Rick Garrick

A group of seven high school students are enjoying the opportunity to grow, harvest and sell vegetables and honey this summer through Roots to Harvest’s Urban Youth Farm Program in Thunder Bay.

“It’s good labour and a nice workout,” says Kiaren Wapoose, a Hammarskjold High School student from Eabametoong who was working at the vegetable market stand on Aug. 6. “It’s gone alright — I find it a little stress relieving working with other people.”

Wapoose says he likes working with the potato plants at the farm but has also worked twice with the honeybees.

Three Oshki-Pimache-O-Win The Wenjack Education Institute Police Foundations graduates/students are currently studying at the Ontario Police College (OPC) after being hired by the Ontario Provincial Police for the Pikangikum detachment. The three OPP recruits, Rhonda Peters and Daphne Peters from Pikangikum and Brendan Mawakeesick from Sandy Lake, will also study at the OPP training facility in Orillia after completing the OPC training. Once the recruits complete their training at OPC and the OPP training facility, they will be assigned a coach officer in Pikangikum.

Fort Albany recently released a statement on justice for survivors of St. Anne’s residential school who are trying to have their Independent Assessment Process (IAP) compensation cases reopened. The survivors did not have important evidence presented during their IAP because the federal government withheld information it possessed, including the testimonies of hundreds of St. Anne’s survivors that were gathered and shared with the Ontario Provincial Police in the 1990s.

The late Lakehead University Elder and alumna and Gull Bay citizen Dolores Wawia, who died at age 76 on May 31, is recognized for her achievements in education and on the land.

Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler is calling for more communications with First Nation communities after six staff at the Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre (SLMHC) tested positive for COVID-19 as of June 22.

“Obviously we’re concerned by these developments — not only are we concerned about the six or so positive cases that have been identified, we’re also concerned about the communication process from the hospital,” Fiddler says, “the fact that there have been delays to communicate the news of these troubling developments to our communities.”