Two Eyed Seeing Network Resources
Promising Practices and a New Way Forward.
The following documents and briefs have been developed to provide an opportunity to access network findings in an easy to access format.
Indigenous Youth Engagement: Wise Principles and Practices
To support the Two-Eyed Seeing Network in its activities, SRDC was tasked with conducting secondary research on wise practices in Indigenous and Indigenous youth engagement, particularly in the context of employment and skills training. This brief is informed by experiences from industry, research and academia, environmental management, natural resources development, and social services, both from across Canada and internationally. It is not intended to be prescriptive, recognizing that meaningful engagement is contextual and without a “one-size-fits-all” approach. It is also not exhaustive: readers may know of or apply additional principles and wise practices.
Making Employment and Skills Training Work for Indigenous Youth
To support the Two-Eyed Seeing Network in its activities, SRDC was tasked with conducting secondary research on promising practices related to workforce development and employment and skills training for Indigenous youth. This brief offers a summary of promising practices that emerged from a review of internal documents from the work of SRDC and our partners. While by no means exhaustive or generalizable across all contexts, we hope this document can offer a useful starting point for those seeking to develop and deliver accessible, meaningful, and equitable workforce development initiatives for Indigenous youth.
Milestone Based Pathways
To support the Two-Eyed Seeing Network in its activities, this resource provides an introduction to the concept of milestone-based pathways. Milestone-based pathways can be an effective tool to support the design of workforce development pathways, especially those that involve multiple components. They provide a useful way to structure and think about the selection and sequence of program activities and supports to support youth along their journey to meaningful employment, education, and other personal goals. They can also be used as a framework for measuring and evaluating progress and success, including short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term outcomes.
Industry Indigenous Engagement Guides: Resource List
This document provides a non-exhaustive list of existing resources and guides developed by Indigenous-led and non-Indigenous businesses and organizations to support respectful, culturally-relevant, and culturally-safe Indigenous engagement processes. They are listed in alphabetical order below by industry/ organization name.
Indigenous Awareness And Engagement: List Of Trainings
This document provides a non-exhaustive list of available Indigenous awareness and engagement trainings to support respectful, culturallyrelevant, and culturally-safe Indigenous engagement processes. They are listed in alphabetical order below by organization name.
Two Eyed Seeing Network Literature Review - Full Document
The current report serves as SRDC’s initial literature review for the project. In addition to describing the current climate and historical context surrounding the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada, it aims to provide further information, evidence, and promising practices across three main themes, with a view to informing the creation of meaningful workforce development pathways for Indigenous youth through the 2ESN: 1) engagement, 2) program design and delivery, and 3) milestone-based pathways.
Network Meeting Materials
2024 -
The next round of Two Eyed Seeing Network roundtables will be announced soon.
2023 - 2024 Recap
This round of Network roundtables was conducted in conjunction with CFBC’s Sky Keepers program. Sky Keepers supports Indigenous peoples to reclaim their roles as the natural stewards of the skies, just as they have been stewards of the land and water since time immemorial.
2022 - 2023 Recap
In 2022/2023, the Two Eyed Seeing Network facilitated 17 Roundtables to uncover new pathways forward for workforce development and inclusion. Each Roundtable hosted participants from Indigenous communities/organizations, Industry leaders, Workforce development professionals, Education/Training authorities, and Indigenous Youth. Highlights from each of the discussions are shared on in this section.
Themed Discussions
Understanding and Building Rapport
Understanding how to engage with Indigenous youth and communities is vital to the success of any collaborative plans together. Building rapport, and relationship is a process that takes time. The network discussed at length the success strategies they have experienced with building that trusting and reciprocal relationship, which leads to practical project planning.
One Size Does Not Fit All
A journey to discovering your place in life, community and your local economy is not a straightforward route. Taking a look at the varying needs of students helped us in the network to understand how to diversify training strategies to be more accessible.
Youth Need To Be Involved In Their Own Futures
One fact that continued to recur is the fact that we cannot continue planning for a certain population without their input. Adding youth to the conversations we were having was of the utmost importance, to ensure our knowledge base and planning were aligned with what youth needed. Coming from that process was a session in which we were able to brainstorm how exactly we can build strategies that included youth voices.
Understanding Local/Provincial Market Opportunities
When discussing the local and provincial opportunities for Indigenous Youth, we became aware that 48% of Indigenous Youth that engaged with the network needed more information to make an informed decision on entering the skilled trades; with this understanding the network dedicated one of the final sessions to brainstorming how exactly to reach youth with information about opportunities.
Taking a Step Back
Last but certainly not least, our final discussion focused on what we as community members can do to support Indigenous Youth that needs some stabilizing support before moving on to training and employment. How can youth take a step back, and root themselves in a foundation that they can build on?
