On her recent visit to Quebec City Tara was able to check out a whole bunch of amazing marketplaces, shops and pop-up stores, like this one: Les Épices du Guerrier. It’s an Indigenous-owned business that initially started as a social project aimed at helping young people in need, but given the success of their presence at various events and festivals, they decided to officially turn it into a company. Read more in Tara’s post, “A Visit to the CCGS Amundsen.”
Summer Update: August 23, 2023
Summer is almost over!
It’s been a hot summer, but it’s almost over. This summer we spent a lot of time working on planning out our next year of projects and programming. As we get ready to kick-off our Niriqatiginnga Framework initiative this fall, we spent a lot of time consulting and engaging.
Youth like Tony have been spending the summer with their families. Tara went on a trip to visit the CCGS Amundsen. Tootoo is going to be playing hockey this fall with the Willmar Warhawks in Minnesota.
This summer, many of us learned about northern shipping and supply chains, and started to explore what the research structure would look like. At the same time, we had a lot of meetings about how to link our work with some of the community arts projects.
Everyone is really keen on getting more hands-on this fall for cultural entrepreneurship activities. One of the big activities a lot of us have wanted to do for a long time is a canning and traditional food preservation workshop. We’ve applied for funding on that, and we’ll let everyone know how that goes. Otherwise, we are hoping for an October workshop. If anyone wants to take part, we’ve still got room, just contact us for more info and we’ll hook you up.
Consulting and Engaging for Fall and Winter 2023
A big part of our summer was spent consulting and engaging with local food sector businesses, other research projects, Elders, youth and interested community members. Since our upcoming Niriqatiginnga project will be officially starting this fall, we really appreciate everyone who took the time to meet with us, to help shape what the research, arts and cultural entrepreneurship aspects of the program could look like.
Thanks go out to Constance Menzies, Tara Tootoo Fotheringham, Tootoo Fotheringham, Tony Eetak, Lucy Eetak, Jamie Bell, Dr. Wenqing Zhang, Dr. Olaf Kuhlke, Dr. Marié-Jose Naud, Maeva Gauthier, Mervin Traverse, Wendy Carnegie, Dorothy Tootoo, Nellie Kusugak and everyone else we might have missed.
Also thanks to Mervin Traverse and Wendy Carnegie from Manitoba Agriculture for introducing us to the new Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Program Indigenous Relationship and Engagement Program and answering all of the questions we had. We learned a lot about these new programs and are definitely going to submit a couple applications. For those who are interested in learning more about the new programs, check out our news post, or visit the Manitoba Agriculture web site.
This year we are going to be working a lot more closely with local businesss and entrepreneurs. We greatly appreciate the support of the Arctic Buying Company Kivalliq and Winnipeg, Chocolatier Constance Popp and the Labovitz School of Business and Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth. When our previous projects were going on, and during the pandemic, most of our youth were still in high school. Now most of them have graduated and are moving on to post-secondary studies here in Winnipeg, as well as in Ottawa, Minnesota and Nunavut. Good luck to everyone going on to college and university studies this year!
Photo: Tony Eetak took this photo of a giant mural on the side of Mark Kalluak Community Hall in Arviat, Nunavut.
Regular Weekly Meetings start up again on September 22, 2023:
We’ll have a small team meeting on August 28th at 1:30 p.m. (CST), but our regular meetings will start up again on Thursday, September 21, 2023, once everyone has had a chance to settle into their campus life and all the back-to-school activities that happen at the beginning of each new year. We’ll have a Google Meet room scheduled so we can keep everyone who is away from home connected as well.
Until then, safe travels and good luck to all the students who are returning to studies next month. For the rest of us here in Manitoba, we look forward to seeing everyone in September.
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