Employment gathering supports future generations in the work force
By Rick Garrick
THUNDER BAY — The Feathers of Hope held an employment gathering with support from the Future Generations Foundation on Nov. 28 at the Valhalla Hotel and Conference Centre in Thunder Bay.
“We use this opportunity to bring together young people and in this instance, educators as well as Indigenous employers, to talk about what they want or see in terms of hiring Indigenous young people,” says Betty Kennedy, CEO at Feathers of Hope and a Red Rock Indian Band citizen. “[The] young people themselves spoke about some of their personal issues as it relates to both education and employment and the struggles that they face, and they hopefully will give us some very specific recommendations about how to improve those systems in order to facilitate better attendance at both.”
The gathering began with an Employers Panel discussion featuring Jason Thompson, Leanna Henriksen, and Gary Christian.
“I’ve been very fortunate in life from an early age — as soon as I turned 17-years-old, I was able and given the opportunity to start working in the local plywood mill,” says Thompson, owner of Superior Strategies and Warrior Engineering and a Red Rock Indian Band citizen. “It was through those opportunities that I was able to pick up some skills that helped me to where I am today, so I’ve always been a person of learning, not the typical educational-type learning, but learning from hands-on.”
Thompson says he spent many of his winters on the trapline with his father and grandfather and many summers with his grandfather commercial fishing on Lake Nipigon.
“I think that’s where this entrepreneurial spirit comes from,” Thompson says. “We, as Indigenous people, have been practising the art of apprenticeships since we existed, and those are skills that you cannot ever forget.”
Thompson says he and his wife pursued post-secondary education goals when the forest industry began to collapse, and they also started up their own company focused on health and safety training and consulting.
“I am very active in the business community, so I am currently the outgoing chair of the board of the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce,” Thompson says. “I am very active locally, provincially, and nationally, but it’s through those networks of being involved that we heard the call for more Indigenous businesses.”
Thompson says his message for the gathering was to choose life.
“You deserve to be here, everybody deserves to be here, you deserve a voice,” Thompson says.
The gathering also featured an Educators Panel discussion with Tina Vacca, Ericksen Owen, and Kennedy and an Our Youth Panel discussion with Abigail Rutledge, Breeze Tougas, and Meranda Galusha.
“The presentations by the young people were extremely powerful and it really spoke to some of the issues they face by these systems and the difficulties and struggles that they’ve experienced, and I think they have some very clear, solid recommendations about how to improve them,” Kennedy says. “I think it also facilitated a broader discussion by those in attendance to also share and validate exactly what those young people were saying.”
Koral Hamilton, project manager at Feathers of Hope, says they were creating a space where youth were empowered to share their voices and have direct input into what supports or services they would find valuable.
“Our key points that we are hoping that the youth take away today is that their voices matter and we want to empower them and we want their input and opinion on situations and systems that they face in the education and employment sectors,” Hamilton says. “We will be putting those forward into reports that will be forwarded to the various levels of Indigenous and government councils for potential funding and implementation for programming.”