Summer program celebration and Aboriginal girls hockey camp

By Jessica Yee

August 12-13 Whitefish Lake First Nation, ON


This was my first trip to Whitefish Lake First Nation and coupled with the great weather, it was a wonderful experience! Working with youth means you have to be easily adaptable – and luckily since that’s my work day in and day out – I was ready to roll with the punches. The evening I arrived there was a community BBQ and summer fun activities, and after hanging out with the youth I was able to address them with a few opening remarks about Aboriginal pride and culture being a uniting factor amongst us all – regardless of our reasons of being at summer camp, or what sport we play. I was also happy to see some of the older youth at our table of safe sex info – since summer is definitely a time when people hook up!

The next day I was thrilled to work with the Aboriginal girls hockey camp – and I was able to meet some pretty fierce hockey players who were bursting with energy – but also able to talk very frankly about the sexism they have to face being young women who play hockey in a generally male-dominated field, amongst other sports. We worked through several self-esteem building exercises and discussed at length what strong Aboriginal women are doing in our communities, along with claiming our power as young Aboriginal women today and what that means both on the rink or in the school yard. Later that day I stayed to talk to the parents of these strong young women about how much I enjoyed meeting and working with them – and made a small presentation about honouring oneself and each other.