Arts festival a bonanza for students: organizers

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Nine-year-old Keisha Cook eagerly bounced from display to display at the Eighth Annual Prince Albert Grand Council Fine Arts Festival which ran from April 26 to 29 in Prince Albert.

The Grade 3 artist, weaver and wordsmith was enthusiastically taking in all the other student work being showcased at the festival. "I like getting ideas from other people's art," Cook said. "There's nice stuff that people make out of their own minds."

Cook, a student at Chief Moses Ratt School in La Ronge, is no slouch herself creatively. She entered her own dreamcatcher, poem and a painting titled Hunter Coming Home in the arts and crafts competitions of the festival. And giving students like her a chance to see and be seen is exactly the purpose of the festival, according to Bev Waditaka. Waditaka is the education coordinator for the Wahpeton Dakota Nation School and a strong believer in the benefits of the Fine Arts Festival.

"It's very good for the kids. It gives them more self-esteem," Waditaka said. "They're not as shy as we were. They, as Indian people, are more assertive."

Waditaka has been involved with the festival for the eight years it has been around. In that time she said she's seen it grow in both size, and importance to the 26 schools that gather in Prince Albert every spring from all over northern Saskatchewan.

"I noticed there's getting to be more involvement and a lot of the schools take pride in what they're doing," she said.

Her own school makes it a big part of its cultural program, she said. From September onward, students, parents and teachers are working at the festival entries as an extra-curricular activity.

"We dance once a week and sing once a week. Toward the end we have regular dress rehearsals," Waditaka said. "They're anxious for it to come. There's a lot of practice for all the groups."

Waditaka chaperoned the school's dance group as it performed at the opening ceremonies of the Fine Arts Festival. She brought along 14 dancers who told the story of Mother Earth as the centre of the universe. While a traditional dancer represented Mother Earth in the centre of a circle, other traditional, jingle and grass dancers represented life, animals and people. Other students from the 12 PAGC bands performed and competed in things like jigging, square dancing and rap dancing. Visual artists concentrated on things like pastel drawings, model displays and leather work and literature, drama and both solo and choral singing were popular parts of the event.

Workshops were held throughout the week to allow the students to learn and take part in as many types of fine art as possible. This was the first year the competitions, displays and workshops were all held in one venue - the Prince Albert Grand Council Fine Arts Festival.

The festival is broken up into two portions. During the first two days the younger students in Divisions 1 and 2 are the highlight. Organizer Shona Stapleton said this year about 600 of them participated. Later in the week the older students arrive and set up their displays. The festival has averaged approximately 1,200 student in the past few years, Stapleton said, making it a huge undertaking for all the volunteers involved.

"We start planning around late October, early November," she said. And the students are busy getting ready too.

"They probably start getting their groups together as soon as we start organizing. They put a lot of practice into this."

One of the key elements of the festival for Stapleton is the powwow dancing exhibitions that go on.

"We wanted to keep the traditional aspect in the event," she said. "We wanted to mix traditional with modern.

"You have to understand how the traditions and culture have been taken away from Native people from way back when. This is a chance to get some of it back. It's important."