Native communities embrace summer literacy camps – by Simona Chiose (Globe and Mail – July 20, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

FORT HOPE, Ont. — From the shore of Eabamet Lake in Fort Hope, Ont., Ardelle Sagutcheway surveys the land, the water, the tall white birches she’ll miss when she goes to study nursing in the fall at Lakehead University.

“This is where we belong, this is where we come from,” she says.

About 2,500 members of the Eabametoong First Nation live away from the town, but Ms. Sagutcheway won’t be one of them. Degree in hand, she will come back to serve this community 300 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. Ms. Sagutcheway tells a story about her last name – which means “coming around the hill”: At the turn of the last century, when the band signed a treaty with the government, a many-times-over great-grandfather was late to the signing – he was just coming around the hill.

This summer, Ms. Sagutcheway is a counsellor at the Lieutenant-Governor’s Summer Aboriginal Literacy Camps. Since the camps were initiated by former Ontario lieutenant-governor James Bartleman eight years ago, they’ve grown to 80 locations in remote native communities across the country, with half in Ontario. This year, the beginning of discussions about the Ring of Fire natural resource development in the north of the province is lending a new urgency to the camps. The need for educated labour in the region is projected to grow exponentially, but if native literacy rates do not increase, Ontario could see a repeat of the Alberta experience, where labour shortages have not closed the gap between provincial and aboriginal employment rates.

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