Mission Possible

PAge 6

Inserted into this issue of Windspeaker, you'll find two supplements. We consider them so important that we're taking this space (where we usually get the opportunity to correct the world in 300 words) to explain why we think they're important. The two special sections are our third Classroom Edition and our supplement to celebrate the fourth National Aboriginal Achievement Awards.

It seems singularly appropriate that, this year, they're being published in the same month.

Our Classroom Edition is targeted as a teaching and learning aid for schools across the country. In it, we deal with issues that face the Aboriginal people of Canada. At the end of each article, we ask questions designed, we hope, to stimulate discussion.

Each year, the Canadian Native Arts Foundation selects 14 leading Aboriginal Canadians who have contributed to this country, including a lifetime achievement award and a youth award winner. It is our hope that the Classroom Edition will lead other youthful Canadian Native people towards a lifetime of achievement.

If there are questions about how to solve the questions raised in the Classroom Edition , or covered month-in and month-out by Windspeaker, or about who can solve them, then the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards are a big hint at the answers. The people who are profiled in our special section have been dealing with tough issues for their whole lives. Many have received awards for their heroic battles against the demons that have haunted Aboriginal Canada, or Canada as a whole.

We hope that, by celebrating the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards winners at the same time as we provide a teaching tool that will, we hope, make it into every Aboriginal classroom in Canada, we will be sending a clear message that the issues in the Classroom Edition can be tackled. They can be tackled by Aboriginal people. And, no matter how big the challenge we face, it can be overcome.

The people who won National Aboriginal Achievement Awards have already overcome huge challenges. Somewhere in our Grade 8 classrooms, there are future National Aboriginal Achievement Awards winners. And out there somewhere are the challenges they will come forward to face.

The message of this issue of Windspeaker is that every challenge is a "Mission Possible." And every youth is a potential winner.