Lethbridge College offering Indigenous policing micro-credentials

By Ry Clarke - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on January 17, 2023.

Herald file photo Graduate Kirsten Barwegen, who joined the Blood Tribe Police Service, stands with the rest of her class from the Lethbridge College Police Cadet Training program in September.

A new micro-credential program coming to Lethbridge College will help expand Indigenous policing education and put more culturally-appropriate officers into these communities.

The short-term flexible learning programs are designed for re-skilling, providing culturally suitable education to Indigenous police services as they work to address the needs of their communities.

“The Blood Tribe Police are driving this project, because we cannot address anything in our Indigenous communities without our Indigenous people leading these projects,” said Trudi Mason, dean of the Centre for Justice and Human Services at Lethbridge College. “Right now, we are working with the Blood Tribe, Tsuut’ina, and Lakeshore Police Services. We also train Manitoba First Nations cadets in our regular cadet program, we are hoping that we will be able to pull them into this process, too. Together with our partners we came up with a list of topics that needed to be covered in the micro-credentials.”

The six topics include domestic violence/elder abuse, sexual abuse/human trafficking, impaired driving, Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA)/drug matters, writing, and tribal policing.

“We worked with our partners to develop these six micro-credential topics,” said Mason. “Micro-credentials are an interesting way of learning, they are short bits of learning and we will be delivering these online. We are really excited about delving into this project and there is so many ways that we can help our agencies develop the education and training that they are looking for. They provide the subject matter expertise, and we provide the education lens and how to move forward.”

The CDSA/drug matters course is set for an early spring delivery with the remaining five micro-credentials being developed to launch in the fall.

“There is different cultural aspects that we have to understand and if we remember that our tribal services aren’t necessarily always composed of Indigenous people. We have to work on that cultural gap and the understanding so we will be looking at these credentials through that lens. Looking at the culturally-appropriate lens and how policing on a nation might be different from places in the city of Lethbridge,” said Mason.

Hoping to see the program evolve, the College says there is potential for growth.

“We will see how the micro-credentials are received. Curriculum is always evolving, it is never build it and leave it, we always have to be adapting and changing, checking in and changing our curriculum as things develop and society changes,” said Mason. “Once we get these in place and start working on them, I am hoping that we might see a pathway into an Indigenous policing cadet program, like we have our traditional cadet program.”

Completion of the Indigenous policing micro-credential program will be recognized with a digital badge issued on the Badgr platform.

“We are trying to enhance and help our partners wherever we can, we are very partner driven,” said Mason. “I am very excited to be working with the Blood Tribe, it is good for our students and our partners.”