Garnet Angeconeb’s legacy recognized

About 100 people showed up to surprise Lac Seul’s Garnet Angeconeb at a celebratory gala in his honour June 11 in Sioux Lookout.

The gala featured a number of presentations and quite a range of stories from family and friends. Many talked about his professional life in communications and his involvement in the residential school survivor movement.

To keep the event a surprise was no easy task. Shortly after invites were sent out, Angeconeb sent a message to the community. He was seeking input to hold an event for the third anniversary of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s residential school apology. Some discussion took place about what do, but nothing was ever finalized.

“The days and hours dwindled away,” Angeconeb wrote in a thank you letter he sent out after the gala. “I was feeling the jitters as time was running out to plan something. Strange as it seemed, I thought no one was interested or had no time. I thought, we’ll give it a break for this year and perhaps revive the effort next year.”

However, a few days before the gala, Angeconeb said he received an email saying a small event had been organized to watch the apology followed by a sharing circle. By this time, Angeconeb had dinner plans with in-laws who were visiting from out of town.

But on the day of the supposed event, his family decided to check out the viewing after dinner. Angeconeb was delighted. Little did he know what lay ahead.

“As we entered the room, I noticed the lights were off … and then the lights came on along with a thundering applause,” he said. “It was then I knew something was happening, something out of this world.”

He said he felt truly honored and surprised.

Angeconeb was born in Sioux Lookout October 12, 1955. He was raised in a small part of Lac Seul known as Ningewance Bay. In 1963, he left home to attend Pelican Indian Residential School near Sioux Lookout. He attended the school from 1963 to 1969 before moving on to Wellington School, Central School and finally Queen Elizabeth District High School.

After graduation, he worked at Wawatay Native Communications Society becoming one of its founding editors. He later signed a contract with CBC radio in Thunder Bay to produce an Aboriginal language program called Indian Faces.

After working in journalism for a short time and having a keen interest in the field, Angeconeb decided to further his education. In 1982 he graduated from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., with a diploma in journalism.

After his studies, Angeconeb returned to Wawatay, eventually becoming executive director in 1983. He helped create the Wawatay Radio Network in 1984, providing radio services to remote First Nation communities in the Sioux Lookout area.

“I used to work with an Elder in the 70s and 80s, his name was Tom Fiddler, and he told me, ‘You know when you work, you put your creative first and you put the people next and then you put yourself last,’” Angeconeb said.

It’s a saying he carried with him throughout his life and work.

After seeing Phil Fontaine talk openly about the impacts of the Indian Residential School system, Angeconeb was inspired. Fontaine, who attended residential school, is from Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba. A lawyer by trade, Fontaine is a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. During his tenure, he helped negotiate the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement.

During a time when former residential school students rarely talked about what happened to them in schools, Angeconeb began to share about his time in residential school and how it impacted him. He said talking about one’s issues is therapeutic.

“I realized I had to deal with the negative forces that were getting in my way as a result of residential school,” Angeconeb said.

Many people suffered greatly from the multi-layered residential school abuse, he said.

“As people who went to residential school, we did feel and face physical abuse, bullying, mental and psychological abuse, cultural abuse, spiritual abuse, and sexual abuse.”

Angeconeb fell into a dark place after his time at residential school, resorting to drinking to hide his grief and rage. It wasn’t until he had the courage to speak out against the residential school tragedy that he began a path of healing.

He then channeled his energy into making positive change. He became a founding member of the Sioux Lookout Anti-Racism Committee. He now serves as a lifetime member on the board. He is also involved in the Sioux Lookout Coalition for Reconciliation and Healing and is a board member with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

“I’ve been on a lot of boards over the years and that’s where I learned a lot of things that I still carry with me, my own personal education,” he said.

He hopes he has made an impact in the community to lighten the tension and ease the lives of his children and grandchildren.

Angeconeb received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee medal in 2003 for his ‘ongoing and outstanding’ efforts to improve his community. He is also a multiple winner of the Mary Carpenter People Making Changes Award handed out annually to a Sioux Lookout resident who has made a positive difference in the community.

Pat Ningewance, a publisher of Ojibwe language books, is Angeconeb’s aunt. She decided in May that she wanted to hold a ceremony to honour Angeconeb’s efforts and accomplishments.

She contacted Florence Woolner, a longtime friend of Angeconeb, who took on the reins to organize the Garnet Angeconeb Gala for June 11, the anniversary of the 2008 residential school apology.

Ningewance helped with the planning, contacting people she thought would be interested in coming.

“It was supposed to be a surprise, so we had to contact everybody individually,” Ningewance said.

People came from Thunder Bay, Red Lake, Kenora and Winnipeg to attend, she said.

Lois Mombourquette used to work with Angeconeb at Wawatay and have been friends for many years. She helped arrange the gala under Woolner’s direction. She said Woolner had pulled together a team to work on the gala and try to keep it a secret.

“It was very difficult to keep it a secret from Garnet, he knows everything!” Mombourquette said. “The gala was heart-warming. It accomplished its mission and that was to recognize and celebrate Garnet’s many achievements.”

Mombourquette said Angeconeb is an exceptionally brave, courageous trailblazer, saying he has tackled many Native issues head-on. The fact that he was the first Aboriginal councillor in the municipality of Sioux Lookout is an indication of the role he’s always taken on.

She said he has exceptional vision. He was persistent with the federal government when working to secure funding for Wawatay and was successful. He helped lead the movement to get funding for Aboriginal radio and television, which became the Northern Native Broadcast Access Program in 1983. The program funds northern broadcasters across the country.

Woolner has been a colleague of Angeconeb’s since 1976 when she started working at Wawatay. Woolner said Angeconeb has been deeply involved in Aboriginal communications. In his varied career he’s been a writer, a journalist, a columnist and a CBC broadcaster. When she joined Wawatay, Angeconeb was the first editor of the Wawatay News. Before he took over it was called Keesis, a newsletter for the Sioux Lookout area. Angeconeb helped to convert it to a newspaper expanding its coverage to First Nations in northern Ontario.

She thought hiding the gala from Angeconeb would be impossible. She was sure he was going to find out.

In the end, the group succeeded and Angeconeb couldn’t have been more grateful.

“Meegwetch for all the kind words, memories, laughs, tears, and love,” he said to all those who organized and attended the gala.