Wahkomiwew - Being connected to the People

By Christy Bird

 

Christy and Kaitlyn Murdock 

Boozhoo, Tansi. Christy Bird ndizhnikaaz Peguis/Fisher River indoonji. I am near completion of my time in MDP, and it has been a great learning experience. For my final field placement, I am working under the supervision of Dr. Shailesh Shukla with Fisher River Cree Nation (FRCN) developing a traditional food guide that is reflective of their community. 

My Mom is Cree from Fisher River, and I spent a lot of time with family in Fisher River, so I am very grateful for this opportunity to connect with family and friends and build new relationships with youth in the community. 

As a part of my placement, I have met with several community members that work in the community and have participated in a community event organized by Sharon Monkman from Fisher River Health seeking their inputs in designing traditional food guide project through a written survey. Community members provided useful feedback on potential content of the Fisher River food guide including important and healthy traditional Fisher River food items that should be included in the guide. 

I have also had the opportunity to visit Fisher River High School Land-Based educator Kaitlyn Murdock in their land-based program. In addition, I had the privilege to host two focus groups with youth that attend the program. There are still more interviews with knowledge keepers, youth and elders in the community that need to be completed, but it has been great to put learn and apply community-based research for this important project. 

Our key focus would be to engage local youth and knowledge keepers and build in their voices into their own food guide. We would also like to organize traditional recipe events open to FRCN community members sometime in early August. At the end of the event, we plan to host a community feast to present the traditional food guide to the community. 

Finally, it has been great to be in community, around people, especially after 2 years of virtual learning. Although virtual meetings occur weekly, in person dialogue and community visits are something that I enjoy the most. Miigwech.