'Our young people need to be confident on the land': Students, community learn Anishinaabe trapping (8 photos)

As a fire burned in the middle of an arbor at Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig, more than 30 people listened and watched intently as a beaver, splayed on a table, was cut down the middle with a knife.

The beaver was one of a handful of animals to be skinned during an event entitled ‘Trapping and Anishinaabe Trapping Life’ in Sault Ste. Marie on Thursday.

“We’re working on returning to the land, getting back to the land, and learning those skills that we need and our young people need to be confident on the land,” said Mitch Case, director of Student Services, Outreach & Resources for Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig.

It’s the second year of a collaborative effort between the university and Great Lakes Cultural Camps, where the two entities come together each academic year in order to help other First Nations and Metis students and community members reaffirm their connection to the land through traditional hunting and harvesting practices.

Earlier in the semester, Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig and Great Lakes Cultural Camps partnered to show community members how to butcher and package meat from a deer, and how to use the leftover hide — all during normal university hours, right on campus.

Maheengun Shawanda of Great Lakes Cultural Camps told the crowd assembled in the arbor that they all have a responsibility in terms of conservation and the traditional protocols that inform the Indigenous worldview. “When we harvest animals — fish, big game — we feed our elders, and we feed people inside of our family or community,” Shawanda told the crowd. 

These are lessons that most people in attendance, including Harley Syrette, deem to be important. Syrette is a traditional youth recreation worker for Thessalon First Nation, who brought high school students along with him for the trapping presentation.

"We brought in three kids from our community and we were able to get them excused from school to come out for this, just because it’s cultural teachings, on the land teachings,” said Syrette. “I think it’s great, and Maheengun and his family, they’re amazing people to be around.

“I’m hoping they get some hands-on participation and maybe they can take it back to their community and that’ll just spark an interest in them.”