Appreciating community collaboration

By Kiera Kowalski 1st year MDP student & Courtney Bear

As our field placement comes to a close we want to thank all who supported our experience. Thank you to the community members of Peguis First Nation who shared their knowledge and agricultural expertise during the focus group, as well as Elder Carl McCorister for providing guidance. Thank you to Agriculture Manitoba as well for hosting us, providing mentorship and support. We have learned so much in such a short period of time and appreciate everyone who shared their knowledge along the way.

To recap from our previous blog post, we worked with Agriculture Manitoba to hold a focus group session in Peguis First Nation to better understand Indigenous youth perceptions of the agriculture industry in Manitoba. The participants were all on-reserve youth from Peguis between the ages of 18 to 35. During the focus group we adhered to Indigenous research protocols. We believe this was very important to conducting a successful, community collaborative project. In addition to conducting the focus group we also analyzed the findings and produced a final report, which is what we’ve been working on throughout the month of July.

It was such a great feeling to complete our final report and represent the views of Peguis youth. In the report we summarized the participants vision for agriculture in their community based on the main themes that emerged during the focus group. The participants determined that all agricultural projects should be driven by cultural knowledge and revitalization, support food security and food sovereignty efforts and foster a holistic connection to land. The expressed interest in a greenhouse initiative so that they can grow produce year round, and a summer agriculture institute to engage and teach youth about sustainable community gardening practices.

Again, we acknowledge and greatly respect our participants for sharing their knowledge on this topic. Without our participants’ patience and willingness to help, especially while navigating COVID, we would not have been able to complete this project.

At Kiera's cottage on Lee River after finishing writing our final report. Courtney (R) gave birth to a baby boy exactly 2 weeks later!