Anishinabek Nation hosts Eshki-niigijig Maawanjidiwaad youth gathering

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY — Climate change, housing needs, and mental health and addictions support were among the issues raised during the Anishinabek Nation’s Eshki-niigijig Maawanjidiwaad 2023 Youth Gathering, held from Aug. 10-13 at Lakehead University’s Thunder Bay campus.

“This youth assembly was an opportunity for the youth to provide their input and direction to the Anishinabek Nation on their priorities,” says Lance Copegog, Eshki-niigijig (Youth) Advisory Council Southeast male representative and Beausoleil citizen. “We heard that addressing climate change, creating housing for our families in our communities, and supports for mental health and addictions are among the top priorities for youth.”

Copegog says the youth are also looking into doing more gatherings to provide youth with opportunities to give direction to the Anishinabek Nation.

“We are doing a lot of work to build capacity in First Nation communities to support youth leadership initiatives, one of them being the creation of community-based youth councils,” Copegog says. “That is really important to give youth the opportunity in their communities to work on these issues, to advocate, and to represent their peers.”

Katelyn Peters, Eshki-niigijig Advisory Council Southwest female representative and Munsee Delaware Nation citizen, says this was the first youth gathering since 2019.

“I feel like it has been quite difficult, especially considering they experienced COVID-19 for the past three years,” Peters says. “They haven’t been able to see their peers, their own family members, other [citizens] of the Anishinabek Nation, but I think this is definitely a starting point and it’s going to be kind of like a snowball effect. Hopefully the next few gatherings there’s going to be even double or triple or quadruple the amount of youth that were present at this gathering.”

Pierre Debassige, Eshki-niigijig Advisory Council Lake Huron male representative from M’Chigeeng First Nation, says one of the main points of the youth gathering for him was the call for more gatherings, especially the youth and Elders gathering.

“We hosted that in late 2018 and that was a hit,” Debassige says. “The youth want to hear stories, they want to hear more history, they want to hear … culture teachings. I’ve been advocating for that for the past three or four years, so it’s really nice that this group of youth really want to see that again.”

Debassige says he took on the initiative calling for more youth councils within communities with help from the Eshki-niigijig Advisory Council.

“That way we can have more ideas coming in from all levels, from the community level across the Anishinabek Nation bringing it up to the nation level and maybe going as far as the Chiefs of Ontario level,” Debassige says. “There are toolkits in place right now to be sent to communities to be able to have youth start their youth councils within their communities.”

Briar Sandy, health secretariat assistant at the Anishinabek Nation, says the youth brought up a lot of issues from their communities during the gathering.

“I’m really proud of our youth,” Sandy says. “A lot of the issues they brought up had to do with addictions in their community and a lack of health resources, and we did speak a lot about emergency preparation in regards to fires, floods. We talked a lot about COVID-19, too, when sickness breaks out in your community you have to have a plan.”

Anishinabek Nation Northern Superior Regional Deputy Grand Council Chief Mel Hardy says the gathering brought awareness to the trials and tribulations that youth are having in the regions.

“One of the things we wanted to do was we wanted to expose the youth to the truth, but we also wanted to show the youth how they can gather in these areas and still create safe spaces,” Regional Deputy Grand Council Chief Hardy says. “One of the things we are talking about is building capacity within the communities to give the youth voice, but not just that, to give them movement.”

The Eshki-niigijig Maawanjidiwaad 2023 Youth Gathering also featured beading workshops, hide workshops, a drum social on Anemki Wajiw, and a Medicine Walk led by Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek’s Pamela Hardy.

“I provided an explanation that we can’t talk about plants without talking about the animals, without talking about the land, without talking the waters, the interconnections and some of the protocols when we go out to develop relationships with our medicines,” Pamela says. “There were many medicines before we got to the [Lakehead University Gitigaan medicine] garden that we were able to identify with respect to mental health and well-being, taking care of yourselves. The key message was to develop a relationship with that medicine — part of developing a relationship is knowing when to pick it, how to identify it, how to use it and when it’s OK to start teaching others to use it.”