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Transition school in the works
By CHEN CHEKKI - Apr 17, 2006

It’s something that happens all too often to the youth of Mishkeegogamang First Nation.

The Northwestern Ontario community, 30 kilometres from Pickle Lake, is forced to send its high school-aged students to schools in Thunder Bay, Ear Falls and Pelican Falls because it has no secondary school of its own.

Most of the other 49 reserves belonging to Nishnawbe Aski Nation are forced to do the same, as their schools usually go only as high as Grade 8 or Grade 10.

As a result of being put in a totally different environment, many of the students are exposed to things they are not normally exposed to and lack their ordinary support structure, said Connie Gray-McKay, chief of Mishkeegogamang.

Also, some of the teenagers are parents already, she said in an interview.

Many of the students are four or five years behind where they should be academically. Combined with the shock of their new surroundings, it makes for a recipe for dropping out of school.

“Many of them drop out and come back,” Gray-McKay said.

She said her community of about 1,500 is planning to have its own school, designed to teach basic trades skills along with the fundamentals of reading, math and life skills.

It is known as the Mish Tech Initiative and it has been in the works for the last two years. It could lead to the construction of a school by the end of summer.

The school would not be a substitute for urban high schools, but a transition point to prepare youth to go away to high school or enter the workforce. It may eventually offer accredited courses.

Courses in small motor repair, computers, woodworking and mining technology could be taught at the school.

Gray-McKay said when new homes are built in her area, plumbers, carpenters and electricians must be brought in from elsewhere to do the job.

“Why, when we can train our own young people?”

David Smith, an Ottawa-based entrepreneur who opened a trades school in his city nine years ago, said the new school will help satisfy the Northern demand for workers in mining and other industries.

As a member of the Mish Tech Initiative, he said the youth of Mishkeegogamang lack incentives, encouragement and motivation without their own high school.

“These young adults have to have some type of training,” Smith said.

Goyce Kakegamic, deputy grand chief of NAN, said to the best of his knowledge no other trade school exists in NAN territory.

Aboriginal teenagers tend to be “academically overwhelmed” when they arrive in urban centres such as Thunder Bay to complete high school, he said. Kakegamic said the new school in Mishkeegogamang would be “good for our people.”

However, Kakegamic said NAN has no money for the school, which could cost $2 million. Most of that cost would be for construction, with the rest used to run the school for its first year.

Funding will be sought from Ottawa, the province and the private sector, but the school would be run by the reserve, becoming part of Mishkeegogamang’s existing educational system.

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