Gii-maamiikwen daagod

Submitted by Ashley St. Pierre

Gii-maamiikwen daagod!

These words help describe my feelings over the week of sharing at the Anishinabek Nation Wahniigaaniiwat Youth Summit at Nipissing University on August 14-16. It was inspiring, good, great, incredible, fantastic, and I could not help but share my daily experiences with my Gran who, at 72 years young, accompanied me on the trip to North Bay.

My initial thought when I was invited to the Wahniigaaniiwat Youth Summit was, ‘How does entrepreneurship suite my interests?’. Leadership—yes, definitely—but entrepreneurship? I never saw it being in my career interest. What I discovered at the Youth Summit was, yes, it does! Being an entrepreneur doesn’t just mean you’re a business person with the main objective to make millions of dollars. Becoming an entrepreneur can also mean someone that establishes an organization to help solve or remedy an issue, or even draw awareness and promote preventative measures. The overall goal is to help many people and even inspire others.

I was inspired in many ways. On the first day, we met Earl Lambert, a motivational speaker and entrepreneur that brought the spirit of entrepreneurship to life for me. I was inspired by his introduction of what it means to be an Indigenous entrepreneur. Hearing Lambert’s story of how he became an adolescent entrepreneur that followed into young adulthood was inspirational. From selling preowned vehicles in college, to creating a clothing business sporting the logo “Proud to Be”; his journey brought him to creating his current business, Warrior Spirit Productions Ltd. His perseverance during his many struggles throughout his career taught him many valuable lessons along his journey and he came out the other side as a highly influential successful Indigenous entrepreneur. Lambert was great, and motivated everyone to participate in every activity, by invigorating the youth when the energy was lacking from us.

I greatly appreciated Gokomis Virginia Goulais and her presence. I could feel her warm spirit when she gave me a hug and introduced herself. She spoke with great insight and I really enjoyed the songs she shared and the stories behind each one. I was moved by the meanings of the songs and felt so connected with my heritage—hearing and feeling the beat of the drum, which is important to me—as I don’t feel a strong sense of connection to my culture.

The medicine walk led by Joseph Pitawanakwat of Creator’s Garden was calming and very exciting to learn from about the different vegetation species and all applications each species of vegetation can do for the body. Joseph’s knowledge of the forest is incredibly vast and super resourceful. I not only learned so much about plant medicine, but also was able to network with him as I build my business ideas around creating a holistic Aboriginal Mental Health practice.

Further presentations included Nadine Roach who defined Social Enterprise & Entrepreneurship that brought a clear depiction between what an enterprise & entrepreneurship is. Cliff Skelliter of Launch Pad Creative was down to earth and shared his journey and how he felt academics was not his strength, but he still became a successful entrepreneur in Sudbury. Skelliter is inspiring to many of the youth who may not feel that they can become successful at anything.

The speakers and information sharing was beneficial; however, the most rewarding  was interacting with other Indigenous youth and hearing the challenges in each community and hearing how those challenges have been resolved. For example: the creation of language apps would help combat the issue of our language dying in many communities, and this was shared as part of our group discussions. Every day we shared our view of entrepreneurship, but on the final day, we brainstormed as a group on what we thought makes a successful entrepreneur and the challenges/barriers for youth within a First Nation face to become a successful entrepreneur.

The Wahniigaaniiwat Youth Summit was spectacular! I hope there will be other events like this for the youth in the future. Looking forward to the new Innovation Center that is going to be developed in the near future. Every aspect was such an excellent experience for each and every one of us youth attending the Youth Summit.