Connecting students with Indigenous role models through learning

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY — Red Rock Indian Band’s Sara Kae, a content provider with Connected North, shared some of her music during A Celebration of Learning with Connected North gathering on Jan. 27 at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.

“I am a session provider, I’m a host, I do outreach now with Connected North because I believe in everything that they’re doing,” Kae says, noting that her father Ron Kanutski was proud of her and believed in her to follow her dreams. “That’s all I needed to continue on in the successes that I’ve been able to take on. The important thing to know and remember is that we need role models, whether that be your parent, whether that be the host that comes into your class online, whether that be your teacher, you need those people in your life, so for me, that was my father and mother.”

Kae says her role as a content provider is one of the many things she does with Connected North, which is a program at TakingITGlobal.

“Connected North does such a good job at meeting students and meeting schools where they need us to be,” Kae says. “We just come in and spend a little bit of time with these students with whatever skill we have. For me, it’s music, but honestly, there’s such a wide variety and Connected North kind of allows these students to express themselves how they need to.”

Kae says she mainly does her role with Connected North through online sessions.

“But there is sometimes the opportunity for all of us to visit schools and go in and hang out with students,” Kae says. “So if there’s an opportunity where we’re in the community or I’m passing by, we’ve been able to kind of meet some of these students.”

Wasauksing’s Waukomaun Pawis, Indigenous education coordinator at Connected North, says his role is to work with communities and schools they are partnered with and bring guest speakers virtually into their classrooms.

“We have a really wonderful opportunity through our program to deliver virtual programming to remote northern Indigenous communities,” Pawis says. “It’s just a really awesome program that connects students with Indigenous role models or guest speakers that can share their knowledge, lived experience, expertise, their gifts, and their talents with students to inspire them and get them excited about education, but also maybe that is the inspiration for their future career or their potential in whatever avenues they want to exercise or go down or venture forth as their own potential career.”

Jennifer Manitowabi, community lead at Connected North, says caribou tufting was one of the arts projects that the students did through Connected North.

“That was an art in our northern communities, but almost lost,” Manitowabi says. “We bring in resource people that help bring back some of the teachings — that they’re not lost, they’re just resting. So we can find those resource people, they can teach virtually those lessons, and then the kids pick it up, it’s almost like a blood memory, so we’re reawakening what’s there, we just need the people to help it out.”

Manitowabi says the caribou tufters use dyed caribou hair tufts to stitch onto fabric to create designs.

“They get really creative, they’re really skilled,” Manitowabi says. “They know exactly where to pull that caribou hair to make it go right to the direction they need if it’s a leaf pattern or [another pattern].”

Michael Solomon, Indigenous engagement educator at Connected North, says he provides technical support and support for the school leads at Connected North.

“I have seen some kids transition from elementary to high school and seen them graduate, some of them really sticking it through,” Solomon says. “The thing for me that I really like seeing is there’s always that one moment where you see a student and that idea clicks, you could just see it in their eye where it’s just finally like boom, they’re inspired and they’re completely invested in what they’re learning. To me, I find those moments amazing in witnessing that.”

Jennifer Corriero, executive director at TakingITGlobal and Connected North, says the gathering was a celebration of student learning featuring some of the content providers, including Kae and Fort William’s Helen Pelletier, who share their knowledge as artists with students across remote northern First Nations in Ontario.

“Sara, for example, has music sessions so students learn about their voice,” Corriero says. “Helen has birch bark sessions — she makes kits, we send them to the schools, and they make their own little birch bark canoes, and she shares teachings. And the Thunder Bay Art Gallery also delivers art sessions.”