TRI News

Algonquin College graduates join new Indigenous radio station

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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Difference maker: Marc Maracle has built a better future for Indigenous people

*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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Algonquin College mural portrays an Indigenous creation story

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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Algonquin College’s Indigenous ceremonial drums come alive

The Drums are awake.

In an event Thursday at the Mamidosewin Centre in the Student Commons, Indigenous Elders conducted a ceremony to “awaken” two of the three ceremonial drums recently made for Algonquin College.

“These are beautiful drums, and you are responsible for taking care of them,” said Thomas Louttit, an Elder from Moose Factory First Nation in northern Ontario, told the close to 50 people who gathered to witness the ritual.

Dave Hookimaw, a drum carrier and Elder from the Attawapiskat First Nation near James Bay, echoed the sentiment, explained the meaning, purpose, and importance of the drums. “These drums have the spirit of the woods, and the animals that gave up their lives for them. You have to show care for your drums.”

The drums are the product of a collaborative project entitled 3 Drums, 3 Campuses conceived last year by Andre O’Bonsawin, the College’s Manager of Indigenous Initiatives, and Jason Verboomen, a professor in the Applied Science and Environmental Technology department.

Their intent was to get Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to work together to make a drum for each of Algonquin’s three campuses in Ottawa, Perth, and Pembroke, all to reinforce the College’s commitment to Truth and Reconciliation between Canada’s Indigenous population and the wider Canadian populace.

“In order to play the drum, you have to awaken the drum,” O’Bonsawin said Thursday. “For many Indigenous people, the drum is the heartbeat of Mother Earth, and the reason we did this project is to have the heartbeat of all three campuses beating together.”

The drums, which are made of traditional materials of wood and animal hide – buffalo for Ottawa’s drum and moose for Perth and Pembroke – were constructed separately in March under the guidance of veteran Indigenous drum-makes and drum-keepers. Thursday’s ceremony involved the awaking of the Perth and Ottawa drums. Pembroke’s had been conducted previously.

O’Bonsawin said he expects to see the drums used for the official opening of the DARE District on May 3, as well as during Convocation ceremonies on the three campuses in June.