City of Timmins employees may take an Indigenous awareness training but not before the members of the Indigenous Advisory Committee do it first.
At an advisory committee meeting Wednesday, members agreed to take an online training program to learn more Indigenous culture and history before they decide whether they want to recommend the training for city employees.
If approved by council, this will be the first cultural awareness training for city employees since the Ontario Human Rights Commission's visit to Timmins in 2018.
Earlier this year, committee members were considering retaining George Couchie of Redtail Hawk Training and Consulting to provide Cultural Mindfulness training to the city employees.
City clerk Steph Palmateer said Couchie didn’t want to make his training specific to Timmins, so committee members had to decide whether to accept Couchie’s video training or find an alternative solution.
“We have to have some mechanism to track that people actually took the training,” he said. “The problem with George Couchie is if we leave it up to them (employees) to watch it, who is actually going to watch it from start to finish.”
Palmateer shared his experience taking a specific training a few years ago, developed by First Nations of Thunder Bay in response to the issues in Thunder Bay, and said it was “quite powerful and moving.”
The committee’s acting chair Kristin Murray suggested the The San’yas: Indigenous Cultural Safety (ICS) Training Program, provided by the Provincial Health Services Authority of British Columbia, as an option as she had already taken the course.
The ISC online program lasts for about eight to 10 hours and allows people to learn at their own pace, Murray said. Participants also have to take quizzes before they can proceed to another module, she said.
“It’s a part of the Truth and Reconciliation calls for action, it ties it all together … It has to be done,” Murray said about the importance of taking Indigenous training.
Palmateer said he will also reach out to the ISC program organizers to find out its cost.
