Providing accredited post-secondary land-based education is at the heart of Dechinta. Our blended model of education innovatively combines Indigenous knowledge with academic credentials to ensure students are positioned for success on the land, in the community, in post-secondary education and in employment.

We currently offer 1-3 week long courses in three semesters throughout the year: Winter, Summer and Fall.

One of the core pillars of Dechinta programming is research. We support Dene and Inuvialuit communities who are committed to generating the next generation of Dene Knowledge Holders and we follow their lead in generating and preserving knowledge within their communities. Our research program at Dechinta has recently expanded to include more regions, more communities, and more creative and diverse projects that generate Dene and Inuvialuit knowledge from and with the land and in close relationship to the communities we aim to serve.

Another core pillar of Dechinta programming is community engagement. Dechinta supports an intergenerational reconnection to the land and traditional land-based knowledge/skills among Dene and Inuvialuit communities in the North. Through our programs at Dechinta, which now span across multiple communities and nations in the North, we work to strengthen the relationship individuals have to the land by teaching students and community members practical land-based skills and knowledge.

Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà: Northern Indigenous Voices on Land, Life & Art is a collection of essays, interviews, short stories, and poetry written by emerging and established northern Indigenous writers and artists. Centered on land, cultural practice and northern life, this ground-breaking collection shares wealth of Dene (Gwich’in, Sahtú, Dehcho, Tłı̨chǫ, Saysi, Kaska, Dënesųłiné, Wıìlıìdeh) Inuit, Alutiiq, Inuvialuit, Métis, Nêhiyawak (Cree), Northern Tutchone, and Tanana Athabascan creative brilliance. Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà holds up the voices of women and Two-Spirit and Queer writers to create a chorus of voices reflecting a deep love of Indigenous cultures, languages, homelands, and the north.

On November 29th Dechinta hosted the Yellowknife launch of the Xàgots’eèhk’ǫ̀ Journal in collaboration with Aurora College and Hotıì ts’eeda! We welcomed a number of people and contributors at the event who discussed and exchanged stories, research, philosophy, and art from the journal.

The inaugural theme of the journal issue is Education in the North. We are also proud to feature in an article written by four of our Dechinta staff: Rachel Cluderay, Rena Mainville, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Kelsey Wrightson.

We are so excited to announce the release of our short film documenting our 2021 łiwe (fish) camp at Dechinta. This film first premiered at the 2021 NAISA conference. At fish camp we work to create deeper connections with ourselves, each other, and the land. Even if from a distance, we hope that through this short film, you will be able to connect in some way to the world of a Dene winter fish camp on Tı̨ndeè (Great Slave Lake). By guiding you through our fish camp at Dechinta, you will walk away with a deeper understanding of Dene life. Our aim with this short film is for you to witness how the Dene continue to govern themselves according to their own laws and resist the ongoing forces of colonialism in the North, to think critically about what it means to form living relationships with Indigenous and Dene land in practice, and to see how Indigenous land-based education operates on the ground.

In March of 2022, Dechinta created a “Gender and Queer Terminology Toolkit” - a 55 page report that provides readers with a comprehensive overview of gender and queer history, terminology and resources, specifically in relation to Indigenous people in Canada. We have printed around 100 copies of the gender toolkit so far and it has been given to students of our programs, to our professors and guest lecturers, to our staff members, and to community members. We also paid 10 queer Indigenous and BIPOC artists whose artwork features in the toolkit.

As we continued to navigate COVID-19 into the winter of 2021, Dechinta created a 7-month long speaker series in order to create spaces of learning, knowledge creation and dissemination by Northern women activists and scholars. Hosted by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, the Ts'eko Nàgeètso speaker series featured the brilliant voices of 8 Northern Indigenous women, each presenting on their personal experiences and academic work. The speakers included Mandee McDonald, Dr. Lianne Marie Leda Charlie, Dr. Crystal Gail Fraser, Siku Allooloo, Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, Tiffany Ayalik, Dr. Anita Lafferty, and Dahti Tsetso. We had approximately 260 participants attend our speaker series live on zoom, and to date, the speaker series videos have had 912 views on our YouTube Channel. As well, many of the videos are now being used as part of the curriculum for our post-secondary courses.

In 2022 Dechinta hosted an online conference featuring panels and art from Northern Indigenous peoples. We wanted to use the NAISA platform to showcase research in northern Canada and beyond by northern Indigenous community researchers, Elders, land based practitioners, artists and makers, academics, and students. We wanted to make the presentations accessible to as many people in the north as possible. We strived to create collaborative, nurturing, and reflective spaces that celebrate Indigenous excellence.

Our panels, films, round tables and performances focus on northern issues; land based research; land based education; decolonial feminisms; self-determination, governance and law; 2SLGBTQQIA+ issues in the north, solidarity & internationalism, and northern creative practice; and youth leadership.

This project was created in response to the urgent needs of Indigenous communities in the North during the COVID-19 pandemic. Led by Dr. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Dr. Alex Wilson from the University of Saskatchewan, Dechinta hosted a series of webinars in the summer of 2020, and the videos and a subsequent report written by Dechinta researcher Sydney Krill were released in the spring of 2021. Through the webinars, interviews, and curated lesson plans included in this report, we hoped to get students and educators to think critically and creatively about carrying out land-based education remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic and offer tools and resources to Indigenous land-based educators. We created 7 online webinars, posted to our website and YouTube channel.