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About Us
IndigeSTEAM began as the Power to Choose Program hosted by Alberta Women's Science Network. In 2018, the Power to Choose coordinator and advisors were working with FIRST Alberta Robotics about engaging more Indigenous youth in FIRST Robotics and the idea of combining three separate programs; youth, mentors and community led to IndigeSTEAM developing into an independent society. We were incorporated in Alberta Sept 21, 2018. The original mentoring program has become Pathways for Choice and the community programs has become Partners in Community.
Our IndigeSTEAM story includes the meanings of our logo and the Medicine Wheel was a way for us to link the three original programs into a new fourth. To learn more about the Medicine Wheel and the modern Medicine Wheel symbol, we recommend starting with The Canadian Encyclopedia and Wikipedia articles. Elder Vivan Seegers gave us a lesson about the logo we created: The meaning we had in our logo made this version our Medicine Wheel with our meanings. Follow our thoughts in the Medicine Wheel of our logo to learn more about us.
We found our first inspirations in research and the last line of each section of this wheel: Wisdom and Logic, Illumination and Enlightenment, Trust and Innocence, and Introspection and Insight. Also the colours here represent the races of man (white, yellow, red and black) and our goal of inclusion and diversity.
Our first logo shared the logos of the three founding organizations: Wisdom for the Community program First Light Initiative; Illumination for GAIA, the mentoring organization; and Innocence for Power to Choose youth program. The Insight was the name 'IndigeSTEAM'.
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As Power to Choose grew, the choice of retiring the old logos from the founders was made along with the new names of Pathways for Choice and Partners in Community better reflecting how those to programs were growing from their roots.
Here are some of our thoughts about the four directions of our Medicine Wheel. We acknowledge the other directions of up to the sky and Creator, down to Mother Earth and that we and every youth, parent, adult member or volunteer is a center to the Wheel and we need to have them all in balance. IndigeSTEAM cannot work without all of these aspects.
Further, we included our thoughts from the Concept of the Medicine Wheel of Chemistry or The Scientific Method on the Medicine Wheel as described by Michelle Hogue, Metis, Chemist, University of Lethbridge who was one of the first mentor/presenters at a Power to Choose summer camp.