Thunder Bay youth tell the story of Mount McKay

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY—Curve Lake’s Shelley Knott enjoyed watching her daughter perform in the St. Elizabeth School play — Anemki Wajiw (The story of Mt. McKay) — on May 9 at St. Martin School in Thunder Bay.

“It’s absolutely wonderful,” says Knott, who works with the Ontario Native Women’s Association in Thunder Bay. “For the school to take that opportunity to educate the children about the true cultures of Indigenous people is phenomenal.”

Knott says her daughter Lysa Rae Knott was proud about participating in the performance along with about 52 Grade 5 and 6 St. Elizabeth students.

“This is her second performance,” Knott says. “She was talking about how nervous she was, but on the other hand you could see and hear from the tone of her voice on how proud she was that they were talking [about] and bringing so much culture into the school.”

The students previously performed the play in their own school after creating the play under the direction of Lila Cano, arts educator for the Anemki Wajiw project. They performed it twice on May 9.

“One of the classes represents the spirit and the embodiment of the mountain, of Anemki Wajiw, and the other class is in a shadow box with frozen pictures telling those [non-Indigenous] settler colonial stories,” Cano says. “The gist of the piece is it didn’t need to be renamed — it already had a name and its name is to be respected. This was a place that was sacred to the Anishinabe people, it was a place where they held their ceremonies, it was a place that was cared for by the Elders, it was a place that was super special to them, so Anemki Wajiw is its name and it never needed to be renamed.”

Cano says the students participated in a field trip to Mt. McKay where they learned about some of the traditional teachings and knowledge about Anemki Wajiw from Laura Calmwind and Gail Bannon.

“So it was very powerful for them to start in that place,” Cano says. “I thought that was crucial in terms of where we were going with this story. We did a huge brainstorming session, and the children themselves decided that their project needed to be about telling the real story of Anemki Wajiw.”

Fort William’s Daphne Maclaurin, one of the performers in the play, says learning about the history of Anemki Wajiw was “really inspiring”.

“It opened my mind about my culture,” Maclaurin says. “I was very happy [the other students] got to learn about Anemki Wajiw and the Indigenous people.”

Avonlea Moorman, another performer, says the Anemki Wajiw project was a “really great learning experience”.

“It really opened my mind to a lot of new opportunities and experiences,” Moorman says. “I’m really thankful that Lila chose our class to be a part of this really incredible experience.”

Danica Jourdain, another performer, says the Anemki Wajiw project changed her perspective about the history of the area.

“I felt like I knew everything about our history in Thunder Bay,” Jourdain says. “My dad is super excited to see this because he loves learning about history on our culture.”

Anita Treesh, principal of St. Elizabeth School, says the Anemki Wajiw project was an “exceptional experience” for the students and herself.

“We did this on a small scale at the school level and then we just rolled it out because we really felt it was important to share this knowledge,” Treesh says. “They actually had a standing ovation the first time they did it, so the parents were very impressed.”