Rick Garrick

The Sioux Lookout Zone Children’s Environmental Health Study Team recently received an award for their study on Indoor Air Quality and the Effect on Children’s Respiratory Health in First Nation Reserves in the Sioux Lookout Zone. The study team, which evaluated the indoor air quality in the houses of 101 children in four Indigenous communities, was recognized with the 2020 Health Canada Assistant Deputy Minister Award for Excellence in Sciences.

A group of seven high school students are enjoying the opportunity to grow, harvest and sell vegetables and honey this summer through Roots to Harvest’s Urban Youth Farm Program in Thunder Bay.

“It’s good labour and a nice workout,” says Kiaren Wapoose, a Hammarskjold High School student from Eabametoong who was working at the vegetable market stand on Aug. 6. “It’s gone alright — I find it a little stress relieving working with other people.”

Wapoose says he likes working with the potato plants at the farm but has also worked twice with the honeybees.

Three Oshki-Pimache-O-Win The Wenjack Education Institute Police Foundations graduates/students are currently studying at the Ontario Police College (OPC) after being hired by the Ontario Provincial Police for the Pikangikum detachment. The three OPP recruits, Rhonda Peters and Daphne Peters from Pikangikum and Brendan Mawakeesick from Sandy Lake, will also study at the OPP training facility in Orillia after completing the OPC training. Once the recruits complete their training at OPC and the OPP training facility, they will be assigned a coach officer in Pikangikum.

Fort Albany recently released a statement on justice for survivors of St. Anne’s residential school who are trying to have their Independent Assessment Process (IAP) compensation cases reopened. The survivors did not have important evidence presented during their IAP because the federal government withheld information it possessed, including the testimonies of hundreds of St. Anne’s survivors that were gathered and shared with the Ontario Provincial Police in the 1990s.

The late Lakehead University Elder and alumna and Gull Bay citizen Dolores Wawia, who died at age 76 on May 31, is recognized for her achievements in education and on the land.