Maadaadizi in Marina Park an opportunity for new students

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY – Pic Mobert’s Howard Twance encourages First Nation students to pursue their post-secondary education goals, even if it takes them across Canada or the United States.

“We’ve got students all over the States, all over Canada — we’ve got students in Harvard,” says Twance, director of the Post-Secondary Student Support Program at Seven Generations Education Institute in Thunder Bay. “Many of them do start off with a pre-tech program and they’ll move on to their choice of program. Once they start to get some confidence and they start to see the opportunities, a lot of them go on further. They’ll go on to the honours, to the masters, to the PhDs.”

Twance and a number of support staff and leaders from Lakehead University, Confederation College, Matawa Education, Northern Nishnawbe Education Council, Oshki-Pimache-O-Win, Fort William First Nation and Eabametoong First Nation hosted Maadaadizi 2014, the first group post-secondary Aboriginal student orientation held in Thunder Bay, on Sept. 6 at Marina Park.

“We’re trying to give (students) an opportunity to meet each other and to meet some of the faculty and some of the instructors and some of the people who are associated with their education,” says Chippewa of Georgina Island’s Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, vice-provost of Aboriginal Initiatives at Lakehead University. “And we’re going to try to introduce some speed dating. We set them up opposite each other and they talk about themselves for one minute. After the opposite person has a chance to talk, we ask them to rotate and they get a new person. It gives them an opportunity to develop their shtick, their pitch, and they get to meet a lot of people.”

The students were also provided with an opportunity to meet role models and mentors during the five-hour orientation.

“They need some role models and they need to see that what they are doing will work out for them and they will be in a better place,” Wesley-Esquimaux says. “There are people that have gone ahead of them who understand what it is like.”

Maadaadizi 2014 featured a keynote speech by Wab (Wabanakwut) Kinew, former CBC host of the national documentary series 8th Fire and current director of Indigenous Inclusion at the University of Winnipeg, speeches by the leaders of the education institutions, comedy by Lake Helen’s Ron Kanutski, music by Sara Kanutski and Nick Sherman and a variety of information booths.

Twance says the orientation also provided students with an opportunity to “see and be seen”.