Toys, clothing being collected for northern First Nation reserve

Posted By FIONA ISAACSON

Posted 2 months ago

Charity Keesic thought she was leaving her northern Ontario reserve to come to a community where no one would know her.

Little did she know she would end up helping a group of Peterborough residents who have been collecting and sending toys, clothing and other needed items to her home of Mishkeegogamang First Nation, 400 kilometres north of Thunder Bay.

NATWIN (Native Twinning Peterborough/Mishkeegogamang) was founded in 2000.

Keesic, 20, came to Peterborough from Mishkeegogamang last year to upgrade her high school courses at Fleming College's McCrae campus.

She described conditions on the reserve as cramped, with high unemployment rates (80% to 90%) and there's not a lot of hope, especially for elders many of whom were abused at residential schools. The youth, she said, have nowhere to go and if they want to attend high school have to leave the community.

Most of the students who leave to go to high school end up getting kicked out and get caught up in gangs or drugs and alcohol, Keesic said.

"I always wanted to break that cycle," she said, getting tears in her eyes several times while speaking with The Examiner on Saturday.

The closest grocery store is 45 minutes away and many people are living on social assistance in cramped housing, said Sheila Nabigon-Howlett, NATWIN's founder and chairwoman.

"They don't have a lot," Keesic said.

Keesic said she left because she wanted a fresh start. NATWIN helps provide the people, especially the youth, with a sense of hope, she said.

There's a lot of sense of a lack of self-worth in the community, she said.

Nabigon-Howlett, who visited Mishkeegogamang in 2005, said they send letters and cards to keep in touch with people in the community.

"We just want them to know that there are people who care about them," she said.

". . . We're here to help in any way we can."

After completing her high school courses, Keesic says she'd like to take the police foundations program at Fleming College and then return to Mishkeegogamang.

She said she wants to "bring something back . . . to support my community."

"I think it does," make a difference, Keesic said about NATWIN.

She said she grew up playing with rocks and sticks, not toys.

"It's a start. What else can we do? Especially for a kid."

The only way to start changing the attitudes and hopes of the community, is to start with the youth, the "future leaders," Keesic said.

"That would really make the elders really happy. That they see the youth really happy."

NOTES: A shipping company will deliver the roughly 75 boxes to Mishkeegogamang for free. Sheila Nabigon-Howlett wouldn't say the company's name…. A skate-sharpening machine is also being sent this year. It was paid for from fundraisers done by the Order of the Eastern Star, Peterborough chapter.

fisaacson@peterboroughexaminer.com