AES youth gather for cultural teachings and connection in Fort William First Nation
By Rick Garrick
FORT WILLIAM FIRST NATION — The Anishinabek Education System’s (AES) Youth Fall Gathering included medicine teachings with Joseph Pitawanakwat, protocol, water and berry teachings with Jules Armstrong, and a tour of Anemki Wajiw on October 6-7 in Fort William First Nation and Thunder Bay.
“[The youth enjoyed] a lot of the teachings from Joseph Pitawanakwat,” says Kaelyn Pizzale, Youth Initiatives Coordinator at Kinoomaadziwin Education Body (KEB). “Being up on the mountain, being by the water, [and] seeing the Sleeping Giant was a great opportunity for them.”
The first day of the gathering was held in conjunction with the final day of KEB’s Sharing for Success Education Conference 2026 at Fort William Historical Park, and the second day was held in Fort William First Nation and at the Valhalla Hotel and Conference Centre.
“Yesterday we were with the education conference and today we did some teachings with … Jules Armstrong on Fort William First Nation,” Pizzale says. “We did some protocol teachings, water teachings, berry teachings, and then we went up on [Anemki Wajiw] with Gail Bannon, where we learned about the mountain.”
Bannon says Anemki Wajiw means Thunder Mountain.
“That is the traditional name of the mountain,” Bannon says, noting that the mountain had been named as Mount McKay, after William Mackay, who resided in the Fort William First Nation area in the 1800s. “That’s why it’s important to me to have groups like you come up, we have schools come up all the time, just to transfer that so that people can start calling it by its real name.”
Pizzale says they also had a presentation by Science North on the afternoon of the second day of the conference.
“I strive to have our youth gatherings with youth all over Ontario and build connections with our youth council and the youth and getting teachings from different Elders and Knowledge Keepers,” Pizzale says. “We do our youth gatherings twice a year, so our last one was a spring gathering in Rama and we were in the sugar bush.”
Maddyson Bouvier, STEM specialist with outreach at Science North, says their presentation included information on invasive species and at-risk species.
“After that, we’re going to get them to code something called a micro:bit — it’s going to work like a dice and then we’re going to play a simulation game of what would happen if an invasive mussel was somehow in your happy little pond,” Bouvier says. “After that, we’re going to do another presentation about different types of animal species in and around the northwestern area, the youth are going to get to look at different skulls and different pelts. We have kind of another sorting game with that where we’re sorting them into different biomes, so different habitat areas.”
Cailen Hanzlik, Ogimaa Kwe of the AES Youth Council, says Pitawanakwat’s presentation was awesome.
“It was super cool to see Anemki Wajiw, that was super cool to learn its original name, and now that I know its original name I don’t want to call it Mount McKay anymore,” Hanzlik says. “I liked learning the story of Anemki Wajiw, it was a very beautiful view up there, Gail was really awesome telling us more about the mountain and giving us teachings about the mountain.”
Carson Norton-Sutherland, a member of the AES Youth Council, says there was a good turnout at the gathering.
“I’ve just sort of been strengthening knowledge that I’ve already had, gaining a deeper understanding of things that I’ve learned about already, and happy to learn even more,” Norton-Sutherland says.
Harmony Fisher, a youth from Long Lake #58 First Nation, says she enjoyed attending KEB’s Sharing for Success Education Conference.
“[There were] many voices, especially the educators,” Fisher says. “It’s great to learn from people in that field. Those medicine walks, that was great, absolutely.”