From Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal

Youth get chance to speak up

Kris Ketonen - January 28, 2011

Dilico communications manager Celeste Pedri, Dilico Children’s Foundation board president Elaine Graydon, Matawa First Nations Management education department manager Murray L. Waboose, and the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Keith Nymark look over new cameras that will be used by First Nations youth to photograph their communities.

Students from two Northern First Nations are getting a unique chance to make their voices heard through photography, thanks to a new educational initiative.

Dilico Children’s Foundation will launch See Us, Hear Us, funded with a $65,000 Trillium grant, next month in Ginoogaming and Long Lake #58, where about 30 elementary and secondary school students will learn photography skills and put them to use documenting their communities’ strengths, issues and potential, project co-ordinator Celeste Pedri said Thursday.

“Often . . . the youth voice is the last to be heard,” she said at the Matawa offices after the funding announcement. “This is really providing the youth with a way to get their voice heard using photography, using their story.”

See Us, Hear Us begins Feb. 3 and runs for 16 weeks.

Participating students will have access to digital cameras as they’re taught photography and photo editing skills.

They’ll write stories about the images they capture, and go on supervised photography field trips within their communities, Pedri said.

“It’s always an eye-opener for any community member to see the community through the eyes of the child,” she said.

After the project wraps up, the students will host exhibits of their work in their own communities, and have a chance to participate in a large gala showing hosted by the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.

See Us, Hear Us will give students more than hard photography and technological skills, said Murray Waboose, Matawa’s manager of education.

“It’ll foster self-confidence,” he said. “But more importantly, it’s an opportunity to diversify programming.

“Any type of enrichment/enhancement program such as (See Us, Hear Us) will certainly improve grades, as well as . . . student retention, and those are some of the key challenges that some of our communities face.”

The idea for See Us, Hear Us came up, Pedri said, during the filming of a health promotion video at Long Lake #58, in which some of the youth played roles.

“They were asking so many really cool questions about videography, photography, what do directors do, what do producers do,” Pedri recalled. “They sounded like they really had a thirst to learn this kind of stuff.”

Pedri said Dilico will document the project, and will share the results with other communities in hopes they might do something similar.