First Nation in northwestern Ontario celebrates new school and Oji-Cree immersion program

It's not just a new school year for students in Wunnumin Lake First Nation — it's also their first semester in their new school.

Students and teachers were joined by community members and dignitaries at the grand opening Friday of John George Martin Memorial School, and there was plenty to celebrate, with a tour, speeches, gifts and a grand feast.

Wunnumin Lake is about 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay in northwestern Ontario. It's only accessible by plane or winter road, and is home to about 600 people.

The former school, Lydia Lois Beardy Memorial School, opened more than 30 years ago when the community took local control of its education system from the federal government. For the past several years, work has been underway to build a bigger school that could accommodate more students and programs.

With bright, colourful hallways, traditional artwork and Oji-Cree syllabics above the coat hooks and cubbies, the new building aims to provide a welcoming environment for just under 150 students from junior kindergarten (known as K4) to Grade 10.

"It's nice and spacious," said Grade 5 student Emery Dolph. "The first school was a lot smaller."

It's among a few exciting projects that have come to fruition in the community, which will soon be connected to Wataynikaneyap Power's transmission grid later this month. 

John George Martin Memorial's opening also marks the start of a new Oji-Cree language immersion program, where K4 to Grade 2 students are taught entirely in Oji-Cree.

Preserving traditional language

The school was named after the late elder John George Martin. Community members have described Martin as an influential leader who championed language revitalization and land-based learning. 

Strengthening Oji-Cree in the community is one of the school's key mandates, said Tommy Sainnawap, the school's education director. He said the community's youth were still speaking the language regularly about 10 years ago, but things have slipped.

"That's one of the main goals that I have — to start encouraging the parents to speak the language to their grandkids and kids instead of English. It starts at home."

Once their Oji-Cree immersion ends, students will continue to take Oji-Cree as a separate class.

Viola Roundhead, the school's senior native language teacher, said speaking Oji-Cree is a fundamental way for the new generation to reconnect to their roots.

"It's very important to learn [Oji-Cree] because of our identity, our culture and everything," Roundhead said.

"If we completely lose our language, there's no place we can go to get back our language. For example, if [a French person] loses their language, they can go back to France and learn it — here, we won't have anywhere to go and to learn our language again." 

Teacher shortage in northern communities

John George Martin Memorial has about 50 staff members, including eight teachers, but as of Friday, the school was still short three teachers and looking to hire for its Grade 1-2 class, Grade 5 and high school classes. The shortage has resulted in teacher assistants, such as Tamara Angees, taking over classrooms as needed.

Rachel Burrows is the new special education teacher. For three years, the school didn't have anyone to fill the role, despite the fact about half of the students are either in the special education program or require specialized services such as therapy.

Burrows said these numbers speak to the complex needs facing those in the remote north. 

She's brought a special approach to her classroom by creating what are called zones of regulation, where students identify how they are feeling in the morning by pointing to a coloured teepee — green for happy, red for angry — so she can assess what kind of care they need.

Her classroom has e-helpers who assist students with connecting to therapists through video calls and facilitate in-person visits.

The community has built new accommodations for teachers this year, some of whom have worked across Ontario and even internationally before coming to Wunnumin Lake.

Encouraging further education

After Grade 10, students from Wunnumin Lake must go to Sioux Lookout, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay or Ottawa to complete their high school education, due to a lack of resources to accommodate all grades locally. This is the case in most remote communities in the region, though there are exceptions — such as Pikangikum First Nation, which recently celebrated its largest graduating class to date.

Andy Bajric, who teaches Grades 9 and 10 at John George Martin Memorial, said it's hard even for their best students to move away at such a young age.

"Some of them sometimes even on purpose try to not pass a class so they can stay longer in school and not leave the community," Bajric said. "Once they're 17, 18, they're more comfortable and they do move on to Grade 11, Grade 12, but our goals are higher than that."

This year, students spent the first week before in-person classes doing outdoor education.

Wunnumin Lake First Nation Chief Sam Mamakwa said he wants to see more of this land-based learning, where young people are taught skills such as woodcutting and ice fishing with a net.

Most importantly, he wants to see them learn the life skills they need to be independent, which will allow them to be successful in further education and beyond, he said.

"It takes more than being educated to prepare themselves. They need to prepare themselves by being independent and doing things by themselves, taking care of themselves," Mamakwa said.

For 10-year-old Emery Dolph, his favourite subject in school is coding – and he's got big ambitions ahead.

"[I want to] make a [video] game – or two or three or four or five or six," he said. "And have a successful YouTube channel."

New schools are also opening in Wapekeka First Nation at the end of this week and in Kingfisher Lake First Nation in early October.