POWER OF CONFIDENCE
Enoch students find confidence, motivation in summer school classes
Montanna Shott, 16, performs during a showcase for the Maskekosihk Arts Program during the final day of a unique on-reserve summer school at the Enoch Cree Nation.
The last time ENOCH CREE NATION Montanna Shott sang for a large audience, she was a preschooler belting out Gretchen Wilson’s country music hit Redneck Woman at karaoke.
On a late July afternoon, the 16-year-old wrestled with nerves before singing The Cranberries’ explosive track, Zombie, for an audience at Kitaskinaw School that included about 80 classmates, school staff, Enoch councillors and Chief Billy Morin.
“She blew me away,” her mother Sherry McDonald said. “She’s beyond the moon right now.”
It was this kind of boost in confidence and energy organizers were hoping for when they revamped the Enoch Cree Nation’s summer program for high school students this year.
For the first time, the First Nation just west of Edmonton offered summer school classes for credit this July — the kind of program few First Nations can offer with their comparatively meagre federal education funding.
Whereas previous summer work experience programs in Enoch had students picking up garbage and playing games, band members wanted to offer options for personal growth and to help students further their education, Renee Cantin, the nation’s executive director for education, said last week.
For three weeks, students took one of three options: an arts class, a leadership class that taught entrepreneurial skills or a career and life management class taught with a focus on Indigenous culture and practices.
Like past work experience programs, the students at summer school were paid for their participation — $1,280 for the three weeks.
About 100 junior high students also took a three-day program called Growing Young Movers, where they did physical education and spoke with leaders about planning for their futures.
Unlike more conventional summer school classes, where students might spend the bulk of their time sitting at desks while they plow through the course material in a few weeks, Enoch’s classes are meant to be fun and engaging, Cantin said.
Gathered in the office of Enoch’s K-12 school, Kitaskinaw, some students who took the wellness class said the most memorable experiences involved learning about First Nations culture and history.
Julian Morin, 18, who is in Grade 12, enjoyed a trip the class took to Viking, 130 kilometres southeast of Edmonton. Their teacher, elder Bob Cardinal, and University of Alberta education professor Dwayne Donald led students on a hike to some ribstones, which bear ancient carvings of an animal’s rib cage. There, they took part in a pipe ceremony, and prayed for family members, he said.
Tehgan McGillis, 17, said learning more about his culture was a major draw.
“It’s kind of hard to see that our cultural practices and teachings and the stuff we used to honour and respect are fading, especially our language,” he said.
“I’m trying to make a change, because I know who we were and who we used to be.”
A new dad, McGillis aims to study business in college or university, and would like to become an entrepreneur in the medicinal marijuana field. Being around big groups make him anxious, and he’s beginning to confront those fears, he said.
“I just like how I’m pushing myself toward pursuing things I need to get done,” he said.
Sylvia Mousseau, a 15-year-old who will start Grade 10 at Edmonton’s Jasper Place High School this fall, said at first she wasn’t too thrilled when her auntie registered her in the Enoch program.
“Who wants to spend the first three weeks of their summer in summer school?” she said. “Today, I’m feeling happy and glad that I actually came. I got to make a few friends.”
The students also prepared resumes, wrote cover letters, conducted mock job interviews, and practised budgeting, teacher Naim Cardinal said. They toured the University of Alberta, NAIT and MacEwan University, and met with staff from those institutions’ Indigenous centres.
Cardinal co-instructed the course with Enoch community member Cynthia Cowan and University of Alberta education student Kesho Donald.
Although some students began the course withdrawn or hesitant, they opened up after spending time together walking outside each morning. Swear words began disappearing from their conversations, Cardinal said.
Attendance was 87 per cent throughout the program.
Growing up on the Tallcree First Nation in northern Alberta, Cardinal didn’t feel proud of his identity, or have healthy activities to do in the summer, he said.
“More than anything, I was hoping they would walk away from here with something that made them feel good about who they were — that something they did here made them feel proud to be from Enoch,” he said.
Students in the leadership class were tasked with starting their own businesses. They created a plan and budget, and ran their operations at a community powwow, where they braided hair, sold toys and poured lemonade.
In the arts course, students wrote poems, created paintings, refined piano and voice skills, which 17-year-old Shalynn Ginther found therapeutic. They were led by instructors from Enoch who are recent graduates themselves.
“I don’t think a lot of people like to talk about what’s inside of them,” she said.
“It gives them a way to express that without expressing themselves out loud.”
Cantin hopes the program can expand to offer academic courses such as math and English as well.
The $200,000 spent on the program comes mainly from the band’s casino revenues, and is well worth the investment, said band councillor Nola Wanuch.
“I find it’s empowering our youth,” she said.
“I’ve seen in the arts specifically, young people who were suicidal, who suffer severe depression, severe anxiety, and then you put them into a program like this ... they find themselves. They find that they have a voice. And that’s where they start to get confident.”
More than anything, I was hoping they would walk away here with something that made them feel good about who they were — that something they did here made them feel proud to be from Enoch.
NAIM CARDINAL, teacher