Xavier Kataquapit

The 14th Annual Wabun Youth Gathering is being held in the Wabun territory this summer in multiple stages with a new format to protect youth and participants during a global pandemic. A small gathering was held in Matachewan First Nation on July 21 and 22 and a second compact gathering was held in Mattagami First Nation on July 28. A second day of events had been planned for Mattagami FN but due to severe storm activity and a community power outage the second day of events was cancelled.

You would think that this Corona-virus pandemic had gone away judging by the way people are acting here in northern Ontario. I have been doing curbside pick up mostly at grocery and hardware stores now for some time. It surprises me to see people heading into stores with no mask or gloves and seeming to not pay too much attention to the two metre social distance rule.

An entire new generation of graduates from universities, colleges, secondary schools and elementary schools are moving ahead with their lives all across Canada. This time of the year is very special for First Nations and in particular remote communities. Organized education is a relatively new thing for my people considering that less than a century ago most of my ancestors were only involved in learning about surviving on the land.

A few months ago if anyone told me I would have to be staying at home, stopping all travel, dealing with most stores and services shutting down right across the entire world and being terrified of catching a virus and dying, I would have thought they were nuts. This is the extraordinary reality that everyone on the planet now faces. It is like we all went to sleep and had a bad dream that we can’t wake from.

We are in a world wide war with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We are now at a critical stage in Canada and here in Ontario. If we take this threat seriously and listen to the experts who are telling us to stay at home, cancel events, close schools, work from home if possible, practice safe hygiene and quarantine ourselves if we get sick, we just might come out of this somewhat intact in a few months. If not we might be facing many more months of dealing with this deadly virus.