How Indigenous culture and knowledge is being brought to a Thunder Bay, Ont., after-school program

After-school programs are an important part of children's development, and they often tend to focus on socialization and education. But one non-profit after-school program in Thunder Bay, Ont., is bringing Indigenous culture and land-based teaching to the youth they serve too. 

It's called the Wabshkaa Animikii Benesii Program, or WAB for short, at Sherbrooke Elementary School.

The program began back in April 2022, and has quickly grown in size with about 45 children currently enrolled, with more on the waitlist and more names being added on.

It involves a range of activities including making moccasins, hand drums, ribbon shirts and ribbon skirts, and students are also offered a hot meal or snack to eat, explained Esther Maud, the program's founder. 

Each week starts off with smudging to set the tone. 

Maud says because they're a non-profit program and they've just recently got this off the ground, she's run into challenges including growing pains, hiccups, and ups and downs. Securing stable funding is a recurring issue too. 

But she says with this program, she's been able to see how it helps children and why it's so important.

"To see the kids come into the program, be so shy, so antisocial, nobody didn't want to do any group work or anything like that. They didn't know how to really react with each other," said Maud. "Now they interact with each other. They have their little groups and it's really nice to see them really blossom and flourish."

She says the teachings, activities, and sharing circles they do have helped to be able to bring them all together and do those activities together more.

It was also important for Maud to include traditional and land-based cultural teachings to this program, as it was something she felt was needed to have for youth.

"Our people are still learning a lot of the culture and stuff," she said. "Because of our culture being stolen from us, basically, I feel like it's just something that's so needed so that we can be able to give a little bit of piece of the culture to the kids if they might not be getting it at home." 

And the children seem to be enjoying the program.

11-year-old Brave attends the WAB program, and has taken a liking to the crafts, including moccasins, a ribbon shirt, a rattler, and a hand drum. He was working on a pair of moccasins, with the help of Maud and staff, and hopes to complete it this week.

And 11-year-old Lily has been in the program since September, and has been learning about the wampum belt and has been working  with others to make their own. 

She says she finds the program to fun, and enjoys the crafts and activities and the smudging aspect of it.

Maud says she sees the impact it has on the children and with a consistently growing program with more names being added on she knows this is something that is needed for youth.

"It's a very beautiful program," she said. "To be able to do this kind of work with the kids. I really want people to see that the children are our future, and this is where it starts." 

"It starts with being able to give this kind of programming for the kids. It helps them be able to like get connected with culture, their roots," she said. 

Maud hopes to one day be able to expand to their own location and even to other schools across the city, but for now she is focusing on keeping it running for kids, with the help of donations from people and even volunteers to help out.

Friends of Maud's have raffled off items and donated the proceeds to the program to keep it going.

"Basically just really trying to get the word out to as many organizations or if they know any funders or just places that are looking for programs like ours, you know, that are willing to be able to meet us and be able to support us."