'We're normal:' student inspires first-ever Kitchener high school powwow

A Kitchener, Ont. teenager is looking to showcase her Indigenous heritage at the Waterloo Region District School Board's first ever powwow later this week.

Maegan Boyter-Mandawoub, a Grade 11 student at Huron Heights Secondary School in Kitchener says she wanted to pay tribute to her culture at school, especially in light of its location in an ancestral Huron village area.

"I thought to myself that we should be respecting the land that we're on," she told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris.

The idea for the powwow came up during a light-hearted exchange between Boyter-Mandawoub and a school administrator, when they joked that the school should host a powwow. 

After the conversation, she and the school began to rethink the offhand joke and started to seriously consider how she could make it happen.

"The fact that it became a reality, it's crazy," she said.

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On the administrative side, this was the school's first experience putting together an event like this.

Huron Heights teacher Chris Charman said they had a lot of staff, student and community support in making sure it was well organized and executed.

"[It's] the idea of getting the two communities together in one room [to] get the conversation started," he said.

And it's grown beyond a one-school celebration: Friday, students from other Waterloo Region schools will be bused to Huron Heights for the powwow day, with several hundred students attending.

Despite the fact that this is their first go-round, the school is already optimistic about potential future iterations.

"We're hoping to see this turn into an annual event," said Charman.

'We're normal'

The powwow is especially significant to Boyter-Mandawoub because at one time, an event like this would not only have been uncommon outside of Indigenous communities, it would have been illegal in places such as residential schools.

She hopes that this event will not only shed light on her culture, but also normalize the conversation around Indigenous culture and practices.

"We are just like everyone else," she said. "We're normal."

The powwow will take place Friday Oct. 6 at Kitchener's Huron Heights Secondary School.