Youth group building role models in North Spirit Lake

“It’s still kind of hard, some of the youth don’t open up to us too much,” Kassie Rae said about the youth in the Harvest Time Church Youth Group. “But we still try to talk to them. We try to help.”
It’s been almost two months since the Harvest Time Church Youth Group has been in existence, and Rae is happy with the work she and her fellow group leader Tobia Rae have been doing in their community of North Spirit Lake.
The group was originally started as a Sunday school by Elaine Keesick, North Spirit Lake’s director of education, and it ran every weekend at the reserve’s Harvest Time Church. The duties of Keesick’s occupation did not leave her with much time so she handed the reigns of the Sunday school over to Rae and Tobia earlier this year.
Due to unforeseen tragedies that rocked the reserve early in the year, such as the fatal Keystone Air crash, the tragic death of a local teen, and the passing of a respected community Elder, the group did not start as soon as Rae originally planned on it starting.
Rae feared that the deaths in the community would “push the youth over the edge” because North Spirit Lake is such a small community and the adolescents knew the deceased very well.
Rae did not want the youth to resort to using drugs and alcohol to deal with the pain that the losses caused, and it was a youth-rally fundraiser held in the spring that gave Rae and Tobia the idea of turning the Sunday school into a youth group.
Rae said that the goal of the group is to keep the youth busy and “steer them away from drugs and alcohol,” in hopes of encouraging the youth to lead a better life. The group spends time doing things like playing board games and having cooking classes. The group consists of 12-15 youths between the ages of 12 and 17.
Rae knows that is it hard to earn the trust of a young person but she and Tobia still work at it. Rae and the group try to influence others in the community to lead a better life too, as well as a safer one.
“We hung up signs in the reserve that said ‘don’t drink and drive’ and ‘don’t do drugs,’” Rae said of one of their activities.
The group has had some issues to deal with, like the Harvest Time Church where most of their activities took place being out of commission due to problems with the water supply, but Rae is confident that the group will continue.
There is still fundraising that needs to be done for the group, but Rae said she will keep trying because there are goals for the community in general to help the group work for.
Rae hopes that the youth she and Tobia are working with now will become role models for the younger generations in their community, to show them how to live a better life. She said that it gives her a good feeling when young children come up to her and Tobia and say “hi teacher!”