Anishinabek storyteller to receive the Civitas Award
By Rick Garrick
ORILLIA—Chippewas of Rama and Golden Lake Elder and storyteller Mark Douglas is looking forward to his upcoming recognition with the Civitas Award at Lakehead University’s Orillia campus convocation ceremony on June 8.
“It was a surprise,” says Douglas, noting that he has shared his stories and teachings at the university’s Faculty of Education for about 11 years. “My wife and I both go and we do a cross-cultural piece helping them to understand who we are as a people and how to work with us. We talk about consensus versus majority rule, talk about restorative justice as an element and how things are in Rama.”
Douglas also speaks about the Mnjikaning Fish Weirs that were used for millennia to provide food for the community.
“They’re 5,000 years old,” Douglas says. “It was the largest wooden fish fence operation on Turtle Island. The fish came through the narrows every spring and fall, the whitefish coming through until the last part of November. It was a very powerful place, we’re talking about 300-600 families all showing up and working together.”
Douglas is recognized for his varied career path, including positions as a police officer, welfare officer and addictions counsellor.
“I worked for Rama for 10 years on the project team for Casino Rama,” Douglas says. “Prior to that, I was the executive director of the Ogemawahj Tribal Council for three years, prior to that I worked with the Native Community Branch of the Ministry of Citizenship and Culture.”
Douglas is recognized for understanding different perspectives and learning how to help others achieve their goals and assist them in seeing their potential.
“I’m of the loon clan and I’m pretty confident the loon sees life in a very particular way,” Douglas says. “We have to listen real hard to hear the other six clans and how they see life, and it’s always a little different, sometimes big time different and sometimes it’s just a subtle difference. Learning to accept the way [others] see life, rather than arguing, is really the point we are trying to make, and how to build consensus versus ‘my way is the right way and your way is wrong’.”
Douglas is also recognized for using his skills to support youth and encourage social interaction and cultural teaching.
“What we’re really taking about is life and how to get involved, easing yourself into community, doing the walk about, going to the store, talking to the older people,” Douglas says. “We talked a little bit about the shyness of our people — it takes a while for them to warm up a bit before we’re comfortable in knowing who you are and we are able to speak.”
Douglas is being recognized during the convocation ceremony along with Charles Pachter, an internationally recognized contemporary artist who studied French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, painting and graphics at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and art history at the University of Toronto.
“Mark has made significant contributions to Indigenous education at Lakehead University, ensuring that Indigenous peoples and their perspectives assume a rightful place in education teacher training in Ontario,” says Dean Jobin-Bevans, principal at Lakehead University’s Orillia Campus.
Fort William Elder Marlene Pierre; Tanya Talaga, author of Seven Fallen Feathers and All Our Relations: Finding The Path Forward; Gwen O’Reilly, a Lakehead University HBSc Forestry graduate who helped start up the university’s first women’s centre ; and Colin Bruce, former publisher and general manager of The Chronicle-Journal, will also be recognized on June 1 at Lakehead University’s Thunder Bay campus convocation ceremony.