Event brings youth together to celebrate and share

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For four days at the end of September, a group of Aboriginal students from Grades 7 and 8 gathered at the Midland YMCA's Camp Kitchikewana on Beausoleil Island in Georgian Bay Islands National Park.

The students, most of them coming to the camp from the Georgian Bay area, were there to take part in the sixth annual Aboriginal Youth Week. The event was organized by Parks Canada, Camp Kitchikewana and the Aboriginal organizations that sent students to the camp. This year, the planning committee membership included representatives from the Georgian Bay Metis Council, the Metis Nation of Ontario, Mnjikaning First Nation, Beausoleil First Nation, the Georgian Bay Native Friendship Centre and the Barrie Friendship Centre.

About 75 students took part in Aboriginal Youth Week this year, held from Sept. 20 to 23. Included among this year's participants were a group of 10 or so students from Labrador, who got involved in the camp through an exchange program with the Barrie Friendship Centre.

While the cultural components of the youth week dealt mainly with the First Nation and Metis cultures of the Georgian Bay area, the youth from Labrador still fit right in, said Scott Carpenter, a community development officer with the Metis Nation of Ontario who sits on the Aboriginal Youth Week organizing committee.

"Aboriginal Youth Week is about being proud of your own traditions and culture and being open to sharing it with others and understanding other cultures. That's the whole concept of it," he said.

The idea of creating an annual camp for Aboriginal youth came from local Elders who visited the national park and the archeological dig on site and asked why Aboriginal youth weren't coming to the camp to experience the history of the island for themselves.

The students taking part in the event usually attend for both years they are eligible, so organizers have an added challenge of making each year a bit different from previous ones so returning campers don't become bored.

"Like every year there's a craft, but the craft changes from year to year," Carpenter said. "Last year we had a Metis component to it, talking about Metis and some of the Ojibway traditions, and then this year we didn't get into that so that we wouldn't repeat."

The schedule of events and activities during the week is curriculum based so, while they are missing school to attend, participants are still learning, just in a different way, Carpenter said.

One of the goals of the program is to teach participants a bit about their culture and traditions, in the hopes of sparking their interest so they get more involved when they return to their communities and want to learn more.

The students taking part in the youth week each come to the camp with a different level of previous exposure to and knowledge of Aboriginal culture and tradition, Carpenter said.

"There's definitely a mix. Some of them have never been exposed to the traditional part of First Nations culture or Metis culture ... Some have no concept of what tobacco is used for and that. So there is some cultural teachings, and there's a smudge every morning" Scott Carpenter said.

Part of the cultural teachings is stressing that, while traditions may very from one Aboriginal group to another, no one culture is better than the next, Carpenter said. "So understanding that and not judging that is kind of where we go with that."

Through the activities they take part in, the students are shown the relevance of Aboriginal traditions in a modern context.

"Tradition is important, but it's not stagnant at the same time. We have to adapt or else we'll be left behind," Carpenter said.

"This year we had a really neat model of ground water. And so you could put pollutants in a well or in a lagoon or on groundwater, and it was done with colored dyes. And it would filter into the drinking water so you could actually see that. And so talking about the importance of water to people, tha was one of the segments. And it had both traditional, in the importance of the environment to Aboriginal people, and it was done in a contemporary manner."

On the first day of the camp, students went on a hike, during which they talked about health and wellness.

"So one of the stops was about drugs and alcohol. Another one was traditional use of tobacco. And then the last one was at the cemetery, and talking about respect and things like that. Honoring those people that have gone before us."

The students taking part also took part in a session about bullying facilitated by representatives from the Enaahtig Healing Lodge and Learning Centre and learned about teamwork by working through a low ropes course. They played KooKoosh ball, did crafts, learned about the medicine wheel, and took part in a variety of recreational activities, from canoeing to ping pong. In the evenings, campers would gather together and do skits related to what they'd learned.

"There was lots of laughing and good fun with that," Carpenter said.

Each year the event has a theme of some sort and, with 2005 declared the National Year of the Veteran, this year's youth week focused on Aboriginal veterans. The campers watched a video about Aboriginal veterans and talked about Francis Pegahmagabow, the most highly decorated Canadian Aboriginal soldier during the First World War.

The students also got a chance to find out about the long and rich history of the island by taking part in an archeological dig on the site along side archeologists from Parks Canada. Over the years, artifacts unearthed at the site have shown as many as 12 distinct Aboriginal cultures have called the island home over the past 4,500 years.

The four-day camp wrapped up with a celebration dinner and a drum social. Campers were asked to bring along their regalia, and those that did ended their stay at Camp Kitchikewana by dancing along to the beat of the drum.