Batch of donations to First Nation will ‘make a difference’
Ontario charity True North Aid to help struggling communities like Onion Lake
Onion Lake Cree Nation resident Linda Naistus says a container of donations being sent by an Ontario charity should help bring her community together.
The steel shipping container, set to arrive Jan. 31 at the First Nation straddling the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, 50 kilometres north of Lloydminster, includes 2,600 dried food packages, five pallets of snowsuits, 700 gift parcels, vanloads of hockey equipment, clothes and 25 quilts.
“It’s like another Christmas Day for us here in Onion Lake,” Naistus said Wednesday. “When I came to school and told some of the staff, you could feel the excitement, because we’re helping our community.”
The material was collected by True North Aid, a nine-year-old charity based in Kitchener, Ont., focused on helping Canada’s northern Indigenous communities.
National director Kenneth Smid said the idea to send donations to Onion Lake came up when he talked to Naistus during a visit last June. “There are many people in and around there struggling for basic needs like shoes and clothing,” he said, adding almost 20 per cent of the 5,000 residents are on social assistance.
He suggested buying the steel container so she could keep it for storage, then sent the box out with donations from businesses, individuals and organizations across Ontario.
“We have poverty in Canada and it’s in the North. It’s not right, it’s unacceptable,” said Smid, whose organization aided about 15 communities last year. “True North Aid seeks to do something about it … It’s about reconciliation, it’s about supporting those who haven’t really been supported.”
Naistus hopes to find ways of distributing the material to people as far away as Kehewin Cree Nation, approximately 60 km northwest in Alberta, and several other locations.
About half a dozen people have formed a committee to decide what to do with this bounty, and more are starting to take an interest, said Naistus, who works at the Onion Lake high school literacy intervention program.
She knows students whose only decent meal comes at school or who don’t have warm coats and mitts. She also hopes the sports equipment will mean more kids play hockey this winter.
Naistus has been looking for a way to give back since returning five years ago to the First Nation from Saskatoon, where she sometimes needed help raising her grandchildren.
She hopes there will be enough goods in the container to make life easier for 1,000 to 2,000 people.
“We’re not going to help them big amounts, but at least we will help them with (things like) winter clothing. It will make a difference that there are people out there willing to help.”