Red Rock Indian Band Anishinaabekwe in contention for social change award
By Rick Garrick
THUNDER BAY — Red Rock Indian Band’s Cindy Crowe was surprised about her recent selection as a finalist for the 2021 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards for the Social Change Award: Regional Impact. Crowe is one of 23 finalists from across the country for the seven award categories.
“I’m one of three finalists from across Canada for the Social Change Award: Regional Impact category,” says Crowe, executive director at the Blue Sky Community Healing Centre. “So it’s quite astonishing to me.”
Crowe says she was nominated by an RBC employee she had worked with on an RBC panel earlier in 2021.
“She was the moderator and she let me know a couple of months later that she had nominated me for this award,” Crowe says. “It’s a very long process to get to where I am now with it — they do a very thorough check of [the nominees] and actually confirm that yes, you are doing something towards social change.”
Crowe says the Blue Sky Community Healing Centre was initially started out of her home in 2005 before a commercial space on Victoria Ave. was set up for the centre in 2013. After five-and-a-half years, Crowe purchased about 135 acres of property for the centre in the Municipality of Neebing, which is located south of Thunder Bay.
“It’s a prime location to conduct land-based teachings and invite individuals out and get reconnected to nature,” Crowe says. “We wanted to get things started last year but with the COVID-19 situation we had to put all of that on hold.”
Crowe says a few groups have attended the Blue Sky Community Healing Centre programming and activities on the land this year, including the building of a teaching lodge on Aug. 31-Sept. 1.
“We had anywhere from 35-45 youth on each day, many of them from the Regional Multicultural Youth Council and many from local organizations,” Crowe says. “It was very well attended. It was a wonderful couple of days to spend with people and as a result of that through a partnership with ORIGIN, the whole thing was filmed as a 360 [degree interactive experience] and it will be provided as a virtual reality (ImmersiveLink) session for students across Canada through the virtual headsets.”
ORIGIN, owned by Red Rock Indian Band’s Melissa Hardy-Giles, creates and distributes interactive experiences with 360-degree video content to subscribers across Canada through its ImmersiveLink Content Libraries.
Crowe says the building of the teaching lodge was a two-fold activity for the participants because most of them had not seen a teaching lodge before, let alone build one.
“And to have this opportunity available for students across Canada is very heartwarming and very satisfying,” Crowe says.
Crowe says the Blue Sky Community Healing Centre is impacting social change by inclusion.
“We’re inviting people from all backgrounds to participate,” Crowe says. “We want to make sure that everybody feels welcome and everybody feels included. Blue Sky follows the philosophy of the circle that everyone is equal in the circle and everyone brings value to the circle, so having activities like this out on the land, it just brings everybody together easier. People feel more connected somehow when they’re out on the land and enjoying meeting other new people for the first time.”
Crowe says the Blue Sky Community Healing Centre also provides professional development webinars on a weekly basis.
“Our kickoff event was a panel with five speakers,” Crowe says. “They spoke to what it means to them for our children to be returned home, referring to the unmarked graves that are being found across Canada. Blue Sky felt that was a very important topic to start the fall series off because these discoveries have been impacting people all summer long.”