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Eagle Lake First Nation is working with a number of different partners to host a Residential School/Family Wellness Gathering scheduled for July 1 to 4, 2004 on their famous camping grounds on the shore of Eagle Lake.

Everyone is welcomed at this important event, as are financial contributions to ensure the gathering is a success for everyone attending.

An important part of the gathering is the youth day and daily youth sessions for learning and sharing with the youth. Workshop leaders and speakers are well known facilitators who will help make this special event another strong step in the healing process required to address First Nation, family and personal issues created by the residential school system. Click here to view the tentative agenda.

Visit the web site at www.piiwaseya.knet.ca, regularly for updates on the information.

In partnership with Trican Multimedia and Statistics Canada, Oshki-Pimache-O-Win Education and Training Institute has developed Statistics Canada’s Aboriginal Statistical Training Course for distance delivery. The course is designed to prepare participants to locate, collect and effectively utilize statistical data, and may be of interest to anyone involved in organizational or community-based planning, programming, evaluation, or decision-making.

The course will be piloted beginning June 22, 2004 and we are looking for participants to be part of this initial offering. Because this is a pilot course, only ten participants will be accepted. All participants must have a working knowledge of Microsoft Excel and be familiar with using the Internet and e-mail. The deadline for applications is Thursday, June 10, 2004. Qualified applicants will be accepted on a first-come basis. There is no fee for this pilot offering of the course.

For further information, or to register for the course, contact Stephen Chase at (807) 346-2779, or by e-mail at schase@oshki.ca.

There was a total of 59,675,849 hits occurring on five of the monitored K-Net servers over the month of April. The six servers generating this amount of traffic include myknet.org, knet.ca, webmail.knet.ca, highschool.knet.ca, and photos.knet.ca (just click on the server to see the traffic monitoring chart for each server). These hits were made by the 799,986 visitors to these servers during the month.

These numbers do not include the traffic to the FirstNation.ca, FirstNationSchools.ca, hosting, along with other servers that K-Net maintains.

The May issue of the VolunteersOnline.ca e-newsletter included K-Net and KiHS as one of their selection of "a handful of Canadian non-profit and charity websites that show voluntary sector expertise with technology." Click here to read the newsletter.

Click here to read the K-Net story by the newsletter editors.

Hi to all the Northern Ontario communties that read the K-Net News. My name is Fabian Campbell and I'm the coordinator of the new Early Years Centre in Poplar Hill.

Over the last couple of months I have been working on setting up a centre for children ages 0-6 to have a place to visit and participate in story-telling as well as crafts and other organized activities. The new centre is also intended for the parents to become involved as well, sharing and volunteering.

I secured the former Poplar Hill K.I.H.S building and set it up for the new Early Years Learning Centre. All the supplies were ordered from wintergreen learning supplies.

I have also been visiting with parents to provide information for them about what the program is going to be doing.The program is will be  networking with other programs and workers that are already in place in most communities, such as HBHC and Pre-Natal.

I have been working closely with all frontline workers as well as the Chief and Council to get this project off the ground. I attended a training program in Thunder Bay with Yellow Quill college to become the local trainer. This was a one week training program and there were other coordinators from other communties that are developing a similar project in their communities.

I have some pictures of the grand opening that I want to share with everyone.

The new KO Telehealth web site is showcasing the different efforts being made to complete the Telehealth expansion project into each of the Health Centres in the Sioux Lookout Health Zone First Nations. From May 17 to 19, KO staff travelled to Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug to meet with the Chief, Council, elders, community members and the local health centre staff.

Watch the Community Engagement site on the main menu of the web site for additional community visits and consultations. The photo gallery and news stories contains a number of pictures and stories documenting some of the work involved in rolling out this project.

For photos of the trip, visit Photogallery #1 and Photogallery #2

As well, the reports from this trip are available on-line. These include:

• Elder Stories (meetings with community elders to share and learn about their views concerning telehealth)
• Report to the Communities (staff report of activities, meetings and findings)

Sterling Hall School in Toronto, has donated thirty boxes of books to KO First Nations for use in their schools and community libraries. The books were recently received in KO's Thunder Bay office by Geordi Kakepetum.

Arrangements are now being made to distribute these books to the KO communities. For more information about these books, contact Brian Walmark at 877-737-5638 (KNET) ext 51260 or by e-mail at brianwalmark@knet.ca

NAN Deputy Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler is running a marathon to raise money and awareness about diabetes. He is working with K-Net to post information on his new website about his efforts to support the Nishnawbe Aski in their struggles with this disease. Click here to check out his new web site and leave an encouraging comment for Alvin.

Alvin is one of a four-person team from Thunder Bay participating in the "Fire and Ice" marathon run in Reyjavik, Iceland. He is the only Aboriginal person on this team. 

Alvin hopes that the web site will encourage people across the NAN territory to adopt changes that will promote healthy lifestyles that will lower diabetes rates among Aboriginal people. The NAN Deputy Grand Chief wants to get the message across to as many NAN members as possible about this cause.

Schools are encouraged to organize fund-raising campaigns to assist Deputy Grand Chief Fiddler’s run.

To see the photos taken by Melanie Goodchild of Alvin practising for his run, click here.

Eugene Roman, Group President of Bell Systems and Technology along with Rebecca Shipman (Associate Director), Nathalie Micucci (K-Net Sales Account, Ottawa), Steve Burton (Sales Manager, Ottawa) and Gary Martin (Engineer, Sudbury) with Bell hosted a meeting on May 18 at their downtown Toronto office with representatives from FedNor and K-Net. Carl Seibel, Telecom Officer with FedNor along with K-Net staff (Dan and Brian) joined the Bell Canada team to discuss our work over the past few years in developing telecom network in Northwestern Ontario. The meeting provided an opportunity to examine areas of common interest and further the Bell and K-Net partnership in developing telecom infrastructure and services in First Nations across Ontario.

A tour of Bell exCITE! Co-lab provided the team with an opportunity to observe and share strategic planning and engagement workshop strategies with each other.

Thomas Harper of Koocheching First Nation successfully made a call to K-Net Services from the Koocheching school on May 28. What was unique about this call was that it was completed using a computer and a two-way satellite internet service supplied by Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program along with the Skype VOIP software. Of special significance is the fact that Koocheching First Nation remains one of the last Nishnawbe Aski Nation communities that has only a single radio phone serving the entire community.

Koocheching FN applied to the BRAND and FedNor programs for financial support to install a broadband connection to their community. BRAND rejected the portion of the Windigo First Nations Council's proposal that included Koocheching (even though they included them on their graphical presentation to the rest of the world). The Chief and Council are now working with FedNor in the hope that they will support their application to develop an adequate broadband connection to serve their community.

In the meantime, the Chief and Council are now investing in an interim local solution that will try to use the two-way satellite internet service at the school to deliver a connection for the families and all the buildings presently located in Koocheching. A local wireless solution is being purchased by the band that will hopefully be able to reach all the homes and deliver a connection to the rest of the world.

The VOIP software that can connect everyone to Koocheching and others is available free at http://www.skype.com ... you need a sound charge with speakers along with a microphone to be able to use this software and connect with others. A headset with a microphone will provide you with a little more privacy (these cost about $20). After loading the software, you are ready to make some calls using this on-line service. It is a good idea to write e-mail messages to everyone letting them know your username. The K-Net Helpdesk has three people connected to the Skype service ...

• John Moreau (Skype username = johnknet)
• Jamie Ray (jamie-knet)
• Jeannie Carpenter (jeannie)

The computer in the Koocheching school has Thomas Skype's username on it (tomharper). Give it a try ...