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	Greetings! Aksunai! My name is Brandon Pardy, a Labrador Metis. I have been involved in the Aboriginal and Labrador resistance movement most of my life to this point. I have constantly searching for new ways in which to facilitate the resistance to oppression by the provincial and federal governments. This search has brought me through two undergraduate degrees and currently to a masters degree at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. My area of concentration is Traditional Aboriginal Knowings and Sustainable Communities with a concentration on education as a basis to the resistance movement in Labrador. The main reason I registered for Popular Education for Social Change (6150) in September was that I had hope of learning new education techniques. I eventually hoped to use these techniques in an Aboriginal community context. I had not expected this course to have such a major impact on my entire Plan of Study. I had always looked for new ways to reach Aboriginal people in Labrador in order to share knowledge systems between the three Aboriginal nations. The benefit of this would be to educate each other on values and principals that could be used to create a better sense of understanding and unity to combat outside hegemonic society. As well, Popular Education has proved to have value in breaking down barriers to Aboriginal self government, health, and use of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. I did not expect to find such a wealth of knowledge and discussion around issues that were relevant to my area of concentration. We began the course with an analysis of popular education itself. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Pedagogy of Hope opened a new world of educational concepts. It analysed the Hegomony/counterhegemony as a theory of oppression and resistance. Many of the themes that were analysed by Freire were reflected in the historical developments of resistance to oppression by Labrador from the Provincial government of Newfoundland. Freire also offers new insights and hope for the future of Labrador resistance to oppression. Education has been a common theme in any successful movement. Popular Education for social change has brought many new ideas and concepts into my understanding of the Aboriginal movement. Although many of the terms and phrases used in popular education are not used withing the sphere of Aboriginal activation, many of the themes and concepts are similar. Using a Gramscian analysis, Lynne Davis has worked with Aboriginal communities to perform conjunctural analyses to examine the hegemonic condition. IE, who are the oppressors, how are the Aboriginal peoples oppressed, and how we can use traditional methods in healing and resistance. Lynne has worked with Aboriginal communities primarily in British Columbia and Alberta. The method of analysis has been analogous with popular education techniques. The process of healing and social change has been through education of traditional methods, ie story telling, community participation, and language. Lynne Davis was since asked to work with the Moment project in Toronto with traditional Aboriginal teachings as her key contribution. Lynne also teaches at Trent Univeristy in Native studies. She uses popular education (conjunctural analysis) in the classroom to examine the hegemony of the state within the context of Aboriginal peoples. Lynne Davis also works with Amnesty International within Canada on Aboriginal issues. Our group discussion/workshop has provided some great new insights for Lynne’s work with Amnesty International. A current project of Amnesty International in Canada is to educate Canadians about Aboriginal traditional territories and how we, as Canadians, have come to be on Aboriginal lands. I feel that popular education, and the study of its roots in South America, can play a major role in the Aboriginal struggle to resist oppression and begin the healing process. Aboriginal communities across Canada a suffering from social break down as a result of the federal government’s (and society at large’s) role in the oppression of Aboriginal peoples traditional culture, healing, language, and land use/stewardship. I hope to use many of the concepts and contacts I have gained through my popular education experience to further facilitate the Aboriginal peoples movement in Labrador. Aboriginal peoples are resisting oppression in many forms and more actively, I simply hope to facilitate that process.