TRI News

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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*For the video interview, click here*

The Algonquin College Marc Maracle attended in 1979 was in many ways the same college that presented him with an honorary degree four decades later. But in at least one way, today’s Algonquin has profoundly changed, he says.

Algonquin remains as great a place to learn as it was when he studied Architecture Technology and Mechanical Systems from 1979 to 1983, says Maracle, Executive Director of the Gignul Non-Profit Housing Corporation. But now it is also a welcoming place for students of diverse backgrounds, and an institution conscious of the values inherent in its name.

When Maracle arrived on the Ottawa campus in 1979, he saw it as an opportunity to experience a bigger world than the Tyendinaga Mohawk reserve community outside Kingston where he grew up.

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There’s a dark-eyed moose. A soaring eagle. Sweetgrass and strawberries. And, not to be ignored, the giant turtle on whose back rides a cluster of birch-bark lodging and a great pine tree – the tree of life.

Welcome to Algonquin College’s latest showcase of Indigenous artwork. Nearly seven months in making, the three storey-high painting depicting Indigenous cosmological symbols is now on display outside the Indigenous Commons in the first floor of the DARE District.

“This (mural) acknowledges the creation story of many Indigenous peoples,” says Ron Deganadus McLester, the College’s Executive Director of Truth, Reconciliation & Indigenization. “It’s definitely a piece that links our shared cosmology.”
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