TRI News

Pembroke Campus has kicked off activities in conjunction with the First Moon, First People Indigenous Culture Celebration. The month-long event will include a series of activities in collaboration with the Circle of Turtle Lodge that celebrate Indigenous Culture.

“This is the fourth year of this annual event,” said Jodi Bucholtz, Marketing, Event Planning and Recruitment Coordinator. “Through these programs, we are able to expose students and employees to learn more about indigenous culture.”

Events are aligned with course curriculum to allow for wide interest and participation. All students and staff are welcome to attend.

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Ron (Deganadus) McLester, Algonquin’s Vice President, Truth, Reconciliation & Indigenization, and Jeff Turner, Algonquin’s Partnership Development Specialist, were featured on CBC’s All in a Day recently to discuss the College’s announcement of its COVID-19 Rapid Response Initiative, and the expansion of its YouthBuild program, two initiatives that help Indigenous youth acquire job-readiness skill while expanding their education.

“We just saw an amazing opportunity here to provide positive impact to Indigenous youth, and it’s been really successful to date,” said Turner of the Rapid Response program, which gives Indigenous youth on-the-job training and employment skills related to the impact or effects of the pandemic . Continue reading →

The Algonquin College community is invited to attend an Indigenous ceremony in Ishkodewan Friday as the DARE District courtyard is readied for winter.

Horticultural Industries students will assist in preparing the courtyard garden for winter starting Friday. This entails weeding plant beds, deadheading perennials, and generally getting the garden in shape for winter’s onset – The Big Sleep, as Jeff Turner, Partnership Development Specialist for the DARE District, puts it.

Ahead of this work, Jackie Tenute, Aboriginal Counsellor for the Mamidosewin Centre, will lead an early morning ceremony in Ishkodewan to say ‘thank you’ to nature for its beauty and bounty, including the more than 1,000 plants – flowers, shrubs, and trees – that make up the garden.
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Algonquin College’s Students’ Association was honoured Tuesday for its $1-million investment in providing Indigenous artifacts and architecture for the DARE District.

The investment was announced in August 2017. The College and its students invested $5.4 million – including the SA’s $1 million over five years – into capital projects incorporating Indigenous identity and promoting Indigenization, all with a view to furthering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action. “It is our fervent hope that this will encourage the expression of (Indigenous) history, culture and arts on campus,” then SA President Victoria Ventura said at the time.
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A visit with old friends, a chance to make new ones and plenty of food for thought were all part of the Indigenous Welcome Feast Wednesday at the Mamidosewin Centre.

After welcoming everyone in Ojibwe, Jackie Tenute — a Councillor with Indigenous Services and Partnerships at the College— sang a song acknowledging the ancestors. Following the warm welcome, Elder Terry McKay addressed the room.
“This is the time of year where children were picked up by churches and the RCMP. It was very traumatic for them . . . You have a chance to further your education and be better people, and when you become better people don’t forget your parents and grandparents. And don’t forget Mother Earth. She needs our help so much now.”
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Indigenous graduates from a variety of post-secondary institutions in Ontario and Quebec were celebrated at the 11th annual Indigenous Graduate Honouring Ceremony, held on Saturday, April 27.

Sixty-eight students from Algonquin College, Carleton University, Cégep Heritage College, Saint Paul University, Cree School Board, La Cité, and the University of Ottawa gathered in Nawapon to celebrate their achievements, in a ceremony filled with Indigenous guest speakers, ceremonial drumming and musical performances.
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Ron McLester led a discussion and exploration of Indigenization at Algonquin College on Monday afternoon, looking specifically at the next steps in the Indigenization process.

McLester indicated that this will be influenced by the development of a thanksgiving address that the College community will develop together. The message will incorporate Indigenous Knowledge as a way of bringing everyone together on common ground to ask, “what are the things in our environment that can be identified, collected and codified as our version of the thanksgiving address.”
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Nawapon. Ishkodewan. Pìdàban.

The Algonquin words are, no doubt, unfamiliar to many in the Algonquin College community. That will soon change following Monday’s grand opening and official naming of the DARE District courtyard and Indigenous spaces.

“The opening of our Indigenous courtyard is the beginning of a new way here at Algonquin College,” President Cheryl Jensen told more than 200 people – students, faculty, employees, visiting dignitaries, contractors, donors, and community leaders – who turned out to watch Indigenous elders perform fire and water ceremonies and learn the new names.
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The founder of Wawatay Catering spent her childhood as a prep cook, though she didn’t realize it at the time.

“When I was young I helped prepare our seasonal feast which is about two to three times a year,” says Marie-Cécile Nottaway, whose Indigenous catering company is based in the Kitigan Zibi Algonquin First Nation near Maniwaki, Quebec.

That was the way of things in her community, Nottaway says — women prepared the meal, children helped: peeling potatoes and carrots, cutting up meat and onions, making the tea, setting up the tables. “That was your job, you had no choice,” she says.

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Two of Algonquin College’s recent Media and Communications graduates have joined Ottawa’s new Indigenous radio station, ELMNT FM.

Aiden Wolf will hold down the early morning weekday wake-up slot 5:30 a.m., while Kayla Whiteduck, handles the mid-day shift with music and news from noon to 3 p.m.

Whiteduck, a First Nations Algonquin woman from Kitigan-Zibi in Quebec, graduated from Algonquin’s one-year Music Business and Arts program in 2014 and our Broadcasting-Radio program in 2018. She describes herself as a lover of classic rock.
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