2023 Indigenous
Youth and Community Futures Fund Project Descriptions
Organization Name: Aunties on the Road: Indigenous Full Spectrum Doula Collective
Project Summary: Our project activities aim to support Indigenous youth to grow in relationship with their bodies, through increased knowledge of their sexual and reproductive health, from both western and traditional perspectives. Through our programming, we aim to instil community and cultural knowledge and teachings to such rites of passage, recognizing the plethora of benefits connection to community and culture offers to Indigenous people. We offer monthly programming and workshops hosted by members of our Collective as well as by local reproductive and sexual health experts and traditional knowledge keepers on a variety of topics that seek to educate and empower local youth.
Organization Name: 13 Moons Land Based Learning
Project Summary: This project will build community pride and leadership by connecting Youth to the land and all of creation. Unkwehuweneha (our way of life) follows a 13 moon structure. We will follow the moon phases through a series of weekend expeditions with Knowledge Keepers and Guides.
Organization Name: Niizh Manidook Hide Camp
Project Summary: Niizh Manidook Hide Camp will create safer spaces for 2SLGBTQIA+ Indigenous youth (16-29 years of age) in Southern Ontario to learn traditional hide tanning by offering; a week long traditional hide tanning immersion camp in Six Nations of the Grand River Territory; a leadership centered hide tanning apprenticeship program; and online hide tanning workshops for Indigenous youth on various hide tanning topics.
Organization Name: Ratitsienhanonhnha
Project Summary: The goal of this project is to continue to grow the access to Haudenosaunee cultural teachings and skills such as trapping, tanning, and how to locally source traditional meals. The project will span a year with the different teachings corresponding with the appropriate time of the year e.g. trapping during the winter months or composting earlier in the year to make sure it is ready for the gardens. In between the in-person classes, we will also be doing virtual classes with cultural teachings that correspond with the time of the year and what ceremonies will be coming up. As with many communities, the Residential School Era negatively affected us as well. We are working to reverse some of those effects by making these classes accessible for youth to learn the same skills and knowledge that their ancestors knew.
Organization Name: Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte
Project Summary: Building Your Bundle is a program designed for youth by youth. Based out of Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, taking youth through a year cycle of ceremonies while also completing activities that our ancestors did to survive and flourish such as; gardening, harvesting, hunting, fishing/spearing, learning the language, and learning about our ancestral lands. This year long program will be run with youth ranging within the ages of 12-29. We pride our program being run by facilitators who are Indigenous Youth, Elders, Knowledge Keepers and each activity is run in a wholistic manner. This projects aim is to start the revitalization of our culture to ensure it is passed on another 7 generations.
Organization Name: Tkaronto Plant Life
Project Summary: Tkaronto Plant Life is a farm and small community garden in Tkaronto that is reimaging our food systems from Indigenous and decolonial perspectives. Run by a collective of Indigenous youth, we grow traditional foods and medicines as a collective and with BIPOC youth. Through this land-based participation, Tkaronto Plant Life is an educational space centring Indigenous land and food sovereignty, with aims of promoting access to land, traditional food and medicines by-and-for Indigenous and BIPOC youth in urban spaces. We provide food and medicines to Indigenous and BIPOC community members, and we also share our land-based skills, from seed to table, and from plants to medicine making.
Organization Name: Sheshegwaning First Nation
Project Summary: This project is to start the creation and revitalization of an old Self Sustaining Food Forest in Sheshegwaning First Nation in our contributions towards Food Sovereignty in our community. Last year while gardening for the community, our youth came across what seems to be a old 'permaculture' food forest. There are apple trees, hawberry trees, leeks, sumac bushes, raspberry bushes, endless maple trees, wild mint and rhubarb growing. This year we plan to add more species in a relational planting environment as our ancestors would have cultivated food. The goal is to create a food sovereign space that will be accessible for all community members regardless of age and mobility issues. Picture a green space with edible perennials and pathways with year round food for community. Leeks in the spring time, berries and fruit trees in the summer, harvesting and preserving in the fall & Chaga and maple syrup in the winter. Our goals are to revitalize Traditional Indigenous ways of agriculture.
Organization Name: Nigig Nibi Ki-win Gamik Society
Project Summary: In a series of three land based culture camps, Indigenous youth will experience cultural teachings specific to three different seasons within their traditional territory. Included is a backcountry hiking camp to learn from the land as our ancestors did, a hunting camp to learn about the honourable harvest, and a winter camp trip to learn how to thrive in harsh weather. Key learning opportunities will include: wild edible plant foraging, relationship and responsibilities with plant medicines and with moose, how to traditionally harvest a moose to provide sustenance and self sustainability, building a jig board, ice fishing, snowshoeing, ice safety, Fire Keeping, animal adaptations, navigation, and water filtration.
Organization Name: Youth Odena
Project Summary: We Belong aims to create safe space in Bawaating for Indigenous Mothers, 2 Spirit and Non-Binary Parents, Indigenous youths in care and community, and Knowledge keepers to create community support, promote mental and spiritual wellbeing, and learn valuable skills. In addition, our group will work to promote a community culture of safety for Indigenous youth with our "We Belong" campaign. We will come together for our annual spirit naming, colours and clan ceremony in partnership with local knowledge keepers.
Organization Name: Biigtigong Nishnaabeg Social Services
Project Summary: This project seeks to reconnect our youth to the land and travelling the waterways our ancestors frequently travelled, by planning a 5-day canoe trip on the Steel & Pic River (Bitig) in August 2023. It is our vison our youth will feel the connection to our land, our ancestors, self and each other by participating in this program. Our idea is to provide them with the opportuinty to document their journey by providing the options to complete a video journal daily, journal their experiences nightly, and sharing their experiences with each other on their journey. Finally, we will model and encourage our youth to give back and provide a space for them to share their experience by creating a video presentation to present to friends, family, and community. Our goal is to not just provide this experience, but to also help them have a sense of accomplishment by creating something that they can carry with them forever and to encourage their peers.
Organization Name: Kahnekanoron
Project Summary: Kahnekanoron (water is precious, Kanien’keha/Mohawk) aims to deepen connections between Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQ+ folks and our traditional food and medicine teachings and practices. By growing a community garden and offering a series of workshops on planting, caring for, and harvesting traditional foods and medicines, Kahnekanoron empowers Indigenous women and queer folks in reclaiming relationships with land in meaningful ways that keep ourselves and communities well. Kahnekanoron creates opportunities for Indigenous women and queer folks to plant, grow, harvest, and process traditional foods and medicines. Kahnekanoron works to reconnect Indigenous women and queer folks with our ancestrally inherited land relations.
Organization Name: Aki Kikinomakaywin
Project Summary: Aki Kikinomakaywin: Learning on the Land is an Indigenous-led, land and water-based science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) experiential learning program for Indigenous youth in northern Ontario. Since time immemorial Indigenous Peoples have been successfully conducting STEAM, thus the goal of our program is to weave Indigenous and Western ways of knowing to build the confidence in young people to envision themselves in STEAM careers. Through a one-week program, Indigenous youth (ages 14-16) will participate in immersive land-based, in-lab, and hands-on activities with each activity being guided by Elders and Indigenous scientists through Indigenous stories, teachings, and language, with support from western science techniques. Throughout our program youth will be supported by Indigenous Knowledge Holders, Elders, student mentors, and ceremonies, as well as work to gain a greater connection to the land, water, spirit, and self.
Organization Name: Endaayaan Awejaa
Project Summary: We wish to continue offering programming that relates to cultural teachings and traditional knowledge within our four foundational pillars; arts & culture, education, harm reduction and reconciliation. We are hoping to provide substantial programming to Indigenous youth living in northern Ontario who more often than not experience barriers to accessing available programming in the area. We want to double the amount of workshops we have offered in the previous year.
Organization Name: Isaruit Inuit Women's Sewing Centre in Ottawa
Project Summary: The Isaruit Inuit Youth Connections Project reaches out to Inuit youths up to 30 years old, by letting them know about the warm Inuit welcome and opportunities are avilable to them at Isaruit Inuit Arts Shop, located in Vanier, Ottawa. An Inuk youth who has learned to make knives, tools, parkas and other traditional useful Inuit items at Isaruit over the past year, informs Inuit youths living in Ottawa of the opportunities available at Isaruit for Inuit youths make metal, bone, stone , ivory or wood items in the workshop or clothing or crafts items in Isaruit's sewing shop. Inuit youths are encouraged to drop in, eat some traditional Inuit foods, talk to elders and work with skilled Inuit creators at Isaruit, to develop their own voice and reclaim their identity as Inuit.
Organization Name: M'Chigeeng First Nation
Project Summary: This project seeks to do a seasonal activity to build our knowledge bundle, survival skills and food security development. We want to have one activity per season (which may take a few days up until a few weeks depending on the duration of the activity from start to finish). We would like to invite in an Elder/knowledge keeper to come share their knowledge of the area and land that we walk on. We would also like to invite some knowledgeable individuals to facilitate the land based learning. In each season having a different area of focused learning objectives. In the summer we want to go canoeing around the area, in the Fall we want to do rabbit snaring (harvesting the fur and meat), in the Winter we want to do ice fishing, in the Spring we want to make maple syrup by having a sugar bush.
Organization Name: Bawaating Child Welfare Warriors
Project Summary: Bawaating Child Welfare Warriors "Immediate Action" program, will continue to work with Indigenous Youth, ages 15-17, aging out of group homes to combat structural racism, homelessness and poverty. We will help prepare them for adult living by assisting them to achieve proper Identification, fill in and submit Housing Applications, and open Bank Accounts. We will also establish and coordinate an Immediate Community Action Round Table of service providers in Bawaating for youth about to age out. We will amplify the voice of youth aging out of care by creating a short informercial called "I don't know where I'm gunna live."
Organization Name: Dwadewayęhstaˀ Gayogo̲ho:nǫˀ
Project Summary: Gaǫdadeihǫnyęnihagyeˀ engages youth to continue learning the Cayuga language under the tutelage of a proficient, second-language learner, also a youth. This Mentor-Apprentice style of learning will connect the group for 25 hours per week for 30 weeks speaking only Cayuga. By creating well-versed second language speakers, the life of the Cayuga language is enriched and upheld for generations to come.
Organization Name: Restoring Our Roots
Project Summary: Building Our Bundles Culture Camps are a youth-led initiative that supports the development of a bundle of relationships, knowledges, and gifts that support the maintenance of balance and wellness in our lives. The program will begin with a 4-day immersive land, language, and culture camp, continue with a series of online/on-the-land beading and traditional foods/medicine workshops, and end with a traditional foods feast that honours and reflects on the importance of wholistic wellness. The program will centre activities that feed and enhance all aspects of self, including culture camps that: enrich knowledge of Anishinaabeg traditional territories, culture and cultural practices, traditional foods and medicines; build pride, confidence, and knowledge of our gifts and belonging as Indigenous people; increase access to nutritious food, water, and opportunities to participate in land-based wellness activities; and sustain interconnections with human and other-than-human relations.
Organization Name: Brantford Region Indigenous Support Centre
Project Summary: BRISC will launch the Indigenous Youth Activity Series, that will see a full roster of workshops, sport activities, cultural teachings and Drop-In Activity Nights which will foster a culturally safe and inclusive environment that will nurture and support Indigenous Youth in enhancing their Indigenous identity and sense of belonging through the use of traditional Indigenous teachings. We will also promote community connections and relationship building among participants.This project will also improve Indigenous health by hosting physical activities and cooking classes that will include traditional foods and healthy food options.Through the engagement of youth participants throughout the series, we hope to be able to establish an Indigenous Youth Council for our region. Once the Indigenous Youth Council is established, we will provide leadership training and support systems that fosters the Indigenous Youth Council to become mentors for younger Indigenous youth in the future.
Organization Name: Wolf Lake First Nation
Project Summary: This project will provide Algonquin youth with the opportunity to spend time on our territory with respected Elders and Knowledge Keepers who are committed to sharing their knowledge of plant medicine with the next generation. We will be working hand in hand with two people who have devoted their time to learning from the grandparents about the plants located within our area, how they can be used as medicine and also why caring for our bodies is so important. They will spend time with youth on our territory showing them where they can find certain plants to harvest, teach them about why propagating seeds is important for future use of medicines, explain the circle of life and why caring for these plants is important and how they are connected to animals as well, and lastly, how these plants can help heal our bodies and keep us, and our families healthy.
Organization Name: Auntie’s Place
Project Summary: Auntie’s Place seeks to provide Afro-Indigenous, Black, and Indigenous youth a 6 week girls Empowerment Circle that works towards building a stronger connection to the land, identity, and community. Through workshops led by Elders and Knowledge Keepers the youth will learn about cultural teachings that uplift and empower young girls. At the end of the Empowerment Circle the youth will have an opportunity to travel to Six Nations and connect to the land and ceremony.
This project is important to the community because it allows Afro-Indigenous girls to be in a space that centers both their Black and Indigenous identities, while bringing Black and Indigenous youth together to build solidarity. There is a large population of Afro-Indigenous girls in the west end of Toronto, which is also heavily populated with Black and Indigenous youth. It is important to the group to provide space for these communities to build strong relationships ultimately creating increased acceptance of Afro-Indigenous youth and a better future for the youth and their community.
Organization Name: Finding Our Power Together
Project Summary: The Returning to our Roots Project will allow Indigenous youth to have better access to traditional and healing ceremonies to promote wellness, mind, body, and spirit. The project will provide a culturally safe space for Indigenous Peoples to connect with their culture, engage in traditional practices, and learn teachings with traditional Knowledge Keepers and Helpers, Indigenous social workers, and Indigenous child and youth care workers. The full moon sweat lodge ceremony provides a unique space for women to come together on a monthly basis to share knowledge, support each other, and engage in a healing sweat lodge to honour their sacredness to Creation. As an extension project, Indigenous youth can attend two cultural healing camps that will foster supportive environments for Indigenous youth to participate in land-based programming that reconnects them with their heritage and instills in them the value of the natural relationship between Indigenous peoples and the land.
Organization Name: Hotinohsioni Inc Brantford Native Housing
Project Summary: We all sat together and discussed as a team how we can best use this grant opportunity. We all agreed that we have always wanted to learn more about medicines that are in our region and or Community. We agreed that we all have the love of nature and how we can learn our culture through teachings and learning opportunities. Our current budget would not allot the funding to create such an experience. We want to learn hunting techniques and how to use bows and survival techniques. We would like to purchase camping gear, this will give us survival skills and how to cook over an open fire how to ration our meals well we are out camping. We would like the chance to make our own paddles which will teach us patience and honor our piece of art once completed. We also want to learn how to can our foods from our garden and from other resources.
Organization Name: The Wolverines
Project Summary: We hope to preserve traditional environmental knowledge and learn more about the environment that sustains all of us. Our 4 main projects are:
1.) Annual Spring fasting Camp attendance for youth at Thunder Mountain AKA Aniimiki Aazhibiikoong we will also harvesting medicinal plants and help elders clean hides, close camp grounds after ceremony and beading traditional crafting.
2.) The 2nd Annual Environmental Youth Gathering 2023.
3.) Construction of Canoe and exploration of River.
4.) Attendance hide camp in Oneida October. Traditional trades with other nation.
