A: The project is focused on hosting a conference, a National Indigenous Culture Gathering. The Gathering is intended to bring together Indigenous and Deaf-identifying Indigenous individuals, including Hard of Hearing individuals, as well as hearing people who can sign (like hearing parents who have Deaf children, or hearing people who work with Deaf youth, and other support-people). Those are the individuals coming to this Gathering.
The reason we are having this Gathering is to bring more awareness to the modern-day gathering culture, and to have an opportunity to learn from each other. For Deaf and Hard of Hearing youth, we definitely have barriers, and youth often don’t have the ability to learn their culture or to attend gatherings, since often it’s only accessible to hearing people. So, we decided to connect with each other and host this Gathering to bring awareness. And, for those who are isolated; they can come out and meet each other and just get together and learn from each other.
Most of the youth who were there were Deaf, and shared that they had felt quite isolated until they went to the Gathering. There, they were able to sign and communicate with each other and just be amongst their peers. They didn’t have to be writing back and forth, or trying to read lips and having those types of frustrating situations or miscommunications. Just the ease of being in a signing environment made it feel like family for a lot of participants.
Q: As the youth running the project, what impact do you hope it will have?
A: I myself used to be in the foster care system. I was adopted. So, I’ve seen quite a bit of language deprivation, individuals not being able to learn language. I myself wasn’t aware of sign language – I actually learned sign language through my school. There was a Deaf and Hard of Hearing school that I was able to acquire the language from, but it wasn’t until I was older. But the school didn’t really understand Indigenous culture, and some family members didn’t have that exposure, either. Even so, I only had access to it through school. So then, after school has wrapped up, how do you continue to have that cultural learning? And that’s where I thought, there should be a standard across Canada, and it should be provided. There should be signing individuals that are out in the community who can share the language, and about culture. It’s hard to get an interpreter, to have someone come out to your community, and that’s quite a barrier.
So, I’m hoping this conference will bring some of those issues to light and expose other individuals to our barriers. I’m hoping it will also be a place to share Deaf-to-Deaf issues too. We’re both Deaf, but it’s a culture shock to learn that you’ve never had the same experience, and that’s something that is very impactful. It’s also nice to have a kind of family Gathering. It’s only a two or three-day conference, but you still want to be able to come together and feel like a family. It’s also about that exposure piece, for youth to be able to go back to their hometowns and for their learnings to spread out and raise awareness there too. That youth leave the Gathering feeling equipped for that self-advocacy. The Gathering is also a space to bring light to and share our Indigenous ways of knowing and being with each other.
Q: What is something you have learned?
A: I am an advocate. Of course, I’ve learned so much, but I’m still not feeling at ease with everything, but I’m hopeful that my passion spreads through the community. So, if we have the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community at this conference, there will be such a variety of individuals. Maybe some people will be shocked, maybe some will be surprised, maybe some will think, “Oh, hey, I already knew all this.” It’s hard to predict how this conference will impact individuals, but it’s a learning experience for us to have together.
Many of us on this committee have never hosted a conference before. It’s our first time, so we’re trying to navigate through things like how to book and arrange for interpreters if we have hearing presenters, and how to access funding. Funding, of course, was very challenging for us. The Deaf and Hard of Hearing community doesn’t have the same ability to hear about and access funding as hearing people do. Also, filling out grant applications. We hadn’t yet gotten the approval to be considered a non-profit organization, so we were just operating and navigating grants as a committee. So, I recognize that that was a challenge as well, and all the support we got was very helpful, and it was interesting to learn about the granting process with regards to a committee.
We all learned quite a bit. Most of us were from different provinces, so that meant we had a lot of different perspectives. We would also then set up per-province and create different local networks. That was quite interesting, and I’m glad I got to learn about that. There were some challenges, but it was still a success, and I got to learn a lot throughout the whole process.
Q: Is there anything else about your project that you would like to share?
A: The goal is to host our Gathering every two years. The last one was in 2023, and the next one would be in May 2025, in Alberta. My goal really would be for the Gathering to be open to all Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals, as well as to hearing people who can sign fluently, because it would be great to be able to have full access to the Gathering entirely through sign language. We are also looking at adding more languages next time; like having Indigenous sign languages as well as LSQ (langue des signes québécoise).
The Gathering is an opportunity for exposure to both Indigenous culture and Deaf culture. It’s an opportunity to be within the Deaf community. We want to encourage people and make them think about what it means to have exposure to sign language, and to Deaf community and culture. We want to have a space for Deaf people to socialize and network, and exposure to that would be such a big benefit and help so many people and communities.
I really appreciate all the support we had as well for our Gathering, and the last-minute support that we needed. That support was really just such a positive for me; it was great.
For a lot Deaf and Hard of Hearing people, there is a struggle around communication. That can be a barrier to becoming an expert, or to picking up certain skills and expertise. But at this Gathering, it was amazing, because that experience was flipped. There were a lot of youth who were able to have that exposure to different types of health and well-being practices, and other types of expertise that they were able to see as a possibility for themselves in the future. They got to learn about different skills they can come back and pick up later. I thought it was really cool to have that exposure. A lot of hearing people get to have that exposure in their daily lives, and have that opportunity to be exposed to those fields, which means they can consider them as options for their future careers. The Gathering was great for a lot of the Deaf youth to get a chance to experience that too, to take part in different activities and see those possibilities in themselves. They got to see themselves represented as experts, and that’s what we want for the youth. That’s what this Gathering is about – it’s about Deaf and Hard of Hearing youth feeling included in their communities, and in this community, and it’s great that we got to make that happen.
