ILC Alberta is Launched at Paul First Nation

April 30, 2007

Career Day at Alberta’s Paul First Nation is an opportunity for young Native men and women to explore potential career choices, talk with prospective employers, and in general take a moment to think about their futures.

At this year’s Career Day, held on the Paul First Nation Reserve west of Edmonton, Canada in late April, there was a new twist.

Chief Daniel Paul and ILC’s co-founders, Rick Running Rabbit and Randy Morse, formally announced the creation of ILC Alberta Inc., a jointly owned web-based educational publishing company held equally by Paul First Nation and ILC.

The partners intend to publish a new generation of exciting, effective web-based learning resources for Alberta’s rapidly growing Aboriginal population. Part of the ILC Alberta mandate is also to help creative young Native students, at Paul First Nation and across the province, learn the skills necessary to participate in the new digital economy that ILC Alberta is very much a part of.

To underscore this intention, ILC’s Morse announced the first of what will become annual ILC New Media Scholarships for deserving Paul First Nation grade 9 and grade 12 students who show a keen interest in new & emerging digital technologies.

“We hope that one day ILC Alberta will be able to establish a new Native New Media Centre on Paul First Nation land,” said Running Rabbit in his comments. “Alberta has one of the largest percentages of young Aboriginals in Canada. It also has an excellent network infrastructure, and a provincial government that seems to sincerely want to break the cycle of educational failure that has plagued so many of our young people. We’re confident a centre that can provide training and support for students and teachers alike will prove wildly successful, and will attract participants from all over Alberta and across Canada,” Running Rabbit concluded.