Lakehead University’s Gichi Kendaasiwin Constellation, a program which is dedicated to helping Indigenous youth pursue and complete higher education, has received a significant boost to its program thanks to a $600,000 donation from TD Bank.
The money comes as part of TD’s Ready Commitment program, which looks “to find opportunities for more connected communities, for folks to thrive in their communities,” explains Nicole Beaton, the TD Vice President and Region Head for Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Northern Ontario.
The money will support different aspects of Gichi Kendaasiwin, including Niijii, its mentorship program, as well as outreach and accessibility programs to help Indigenous youth get into fields like STEM and nursing.
Funding will also go towards a new all-season gathering space to support Indigenous Pedagogy, which has been in the works at the university for two decades.
Indoor and outdoor renders of a proposed Indigenous-led all-season gathering space. PHOTO: VIA LAKEHEAD UNIVERSITY
Gillian Siddall, the university’s President and Vice Chancellor, calls the donation “a transformational gift for us.”
She explains that “we’ve long had excellent supports and programs and an Elders Council, access programs, but we haven’t had a dedicated space that Indigenous students could go to and really feel like that’s where they could engage in gathering and learning — Indigenous learning and ceremony, and just feel at home here at Lakehead.”
Siddall says the building could still be a couple of years away from breaking ground, but the architectural design is complete, the location is selected, and much of the fundraising has already been done, though “we do need to raise a little bit more money.”
The Elders Council played a big role in choosing the building’s location, pushing for it to be close to the water.
“That was very important to them,” Siddall explains.
Now that the building is so close to materializing, Siddall says she is feeling “pretty emotional about it, because I was part of the group of many people over all those years trying to get this building built, just seeing how powerful it would be once we had this building.”
At the announcement for the big donation, Jared Visitor, an outreach coordinator with Niijii and a former mentor in the program, was given the chance to talk about Gichi Kendaasiwin.
His words focused on the impact that programs like Niijii have in helping Indigenous youth discover themselves and their place in the world.
Visitor says he went through his own journey with Niijii, but after being pushed to become involved by women from the Indigenous Student Services Centre and the coordinator of the mentorship program, eventually he was able to “really sort of figure out… who I am, how I need to help give and serve the youth, how that has given me direction in my life, how it’s given me purpose every single day, how it’s really allowed me to kind of step out into freedom of being myself and knowing who I am.”
Visitor describes the donation to Gichi Kendaasiwin and the new gathering space as a way of contributing to reconciliation.
“Apologies without action aren’t really apologies, not that this is an apology. But making an investment and making it a tangible space for students to really belong and to come and to share and to learn and to listen, I think is a huge step towards reconciliation.”
He adds that reconciliation happens on a person-to-person basis.
“When we start talking with each other and listening to each other, when we start sharing stories, we realize we’re all people trying to move forward together. And once we do that, we learn how to help each other. So I think these spaces will really allow for a lot of those conversations to take place and for a lot of the students to really feel like they belong. Like I would I feel like I belong.”
