Indigenous post-secondary social networking app gets funding to expand

Asocial networking tool aimed at connecting and supporting post-secondary Indigenous youth has received an Ontario Trillium grant to expand its network capacity.

The Indigenous Friends Association, creators of the Indigenous Friends application, will receive $210,000 to expandover the next three yearsto universities and colleges across Ontario.

What began as a master's degree thesis has evolved into a unique social networking tool with the goal of connecting Indigenous students with elders, cultural resources and each other.

The application's architect, AlejandroMayoral-Banos,left his home in Mexico in 2014 to pursue his master's degree at York University in Toronto.

RuthKoleszar-Green,an assistant professor at York University and vice-president of Indigenous Friends Association, said she metMayoral-Banosin his first month at York.

"He was having culture shock and as an Indigenous person I said, 'wellI'll connect you to Indigenous students,'" she said.

"Being an Indigenous person from Mexico, I was struggling to find myself in this huge university with a lot of people and trying to create community," saidMayoral-Banos.

Koleszar-Green is a Mohawk registered to Six Nations of the Grand River, although she identifies as an urban Indigenous person.

She introducedMayoral-Banosto York University's elder-in-residence andthe following week he was helping raise the school's teepee. A few weeks after that he was learning to fire-keep at a full moon ceremony.

The idea for the community-building application grew from a conversation about how the university could bettersupport Indigenous students.Over three years, a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and staff worked together to develop the Indigenous Friends application.

The application is free to download but requiresa membership tag that can beacquiredthrough theuniversity'sIndigenous student centre to ensurethe app's community is a safe space for Indigenous people. Allies are approved on a case-by-case basis by the centre.

Finding community

McKenzie Toulouse of Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nationnear Sudbury, Ont., isenrolled in York University's Health and Society Program and is the administrative co-ordinatorof the Indigenous Friends Association.

Toulouse said she left hercommunity not having any cultural resourcesortraditional knowledge and needed support.

"The Indigenous Friends app has given me many opportunities to learnthe knowledge within our Aboriginal communities for our people," she said.

The app's development has been a multifacetedprocess, with consultations with elders and Indigenous organizations in Toronto, and with students for their input and opinions as the application expands.

Toulouse said alot of Indigenous people are at risk of homelessness orgetting involved with the law, and thatshe hopes the app helps people at risk find community supports.

"Maybe this will reach out to them and give them an opportunity before they actually fall through the cracks," she said.

Expansion planned

WhileMayoral-Banoshas written all the papers and coding forthe application, he does not want to claim ownership of it but rather wants to give it back to the Indigenous communities and the students to be the voices for the people, said Toulouse.

Because the Indigenous Friends application began as a community project, the team didn't realize the legal challenges they would face with a mobile application regarding intellectual ownership. Even if the application is not owned by an individual, it still has to be owned by something.

"This is a community-based app, it's thecommunity that holds intellectual property rights ofthe app," saidMayoral-Banos.

"It's not my app,it's not Ruth's app, it's the community'sapp."

The solution was to become a not-for-profit organization to whichall of the intellectual property could belong. Once the Indigenous Friends organization was established, the hunt began for funding to expand the application.

The first step of the expansion process will be in more post-secondary institutions, but in the long termthe team hopes it will be able to reach into communities in northern Ontario. Challenges like spotty internet connections still have to be worked out.