Corn featured at Ecole Gron Morgan cultural powwow

The Ecole Gron Morgan cultural powwow was a bit ‘corn’y.
Presenters offered tasty corn bread and corn teachings to students at this year’s cultural powwow Jan. 20 in Thunder Bay.
“Corn originated here in North America,” said Teresa Magiskan, traditional healing coordinator at Anishnawbe Mushkiki in Thunder Bay. “First Nations people were great agriculturalists. Corn had been cultivated here for 4,000 years and it is what we used to make our bread.”
Magiskan, who made the corn presentation along with Sabrina Boucher, healthy eating active living coordinator at Anishnawbe Mushkiki, said corn is good for people on gluten-free diets because it is gluten free.
“Corn was ground in hollow logs and made fine,” Magiskan said. “Corn soup is a staple of our diets.”
Although corn was once traded among the different First Nations people across North America, Magiskan said it is not used as much now because of the ease of using wheat flour and the higher cost of corn.
“It originated in Mexico,” Magiskan said. “In Virginia, the Six Nations people inhabited that area and corn was grown there. There was a lot of trading that occurred and people never stayed in one place as they do today. People travelled and always moved and seasonally they knew where to go to trade for what they needed.”
Magiskan said some of the students commented on the lessons they learned in school about First Nations trading.
“It was nice to hear some of the children had already known about the practice of the corn being ground in hollow logs,” she said. “It is good that our history and our practices are taught within the curriculum.”
Magiskan had previously presented medicine wheel teachings the past two years at the annual Ecole Gron Morgan event.
The cultural component of the event featured Jerry Dampier sharing traditional games, Kelvin Redsky discussing sweat lodge teachings, Shannon Gustafson and Ryan Gustafson sharing traditional female/male roles, Sarah Wright telling stories and legends, and Darren Lentz talking about life as an artisan.
Gloria Ranger also discussed role modeling and motivation.
“The challenge is really interesting because I have Grade 1 all the way up to the older kids,” Ranger said. “You have to speak to them at their level and it’s really great.”
The powwow featured a grand entry, a flag song, a veteran’s song, category dancing and intertribal dancing. Men’s traditional, women’s traditional, men’s grass, women’s fancy shawl, women’s jingle dress, boy’s grass and chicken dancers took part in the hour-long powwow.
Nathaniel Moses, youth outreach worker with the Neighbourhood Capacity Building Project at Ecole Gron Morgan, said the event expands understanding of First Nations people.