Dory La Boucane

Dory La Boucane in her office at The Gathering Place.

Today I met with Dory La Boucane. She’s the aboriginal transition planner with Services for Aboriginal Students at Thompson Rivers University.

She’s Métis and has been in Kamloops for last 5 years on Secwepemc territory. Prior to her work at the university, she worked at a secondary education level as a First Nations family-student support worker.

She works out of The Gathering Place, a house on campus that is designed to offer services and resources to aboriginal students who choose to access them. We sat down in her office in the upper level of the house in a small office with First Nations art on the walls.

Here are some parts of our conversation:

“My passion is for higher levels of education for all aboriginal people.”

“Aboriginal students face many more barriers then non-aboriginal students do and many aboriginal students at TRU come from rural communities so number one, they do not have the support systems in their personal life, let alone the support systems on campus or knowing where to go once they are here to access those resources and there’s multi-generational trauma impact on students from their families, their families of origin regarding the residential schools.”

“Students say this themselves, that they can say (The Gathering Place) is their second home, their home away from home, and there’s a comfort zone that they develop here and trust with the resources that we offer here which includes my position, aboriginal life skills coach, Lisa Christie’s position, and Joanne, the co-ordinator as well as we have a designated aboriginal student council that is physically in the house for different times of week that schedule time here and also able to access the other councils of course on campus main. We have an elders program and we also have back to basics wellness programs. We have healthy snacks and treats in the house for the students who don’t have breakfast. They can grab a granola bar and an orange and run to class. Just that little nutritional support helps. We also have the resources in the community for them to connect with outside of our services here.”

On TRU being the university of choice for aboriginal students:

 “I believe we are not 100 per cent there yet, that we are working on that academic plan, right and it was an inception and a dream that had taken place and there were steps through that process and I know we’ve come a long ways since I’ve started here four years ago so it’s gradual, it’s not all at once.”

 “When I arrived, the co-ordinator, she was the only person that had a position here, we still have that position, thank goodness. My position for the first two years was temporary, full-time temporary position. Now it’s an ongoing position without secured funding.”

“It needs more security. Not only from an individual perspective for job security for myself but also for our students to have that consistency.”

“There are still many barriers that need to come down. There still is racism and stereotyping that happens against aboriginal people on campus. I have students that experience it on a regular basis and I support them in avocation for those misunderstandings and clarifying so those walls and barriers come down slowly but we are humans and we tend to like to classify and without that knowledge base and understanding, myths like all Indians get free education and free housing, those are all myths that need to be dispelled.”

About the connection between education and self-determination:

‘I think education is definitely at the forefront of that and there’s a high need because we need, not to take away from the cultural aspect which is very important, the language, the whole land use base, it’s not to take away from that but we need to have a higher level of education to work at that development of that relationship with the Federal government and provincial governments for the economic land base and the use of their lands to building health centres in the communities, supporting their own schools in the community and even water, we know that water titles and land titles and all that needs to be settled so it’s important.”

“I was at the opening of the aboriginal center at SAIT in Calgary and I will quote Chief Starlight, he’s a former chief there now but he stated that education is our weapon of today and I firmly believe in that”

“It may be self-imposed but there’s also the Italian Cultural Centre, in town, it’s not on campus. There are Japanese cultural centres. We call this the cultural centre on campus. The international building is for international students and the services they have there are much greater than the services we have here and that’s targeted for international students. Our services for aboriginal students are directed towards aboriginal students, but there are activities on campus and it’s slowly growing through FNSS, First Nations Student Society and TRUSU aboriginal reps that helping to build that capacity for education and awareness of aboriginal culture and issues that we face, the poverty mainly and access and barriers that’s created to higher education.”

On opening up The Gathering Place to the rest of the campus:

“We’re short staffed for the capacity of student that we do deal with so we cannot take on that piece. If we had a cultural advisor that would fulfill that role on campus and within the community as well, the networking, it would be fantastic.”

“Our services are mandated directly for students of aboriginal ancestry, First Nations, Metis and Inuit so they are the dollars that are directed towards that... it’s not a cultural piece, it’s an educational piece.”

About The Gathering Place:

“They call it the brown house so that’s how they refer to it and I thought that was pretty cute, so they don’t call it the red house, they call it the brown house because our skins generally browner but we also have very visible First Nations, Métis and Inuit students and we have non-visible First Nations, Métis and Inuit students so we can’t say just from the colour of their skin or their eyes that they don’t belong here, right so they have to have that comfort zone within themselves. Primarily speaking most students in their third and forth years  of house do not access the house so much anymore because they’re more into their program and their cohort within that program so it’s usually the first and second year students and the university prep students that are in the house more often, especially in the computer lab.”