Tamarack Community Life - Spirit, Belonging and Connection

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About Community Life

Community is about place, spirit, belonging and connection. It is about joy, fear, love and hope. Community is also about friendship, caring and being cared for.

These are the things that motivate us every day, and inspire us to laugh, smile and cry.

Great food, movies, music and stories bring us together. Our children, faith and friends help us define our sense of belonging and community.

Within these pages, we want to explore the very things that inspire life itself, and discover the very spirit that makes community so great!

Building Hope and Building Futures [By: Lloyd Fournier]

For the past two years I committed myself to travels among Indigenous People throughout Canada. These travels took me from coast to coast to coast and saw me speaking about Aboriginal Unification to audiences throughout the various Tribes and regions of Canada. During those travels, it became painfully apparent that serious problems existed among my people. Health, poverty and lack of hope for a future are common observations throughout those living in remote regions. I have witnessed bleak living conditions of Canada's 3.5 million Aboriginal People: much worse than any third world country.

Late in the summer of 2010, I began to recognize a distinct pattern in what I was observing. Reflecting back upon my travels, it hit home. Never once in two years of visits to remote locations, did I see a functioning school with good quality resources. Instead, I had witnessed repeatedly, dedicated individuals trying to do the best they could with the scant resources provided by governments. Unlike mainstream kids, these young people were being shown their significance in Canada. Little wonder that many end up in poverty or on the streets in urban centers, quickly assimilated into lives of drugs, crime and prostitution. In a word, this neglect of educational resources creates hopelessness and amounts to little more than self-inflicted genocide.

Upon returning to southern Ontario following last year's speaking tour, I began telling audiences about what I had experienced. As I spoke with educators, I frequently pointed out that I could not understand why it was that Canadians (by way of government expenditure or charitable tax deductible contributions) were funding schools in places such as Africa and Haiti while this terrible neglect took place among OUR own people.

When I described the lack of schools, teachers and textbooks to audiences of professional educators in the south, I began being given quantities of elementary level textbooks to be delivered during my next trips to the north. My little collection of books quickly filled my garage and then the garages of eight of my neighbours' homes. I realized a couple things. First, that ordinary people are basically decent and willing to try to help. Second, I realized that I had created a serious logistical problem for myself. The remote settlements in northwest Ontario are all fly-in only communities.

After numerous and repeated requests for help, these requests finally fell upon the right ears with the Canadian Rangers' Third Patrol headquartered at Canadian Forces Base Borden and ultimately at Canada's Department of National Defence in Ottawa.

Happily, we watched 40,000 brand new textbooks and a mountain of donated school supplies leave Base Borden in late June of this year. The entire shipment filled at 53-foot trailer. While those supplies and resources may light a candle of hope for the kids living in those remote sites, it would be foolhardy to suggest that my little army of over 300 teacher/volunteers had solved the problems. We had merely applied a regional Band-Aid to a much larger national crisis.

To put vital educational resources into young Indigenous hands thereby creating hope;
To create awareness among those kids that they are part of a much larger Canadian family; and,
To create awareness of these abuses and thereby, to melt the hearts of mainstream populations. Hopefully, in doing so, we can force governments to accept their responsibility.

We need about 4 times as many books as are already collected. We are now in possession of about 40 pallets of elementary level texts. We are seeking brand new and gently used, contemporary books. We need school supplies such as gifts of scribblers, pens and pencils. We would love to be able to supply these children with art supplies (crayons, sketch pads and so on). One donor has provided me with about twenty children's book bags (back packs). In accepting that contribution, I instantly recognized another problem: which lucky children should receive a bag?

Each of us is fortunate; so very fortunate to live in a society where such needs are no concern for our own kids. I sadly report that since January 1st, 2011, 15 young persons have committed suicide in north Ontario alone. All of us though are capable of in some small way lighting a candle of hope for these children. In supplying them with these educational materials, won't we be showing them that there is hope? Showing them that they are part of this much larger family called "Canada"?

I am asking for your help. Contact your friends and inform them. In that information process, a third benefit occurs. That benefit is awareness. I have had good success begging surplus books from schools and school boards. I am certain that some of you may be in such positions or have such contacts. Others may have access to publishing houses, school supply manufacturers etc.

I believe in Canada and I firmly believe that most fair minded Canadians will want to help in this work. Can I count on you?

Chi Miigwich