Archive - 2004

April 6th

Eastern NAN Women & Self Government Workshop in Timmins

EASTERN NAN WOMEN & SELF GOVERNMENT WORKSHOP

Timmins Native Friendship Centre, Timmins, Ontario

April 27-29, 2004

Workshop Topics:

  • History of Equay-wuk (Women’s Group)
  • Nishnawbe Women & Self Government - Traditional Forms of Governance, Colonization and Impact on Governance Structures, Current Governance Structures & Self Government
  • Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Self Government Initiative
  • Increasing Women’s Participation in First Nations Governance Structures
  • NAN Equay-wuk Women’s Working Group (selection of eastern NAN Women’s Representative)
  • Starting an Aboriginal Women’s Group
  • Open Forum Discussions

Equay-wuk (Women’s Group) is requesting for First Nation Councils to make a recommendation of the woman who will be attending on behalf of their community. All travel, accommodations and meals for 1 participant from each community will be paid for and arranged by Equay-wuk - total 21 communities invited.

One women representative from each of the following Eastern NAN Communities will be invited to attend the Timmins workshop:

1. Attawapiskat 2. Beaver House 3. Brunswick House
4. Chapleau Cree 5. Chapleau Ojibway 6. Constance Lake
7. Flying Post 8. Fort Albany 9. Ginoogaming
10. Hornepayne 11. Kashechewan 12. Long Lake #58
13. Matachewan 14. Mattagami 15. Missanabie Cree
16. Mocreebec Council of Cree 17. Moose Cree 18. New Post
19. Wahgoshig 20. Weenusk 21. Whitewater

Please contact your Chief & Council if you are interested in attending.

Background:

Equay-wuk (Women’s Group) is an aboriginal women’s organization serving women, youth and families who reside within Northwestern Ontario First Nation communities. It is a non-profit, provincially incorporated (1989) organization serving aboriginal people from 30 First Nation communities in Northwestern Ontario. Equay-wuk (Women’s Group) is independent from any other women’s group in Ontario.

Since 1999, Equay-wuk has initiated the "Nishnawbe Women and Self Government" Projects. The projects have enabled Equay-wuk to provide workshops on self government to women of the remote First Nation NAN communities.

In March 2002, NAN Resolution 02/04 was passed and states, "the NAN Chiefs in Assembly, direct the Executive Council to set up a Women’s Working Group" and the "Working Group is mandated to provide recommendations to the NAN Chiefs on how women could be included in the Chiefs’ meetings".

On July 31, 2003, NAN Resolution 03/75 entitled, "Representation of Eastern NAN Women in the NAN Equay-wuk Women’s Working Group" directed the NAN Executive Council to work with Equay-wuk to develop the NAN Equay-wuk Women’s Working Group which meant seeking participation of aboriginal women from the eastern NAN region in the Working Group.

The purpose of this project is to provide information to eastern NAN Women on: the history of Equay-wuk (Women’s Group), Nishnawbe Women & Self Government, participation in governance structures, starting women’s groups, the NAN Equay-wuk Women’s Working Group and the selection of an eastern NAN Women’s Representative.

For more information about our organization, our other programs and the Nishnawbe Women and Self Government program, you may visit our website at

www.equaywuk.ca.

For more information, contact:

Catherine Sergerie, Project Coordinator
Nishnawbe Women’s Working Group & Self Government Project
Equay-wuk (Women’s Group)
P.O. Box 1781 16-4th Avenue N. Sioux Lookout, ON
P8T 1C4
Tel: (807) 737-2214 or Toll Free: 1-800-261-8294
Fax: (807)737-2699

Other Contacts at Equay-wuk (Women’s Group):

Felicia Waboose, Equay-wuk Program Director
Darlene Angeconeb, Nishnawbe Women & Self Government Project Coordinator

Website:

www.equaywuk.ca
  • Funding for this project made possible thanks to the Department of Canadian Heritage

World Youth Centre Call for Applicants from Northwestern Ontario

Hello,

The Province of Ontario Smart Growth Secretariat is providing an opportunity for one young person from North Eastern Ontario and one young person from North Western Ontario to participate in the World Youth Centre Pilot Project in Toronto this July.  

To apply for this, please complete the application, which is availalbe by clicking here to see the WORD document, (39K).  

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.  

Sincerely,

Carolyn Taylor
Executive Director
ctaylor@worldyouthcentre.com

World Youth Centre http://worldyouthcentre.com

April 5th

Pikangikum youth travelling to Vancouver to showcase their successes

Two NAN First Nations are working with an organization called First Nations Youth At Risk to develop and deliver services supporting their young people. Weenusk and Pikangikum First Nations each received $50,000 from FNYAR last year to develop new youth programs. Click here to read the newspaper article in the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal describing their local program.

First Nations Youth At Risk (FNYAR) is hosting a national conference on youth at risk on April 17-18 at Musqueam First Nation in Vancouver, BC. More than 50 First Nations youth and youth workers will gather to exchange strategies on youth at risk and to learn of new approaches to youth at risk by several First Nation communities. Cindy Blackstock, Executive Director, First Nations Youth and Family Caring Society will be the guest speaker. This is an important conference for anyone working in the First Nations and Aboriginal youth at risk field. If you wish to attend, please register by contacting Harvey McCue, President and Coordinator, FNYAR, at 613-237-3033 or hmccue@sympatico.ca before April 8, 2004.

FNYAR is a charitable not for profit organization managed and directed by First Nations. It provides annual grants to First Nations to work with youth at risk. For more information on FNYAR, visit http://fnyar.ca.

Lieutenant Governor visit to Poplar Hill First Nation

Today the community of Poplar Hill will be visited by the Ontario Lieutenant Governor. He will be travelling with the Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Stan Beardy. They will be visiting the school as well as the band office. The visit should last a couple of hours. They will be meeting with the Chief and Council as well as the school board and the health unit. We are planning to provide them with a tour of Poplar Hill.

April 3rd

Group of Maori students meet with First Nation youth sharing stories on-line

On the afternoon April 2, Jesse Fiddler, Cal Kenny and Leon Fiddler, along with members of Jesse's family (Angie, Mya and Keenan) met via video conference with a class of post-secondary Maori students from New Zealand. The laughter, sharing and exchanges went on for over an hour between the two groups. Click here is see some pictures from this meeting.

Below are some of the e-mail messages that lead to this exchange, explaining the objectives of the meeting. Click here to see an earlier story about this Maori Post-secondary institution.

----- Original Message -----

From: "Graeme Everton"
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2004 3:13 AM

Kia ora koutou,

Once again I find myself saying thank you. Our students were really amazed at the whole experience and enjoyed the knowledge and stories that were shared. Today has set the benchmark and I look forward to more events in the future.

na
Graeme

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Jesse Fiddler (jessefiddler@knet.ca) wrote:

Hi Graeme,

Cal and myself would be interested in joining your class for that  session.  As Brian mentioned, Cal has been working on telling the story of  the Wasaho Cree Nation Traditional Lands through video and  websites (http://fortsevern.firstnation.ca/washaho).  I have some material on the legends from Sandy Lake (http://legends.knet.ca).  I can also talk about what other people and organizations have been doing in our area (http://sandylake.firstnation.ca).  Much of it was showcased at the Native Language gathering that we just had http://language.firstnationschools.ca

Jesse

----- Original Message -----

From: "Graeme Everton"  <graeme@everton.co.nz>
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 1:47 PM

Kia ora Brian,

Hope you have all recovered from the last few weeks of online activity. Thank you once again for giving us such a good and positive experience. It has certainly helped us focus our thoughts on where to with eLearning and the possibilities of video conferencing.

As indicated a week or so back I would like to ask if our students in  Maori Information Management (Diploma/Degree) can have the opportunity to talk with your team. The group is made up of Maori who are either Librarians or Archivists and are training to support Maori efforts to preserve Maori toanga (treasures) both physically and electronically. What I'm thinking is maybe talking about anything you have done to preserve the stories and knowledge of the tribes (the interactive river map for example). Do you have any Librarians or Archivists who would like to talk to us? We have a three hour class Saturday here/Friday afternoon your time and would love to fit you in for an hour

na
Graeme

Evaluation strategy for the KO Telehealth project

A joint proposal by the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Design and Rural Development in collaboration with Laurentian University’s Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research is now being implemented. This will begin the evaluation work for the KO Telehealth expansion project into all the First Nations across the Sioux Lookout Health Zone.

A video conference meeting on April 1 brought together project members from Balmertown, Sioux Lookout, Guelph and Sudbury as another step in completing the proposal. An evaluation committee with representatives from all the partner groups is now being developed. Please contact Kevin Houghton, KO Telehealth Project Manager (kevinhoughton@knet.ca) for more information.

Pic River Elementary School hosts FNS web site development workshop

Teachers, Teachers' aids and administrators gathered on April 2 at Pic River Elementary School near Marathon, Ontario to participate in the First Nations Schools Web Site Construction Workshop. The Pic River Elementary, Pic River High and Netamisakomik schools, each now have their own web site as a result of Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program that is administered in Ontario by Keewaytinook Okimakanak.

The staff at Pic River Elementary was particularly impressed by Jesse Fiddler's historical project on the K-Net web site. The teachers want to work with community members in Pic River to do a similar project on their new website... "We have the tapes and other historical materials.  Now we need to do what you have already accomplished on the Internet.  It will be a valuable tool for the classroom as well as the community at large," said one of the participants.

Click  here to see some more pictures from the session.

April 2nd

Register Now for Term 2 courses starting April 13 at KiHS

KiHS will begin it’s fourth and final semester on April 13, 2004. Students interested in taking a grade 9 or 10 course and living in one of communities with a KiHS classroom can enroll now.

Drop in or call your KiHS community classroom today!!

KiHS – TERM 2B COURSES

GRADE 9

GRADE 10

MFM1P – Applied Mathematics

SNC1P – Applied Science

NAC10 – Native Studies

ASM20 – Media Arts

ENG2P – Applied English

LNCB0/LNLBO/LNOBO – Native Language

April 1st

Over 58 million hits on K-Net servers in March

There was a total of 58,146,015 hits occurring on six of the monitored K-Net servers over the month of March. The six servers generating this amount of traffic include myknet.org, knet.ca, webmail.knet.ca, hosting.knet.ca, highschool.knet.ca, and photos.knet.ca (just click on the server to see the traffic monitoring chart for each server).

This number shows an increase from the previous month of over 6 million hits. As well, there was a total of over 800,000 visits made during this period to these six servers (an increase of over 80,000 visits from the previous month). The following table shows the actual numbers for these categories for the month of March.

SERVER

Total Hits

Total Visits

Daily Avg Visits

Daily Avg Hits

myknet.org

48317308

490325

15816

1558622

knet.ca

5289335

187466

6047

170623

webmail

2271088

64271

2073

73260

hosting

1707849

37527

1210

55091

highschool

392234

9104

293

12652

photos

168201

15373

495

5425

TOTAL

58146015

804066

Personal web pages at MyKnet.org continue to be the most popular on-line space for the Nishnawbe Aski to browse. In March there were over 48 million hits on this K-Net server (over 4 million more hits from the previous month)! The average daily hits on this server rose to over 1.55 million hits each day on this server!

Most of the K-Net servers that are being monitored for hits, visits and usage statistics using the webalizer program again showed an increase during the month.

Please note:

March 31st

KO Smart Communities project begins new era of development

A video conference meeting of the twelve Smart Community Demonstration projects on the last day of the program, signalled the start of a new era of development for each of the initiatives began under this innovative Industry Canada program. The Kuhkenah Network of Smart First Nations project successfully completed all the proposed deliverables scaling many of them to include other First Nations and organizations across the region and the country.

The Keewaytinook Okimakanak First Nations are now undertaking the challenge of planning and developing strategies to sustain all the programs and services began under this project.