Students Learn about Local Fish and Healthy Waters
A Stream of Dreams mural is being installed at Wasauksing Kinomaugewgamik (First Nation School), Wasauksing First Nation, on Tuesday, June 27 from 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. (raindate: June 28). Graduating grade 8 students, parent volunteers, and teachers will be hanging over 100 painted wooden fish on a fence overlooking Hay Bay at the school.
Stream of Dreams is an award-winning program of watershed education through community art. The goal is to help people understand their connections to water and fish habitat, and how to make behavioural changes to protect streams, rivers, lakes and oceans.
Catherine Pawis, Principal of Wasauksing Kinomaugewgamik (School), said, “We are pleased that the Eastern Georgian Bay Stewardship Council was able to partner with us in delivering this environmental education program to our students. Julia Sutton (Coordinator) is very knowledgeable about eastern Georgian Bay and the tributaries that flow into it due to the fish habitat monitoring they are undertaking. Displaying these colourful fish will be a reminder to our children about the value of clean, healthy water for the diversity of fish species in our waters and our responsibility as Anishinaabe people for taking care of the lifeblood of Mother Earth. Water is life – all of creation depends on it. The waters of Georgian Bay have sustained us since time immemorial, and future generations, represented by our children, depend on us to lead in the protection of the water.”
Earlier in the month, students at the school participated in a Mother Earth Water Walk, honouring the awareness efforts of Anishinaabe grandmother, Josephine Mandamin, who has walked the shorelines of all five Great Lakes as well as all four directions of Turtle Island.
For more information contact Catherine Pawis at 705-746-5663 or email principal@wasauksing.ca.