A recent story in our community newspaper, The Eastern Door on my academic & community work.
Recognizing Indigenous Excellence, September 8, 2021 (by Marisela Amador)
Eastern Door article – Day Schools
I recently did an interview with Laurence Brisson Dubreuil for the Eastern Door Newspaper in Kahnawà:ke. The article was published online by the Toronto Star.
Laurence Brisson Dubreuil, The Eastern Door – Fri., June 11, 2021
Volunteering to plant a living willow dome
My family and I joined a group of volunteers to plan a living willow dome at Kahnawà:ke Survival School. It took two days to plant the willow, it’ll take a year for it to fully grow out. I can’t wait to see it bloom!
This article in The Eastern Door covers this special project. The first photo in the article features my husband Merrick (in red) and I (white shirt) working on the willow dome 🙂
I’ll post updates as the willow dome starts to grow out!
NETOLNEW Project
I am a full-time PhD student and a mother of three so I usually work part-time. I know a few wonder women who work full-time while doing full-time studies but that is too much for me with my health and workout regimen. This month I started a new part-time job for the Kahnawà:ke Education Center (KEC) as an Educational Research Assistant on the NETOLNEW Indigenous language revitalization project.
Kahnawà:ke has a long history of language revitalization going back about fifty years. Our community is often looked at as a model of Indigenous language revitalization efforts. From 2017 to 2018, I worked on Skátne Enionkwaió’ten with Kahtehrón:ni Iris Stacey and a team of community members to create a five-year strategic plan for language revitalization in Kahnawà:ke. It was wonderful and rewarding work (and challenging) but when my contract ended, I had to focus on completing my Master’s at Concordia University (which I did in June 2019).
This time around, the KEC is partnering with NETOLNEW to focus on adult second language learners (the “missing generation”). Our work will focus on supporting Karonhianónhnha Immersion School staff & teachers. I was excited at this new opportunity for the KEC to further some of the goals that were set in the language plan with Skátne Enionkwaió’ten. Walking the talk!! We also have two new project facilitators for Skátne Enionkwaió’ten but I remain connected to the project as a member of the advisory committee and the web developer/webmaster for the project website that I created. I hoped that by creating a website for the Skátne Eionkwaió’ten language plan that we would help inform other communities attempting to take a similar approach to language revitalization.
One way or another, I end up working in language & culture revitalization. I am so thankful to have this chance to continue doing very meaningful work in my home community. It has helped me to grow and sparked some new ideas for my future work. That’s all for now, looking forward to this new role 🙂
Skennenhkó:wa,
Wahéhshon – “She Walks About”