Latest news with #Unreserved
Winnipeg Free Press
3 days ago
- General
- Winnipeg Free Press
From doubt to degree: students rewarded after post-COVID pivot
Before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, both Jennifer Breddam and Deanna Garand never dreamed they would go to university — let alone graduate. Breddam, 37, stepped out of her wheelchair she uses due to chronic back problems and walked across the stage to receive her labour studies degree Wednesday at the University of Manitoba spring convocation ceremony. Garand, 32, was handed her degree in nursing a day later. 'I feel I can do a lot of good through a public policy lens,' said Breddam, who will begin a masters degree program in social justice and equity studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., in the fall. Garand said she told people many times through the years that she would never set foot in a university. 'People who know me can't believe I was in university,' she said laughing. 'My aunts are nurses, my grandmother was one too, and they were surprised when I said I've been accepted into nursing — but they were all excited.' Breddam and Garand are two of the 2,934 graduating students receiving their diplomas this week at the U of M Fort Garry campus convocation. The convocation began Wednesday and continues to Friday. The ceremonies have already seen Dave Angus, who was president and CEO of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce for 17 years before becoming president of Johnston Group, an employee benefits company, be installed as the university's 15th chancellor. Four people will receive honorary degrees, the university's highest honour. They include: former Manitoba premier Greg Selinger; Sister Lesley Sacouman, who joined the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary when she was 17 and went on to co-found Rossbrook House and Esther House; Rosanna Deerchild, host of CBC radio show Unreserved and a Cree storyteller from Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation; and Catherine (Kate) Bowler, a Winnipeg historian and New York Times bestselling author who wrote several memoirs after being diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer at 35. Breddam, who had injured several discs in her back years earlier, was working in human resources with Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority when the pandemic hit. 'With my job, I was in the car for long periods of time, doing visits within the health region, and I had constant back pain,' she said. 'Then, in 2020, one day I couldn't get up — I couldn't stand or walk. For about eight months (during COVID-19 lockdowns) I was pretty much bedridden. I even needed help with dressing and showering. But, when I was lying down, I was not in a lot of pain and my fiance recommended that, to distract me and give me something to work towards, that I register for online courses at the university. 'I knew it wasn't going to be a quick recovery, so I did.' When lockdowns were lifted, Breddam switched to hybrid courses, with some online and others in person. While in university, Breddam became involved with organizations supporting and advocating for people living with disabilities. She has been chairwoman of the Manitoba League of Persons with Disabilities for two years. She also served as president of the Labour Studies Students Association. There's only one downside to the two-year degree program she is about to start. 'My wedding for this July has been put on hold — that really sucked — but, while I have received scholarships, I needed the money for my education. My fiance fully supports me.' Garand, who is Métis, was working as a makeup artist and manager with a retail cosmetic company and cannabis outlet when the pandemic shuttered all that. That's when she began looking at her options. 'I never really wanted to go to university, I didn't want to go to school for any reason,' she said. 'But once COVID started, and I couildn't work anymore, my family and friends said why don't you go to school? Maybe you'll find something you like.' Sundays Kevin Rollason's Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba. Garand said she 'hemmed and hawed' but submitted her application on the final day. 'I thought, if I ever go back to school, now is the time.' With a nursing job in the community waiting for her, she is thanking the university and the Indigenous Student Centre for the support she was given. 'If I had gone back to school when I was younger, I wouldn't have been able to finish,' Garand said. 'I think a little bit of life experience helped. 'I'm glad I did.' Kevin RollasonReporter Kevin Rollason is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He graduated from Western University with a Masters of Journalism in 1985 and worked at the Winnipeg Sun until 1988, when he joined the Free Press. He has served as the Free Press's city hall and law courts reporter and has won several awards, including a National Newspaper Award. Read more about Kevin. Every piece of reporting Kevin produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
CBC
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Why these sisters from Fisher River Cree Nation hoop dance
The Mason sisters from Fisher River Cree Nation in Manitoba spoke with CBC Radio's Unreserved about their love of hoop dancing. They've performed all across North America, including at the World Championship Hoop Dance Contest in Arizona earlier this year.
CBC
06-04-2025
- CBC
Guided by the bear, these Indigenous stewards are protecting their lands and cultures
Marven Robinson's first encounter with a spirit bear was a spiritual moment. "It was almost like my life flashed in front of me," he said. On the instruction of his Gitga'at hereditary chief and grandfather-in-law, Chief Johnny Clifton, Robinson was showing a crew around his homeland on the B.C. coast to help them find and film the rare white bear. "All of a sudden … a big white bear came walking out and crossed the creek and went and caught a fish right out in front of us. I was only 19 then and basically it hooked me and I've been doing that since." Bears are spiritually significant in many Indigenous cultures. The bear represents courage in the Seven Sacred Laws, also known as the Seven Grandfather Teachings, which are shared by several communities. Unreserved is exploring each of the seven teachings in this series, Sacred Seven. Robinson, also known as the "Spirit Bear Whisperer," has been a bear guide for more than 25 years. He introduces visitors and photographers to spirit bears and coastal wolves through his company Gitga'at Spirit Tours based in Hartley Bay, B.C. These rare black bear variants, also known as Kermode bears, are revered by many First Nations. Different legends explain the bears' colouring. "One of the legends that goes back far to glacial age is that the creator left one in 10 black bears white, just to remind us of the clean, pristine times when this earth was covered with glaciers," Robinson said. The story reminds Robinson of his responsibility to take care of the lands he lives and works on. "We've been lucky enough to share our territory with this bear. And I think it's taught us that we're only sharing it. We don't own the area, the bears, the wildlife that live there. We just feel like we're left to look after and try and keep the area the same way it was when we found it." Bear-led conservation Before his passing, Chief Johnny Clifton gave Robinson a responsibility to take care of the spirit bear. Robinson says his work as a guide has helped him fulfil this responsibility, through public awareness and tourism. Until the 2010s, the Gitga'at people kept their local spirit bears a secret, for fear of trophy hunting, he says. But eventually, photographing the bear became a key piece of protecting them — and the Gitga'at territory. Robinson recalls when the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project was set to run through the Hartley Bay area. "[Photographer] Paul Nicklin was coming up to shoot some stuff for the cover of National Geographic, and I had taken him out to one of my special places. I called it a nursery for the spirit bears … and I was sitting with him when he first got to photograph one of the bears by a waterfall. "'Marvin,' he said, 'if you want to save Gitga'at territory, you've got to start taking people here, so they got to see what we're seeing today.' And once National Geographic had the bear on the cover, the cat was out of the bag and people started coming. People wrote letters and managed to get the pipeline … stopped." Robinson says the move prevented irreparable environmental harm to his homeland — thanks in part to the spirit bear. Lessons from a bearskin On the opposite coast, a polar bear skin is helping Vanessa Flowers preserve her Inuit culture. When a hunter in her community of Hopedale, Nunatsiavut, harvested a young male polar bear, Flowers reached out to him to see if she and her brother Nicholas could observe him as he cleaned its skin. "He said, 'Actually, I'm trying to sell it just as it is. Do you want to buy it?' And we thought, 'You know, this is the perfect opportunity to learn.'" The Flowers siblings are cultural teachers. Together with other youth, they created the Inotsiavik Centre, an organization connecting Inuit in Nunatsiavut to their language and culture. Last year they won $1 million to establish the centre through the Arctic Inspiration Prize. The siblings are well practiced in cleaning sealskins, but cleaning a polar bear was a new, much bigger challenge. "Between my brother and I, we started at one in the afternoon and we finished cleaning it at seven I believe. I think it was six or seven hours cleaning it straight with a few breaks in between…. It just seemed like it was never ending." When the going got tough, Flowers says she took inspiration from her late grandmother, who she had seen cleaning polar bear skins when she was a child. "When she got so much older, she would tell the hunters, 'If you're gonna kill the bear, you gotta learn how to clean it yourself because I'm getting old.' … And now they clean it themselves because they learned from her. It's the passing on of that knowledge…. It's important to carry on the traditions, because if the bear is gonna be killed, the skin has to be cleaned." Now that the skin is cleaned, it has to dry for several weeks on a frame. Once that process is done, Flowers wants the skin to be used for programming in her community, as a place to sit in a tent or an igloo. If she and her brother clean a future bear skin, it will be used as sewing material for her program participants. She wants to recreate the warm, healing environment her grandmother — known to some as Aunt Joy — always made for others in the community. "Somebody said it feels just like Aunt Joy's, and I was like, that's why we're doing what we're doing, to give people a sense of a homey feeling where they can come and be themselves and live well … and sew and chat and laugh." It all adds up to one goal for Flowers: helping Inuit connect to their identities and to each other.
CBC
25-03-2025
- General
- CBC
Mortified about menstruation? Some Indigenous youth learn to celebrate it instead
The spring equinox has just passed, but Cutcha Risling Baldy's summer schedule is already looking jam-packed, as youth from her Hupa community prepare to celebrate something their tween peers may be apprehensive about or even avoid discussing: their first period. Risling Baldy has helped foster the resurgence of the Hupa Flower Dance, a ceremony honouring the start of menstruation. Her daughter, who took part a few years ago, belongs to a new generation openly talking about and thinking of menstruation in a positive light. Revived by a group of Hupa women, the Flower Dance is a rite of passage that celebrates, guides and empowers young menstruators as they begin their transition into adulthood. Not celebrated openly for more than 100 years, "now, it's such a part of our existence and our lives we couldn't imagine a world without it," the associate professor of Native American studies at California State Polytechnic University Humboldt in Arcata, Calif., told Unreserved. It's just one effort among many that Indigenous women are leading to shift the narrative about menstruation. They're doing away with shame and stigma in favour of honouring and supporting a young person's first period as an important and sacred transition in their life. "When you dance for somebody, when you sing for them, when you stop the world for five or seven or 10 days for them, they cannot grow up in a world thinking that they are nothing," said Risling Baldy, who is Hupa, Karuk, and Yurok and enrolled in the Hoopa Valley Tribe. "They know that the whole world will stop to celebrate them and the whole world will stop to show them how important they are — and then they will turn around and do that for the next girl and the next." Revival normalizes talk of menstrual period Once openly practised, the Hupa Flower Dance was a ceremony pushed underground during the mid-19th century Gold Rush era, when Indigenous people were targeted with acts of violence by settlers arriving in northern California, said Risling Baldy, who documented the ceremony's return in her book We Are Dancing For You. "It became very dangerous for us to do this dance because it was celebrating a young woman. It was bringing women together…. It was demonstrating how important they are politically and socially." Risling Baldy counts herself among those who, in her youth, had internalized Western patriarchal perspectives about women — including a negative perception about menstrual periods as dirty, something to be hidden or feel ashamed about — in the absence of ceremonies like the Flower Dance. Now, however, not only are young Flower Dance participants rejecting those negative narratives, its revival is normalizing open discussion about menstruation, including among boys, men and elders of the community, Risling Baldy said. That breaking down of barriers, she says, can eventually make it easier for young women to open up about any challenges or concerns in their future. Marking a 'Welcome to Womanhood' year Lenaape and Anishinaabe Elder Tracey Whiteye has also seen the positive impact of more people learning traditional teachings that celebrate menstruation — known as moon time — through her role as a cultural educator from the Delaware Nation of the Thames in Ontario municipality Chatham-Kent. When a young person starts their first menstrual cycle, it kicks off a year ("13 moons") of ceremonies and learning from aunties, grandmas and others. "It's like we celebrate a 'Welcome to Womanhood' year," she said. "It's teaching them about themselves. It's teaching self-confidence, self-esteem. It's teaching them [how] we — as aunties and grandmothers and relatives — will watch her as she grows." It's not only the young who benefit either. Whiteye recalled being approached once by a survivor of the Sixties Scoop — the decades-long period in Canada when Indigenous children were taken from their families and fostered with non-Indigenous people far away (or abroad), with many losing touch with their culture. Seeing her granddaughter prepare for her first moon time and berry fast — a time of abstinence from eating berries, which hold special significance — the woman asked about participating as well, having never had the chance herself. "When you talk about moon time and you talk about berry fasting… we talk about [the] importance of identity and sense of belonging," Whiteye said. "It is that opportunity for that inner-child healing for that grandma." Creating space for different conversations Promoting education about menstruation as a time of power, resilience and strength — challenging the notion it's something dirty, messy or to be kept secret — is one of the newer initiatives of Moon Time Connections, founded by Nicole White, who is Métis from Treaty 6 Territory in Saskatchewan. Since 2017, the group has delivered more than 10 million menstrual products to northern and remote communities, where they may be scarce or unavailable, much more expensive or considered a luxury. Currently supporting schools, shelters, health clinics, friendship centres and other partners in nearly 200 communities, their offerings range from single-use pads and tampons to menstrual discs and cups, period underwear and cloth pads. More recently, after consultations with local partners, White and her team introduced training modules — separate ones for kids, teens and adults — to help facilitate local discussions about a person's first moon time. Part of it involves inviting elders to share traditional teachings and practices around this coming-of-age ceremony, said White, who lives in Saskatoon. "We've got a long way to go. We're at the beginning of this conversation, but I'm really excited to hear how this could impact a young person now who's starting their period," she said.
CBC
09-03-2025
- Climate
- CBC
Sea ice is disappearing in the North. This is how Inuit are responding
For over 30 years, Reuben Flowers has been documenting the changes unfolding in the North. The Inuk life skills teacher from Hopedale has spent decades jotting down daily observations of the weather conditions and ice levels in the capital of Nunatsiavut. And his journals are proof that the climate is changing. "The ice is definitely thinning," Flowers, 57, told Unreserved host Rosanna Deerchild. "When I was a child, it was much thicker then." For many communities in the North, ice is present for six to nine months of the year, and is an integral part of the landscape. During the winter, when the ferries stop and flights could be disrupted, ice connects communities. They become roads for people to traverse and hunt for food and materials such as arctic char, seal and firewood. Climate change, says Flowers, disrupts the land and ice that have sustained Inuit people physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally since time immemorial. "We are Sikumiut," said Flowers. "It means people of the ice." As the ice continues to deteriorate, residents of Nunatsiavut, like Flowers, are being forced to adapt to a new reality. Adapting to climate change Rex Holwell, an Inuk from Nain, the northernmost community in Nunatsiavut, is tackling the problem head-on. He's the manager of SmartICE operations in Nunatsiavut, a company that combines traditional knowledge with modern technology to monitor Northern ice conditions. He says the increasing demand for their technology is bittersweet. "[It's] bad in the sense that everybody's seeing climate change that we really don't want to [see]," Holwell said. In the past, Inuit relied on traditional knowledge passed down through generations to assess ice conditions. For safety purposes, elders taught younger generations how to determine its thickness, strength and snow cover. But the weather trends used to predict ice levels are no longer the same as what had been used in their traditional knowledge, according to Holwell. The extended periods of rain and warmer temperatures in Nain are "stuff that [they've] never [seen] before," he said. In response, SmartICE works with communities to make more informed decisions before they travel on ice by retrieving and providing them with data about an area's ice conditions. One of SmartICE's tools, the "smart buoy," is a tall, tube-like sensor lowered into the ice that can measure ice thickness. Another device, the "smart qamutik," is a mobile sensor attached to a snowmobile that travels across the ice, collecting data on the ice's condition as it moves. Establishing climate resilient infrastructure Robert Way looks at the thinning of the world's ice in all its forms, such as glaciers and permafrost. Way is an associate professor and research chair at Queen's University, and is Kallunângajuk (Nunatsiavummiut) from central Labrador. He is concerned about the livelihoods of people living in the northern communities. Recognizing the types of disruptive changes that he's seen in the Arctic as a climate scientist, he says communities are not only at the peril of climate change. The ongoing housing situation in Nunatsiavut, that's been called a human rights violation, is exacerbated by the melting ice. "When you're doing this type of work, you're trying to understand climate change, [but] this is all happening in the backdrop of other issues that are at the forefront as well," he said. WATCH | Thinning sea ice is taking a toll on Nunatsiavut residents: Shrinking sea ice in northern Labrador 4 years ago Duration 1:00 Nunatsiavut residents describe the thinning sea ice, and the toll it's taking in their communities One of Way's current initiatives is to generate maps for the community of Nain that help identify areas that may be unsafe to build on due to changing permafrost conditions. "When you have a growing community that has all kinds of needs for additional housing … you don't want to be having to spend extra cost [and] time … dealing with issues associated with [safety] hazards." 'It just makes it all worth it' Flowers continues to pass down the knowledge he's gathered to the next generation. He says he takes his students out on the land, teaching them to observe and measure the ice, while also passing on traditional knowledge about how to survive in the wilderness. "It's a big part of our identity," he said. Holwell is also committed to passing on the knowledge. Through SmartICE, Holwell frequently travels to different communities to train locals on how to use and maintain the equipment. He says the most rewarding aspect of his work is interacting with elders. "When elders say to me, 'Rex, thank you for coming and thank you for reaching the people in my community on how to do this so that they're keeping people in their community safe,' it makes it worth it," he said. "At the core of it, we're doing what Inuit or Indigenous people [have] really done with anything that we've seen in life — we just adapt to it and learn to live with the situation we're in."
