Home to Me

60 Canadian authors posted pictures of their feet
at hashtag standwithgrasssy

In December I received an email from the David Suzuki Foundation about cleaning up the mercury contamination at Grassy Narrows.  A pulp and paper mill dumped ten tonnes of mercury into the Wabigoon watershed in Ontario in the 1960`s contaminating the fish and thereby poisoning members of the Grassy Narrows First Nations.  Fifty years later, it has still not been cleaned up. 

The Ontario government has recently promised to clean up the water but are taking no action.  So the David Suzuki Foundation in the Stand with Grassy Narrows campaign was asking people to join sixty authors and email the premier of Ontario and the prime minister of Canada to tell them that they would stand with the people of Grassy Narrows "until the Wabigoon watershed is clean and safe for their families, culture and economy."

On the same day, I came across a video (view it here) on my daughter`s facebook page, of youth from the Grassy Narrows community performing a song that they wrote about where they lived entitled, Home to Me.  I watched it and was so impressed that I wanted to know more about how they came to make this video.

After doing some research, I discovered that the video was produced by a unique group called N`we Jinan Artists .  This group brings a mobile recording studio and video production team to schools and youth centres in First Nations communities across Canada.  The youth are helped to write a song about issues such as cultural identity, language, struggle, love and self-acceptance.  The values of "positive messaging, community engagement and collective voice” are stressed.

During the process, the youth learn about sound recording, music production, songwriting, voice and performance.  N`we Jinan wants to help the participants develop stronger self-esteem and confidence by "creating a space where participants feel safe, accepted and respected for their ideas."  By learning the skills for musical expression, the community is given a voice and is empowered. The videos are posted on-line and can be watched and shared on social media.  In fact, this video has gone viral with over 98,000 views on youtube and nearly 1,165,000 views on Facebook since its release in March 2016.

 

Youth from Grassy Narrows at the River Run Rally in Toronto

In October of 2016, members of the Grassy Narrows community joined hundreds of concerned citizens at Queen`s Park in Toronto to pressure the Ontario government to take the long overdue action to clean up the water.  The youth group that wrote Home to Me performed at the River Run Rally.  You can see a video of that here.  You can see how much courage it took for the kids from a northern community to perform in front of so many people and also how powerful music can be to empower, inspire and connect people.

N`we Jinan is a collaborative project of the Cree Nation Youth Council and is headquartered in Montreal, PQ.  They are on tour, visiting First Nations across Canada.  When David Hodge and Josh Iserhoff arrived at Asubpeechoseewagong First Nation (Grassy Narrows) which is about two and a half hours north of Kenora to work with the youth and to shoot a music video the temperature was -35 degrees Celsius.  But they completed the project in just three days.

Darwin Fobister, one of the 19-year-old youth in the video says, "We are getting heard and that`s one way we are dealing with these issues, because the more media we do, the more we get heard.  And we need more people to hear our stories about why we love our home and what we need for support." Their song is in English and Anishinaabemowin which is important to the community, to keep the language and culture alive.  Home to Me  is “Gete Ishkonigan,” in Anishinaabemowin.  One of the lines from Home to Me is, “Rise from the ruins, keep protecting the land; don`t take it for granted, can`t neglect what we have.”

When I receive requests to write letters or sign on-line petitions, the issues can feel abstract and hard to imagine.  But watching these young people sing the song they wrote from their hearts, touched my heart.  This is their home, not some abstract cause.  Of course they want to protect and heal their home, we all do.  They have used their voices, telling us what they need and asking for support.  We can listen to their voices and join ours with theirs.  This would be a new story.