Youth camp to reclaim Dene culture in the works
Holly Toulejour believes reconnecting with Dene culture will be the key to ending the youth suicides that plague La Loche and the north.
To do this, the high school social worker is fundraising to take six youth to a special British Columbia summer camp. When they return, Toulejour wants to create a plan to set up their own camp in La Loche.
The community had a suicide a little more than two weeks ago, she said. She also hasn’t forgotten the northern Saskatchewan girls who took their own lives last year.
Last fall, Toulejour learned of Koeye Camp, near Bella Bella, B.C., in Heiltsuk First Nation territory, which Maclean’s magazine credited with helping the town solve its suicide epidemic. She visited to learn more.
At Koeye Camp, kids learn when the mating season is for fish, the best places to catch them and how to clean and prepare them; they learn about Dene dances and songs, she said.
Toulejour wants to bring some of the youth she’s been working with through the school year to each learn a specific area of Dene culture.
“I don’t see a lot of culture in the north. People think that just because you’re living in northern Saskatchewan you must be just immersed in the culture, and no, that’s not the case. We’re so heavily influenced by the media, social media, that kids aren’t walking around proud to be Dene, proud to be speaking the language. They want to look like Kardashians instead.”
For example, she didn’t notice a word of Dene being spoken at Dene High School graduation ceremony, she said. There wasn’t an elder doing an opening prayer or Dene drummers.
For her, the smells of fire and smoked fish remind her she is home and people are eating together as a family. Reclaiming Dene culture can create community bonds to keep people in a positive frame of mind, she said.
“People will be employed, youth will be employed, and the youth who have gone through the camp will be employed to help manage the camp — that would be my dream. And we would be fully funded, we wouldn’t be going year to year. The funding would be the last thing we would worry about, it would just be having good, quality culture camps.
“And no suicides.”
Kids aren’t walking around proud to be Dene, proud to be speaking the language. They want to look like Kardashians instead