Mistissini !!

Another beautiful day today to travel, and an especially great day to be in Mistissini! Mistissini is a vibrant community with a lot of development going on. Mistissini Eenouch are passionate about education. I heard from people about the importance of ensuring that our school board has an on-the-land experience for our children, and the importance of encouraging them to maintain a connection to the land. I also heard about the importance of finding ways to support Cree language maintenance while we ensure high standards in all of their required subjects.

My visit began with a stop over at JBCCS to record a segment about my beliefs about the importance of empowering students, parents, teachers and communities by ensuring that they have a voice. I also spoke about the importance of ensuring that the Cree School Board remains accountable to its main goal of student success by taking strong and decisive measures to engage our children in their schooling. The recording should be airing on the 18th and 24th.

After visiting JBCCS, I was privileged to get to a number of different places to meet with people and listen to what they had to say about education in Mistissini. I saw people at the band office, the stores, the other main buildings in town such as the msdc, sports complex and school board office.

Despite phones and internet being down for most of the day, it was a great day. I am sorry that I wasn’t able to contact many of those who wanted me to contact them when I was there -- I will be in touch one way or another!

One really special thing that I noted… because the internet was down, stores were only able to take cash, and, as you can imagine, most people don’t carry cash. This meant problems for people who needed to buy groceries. It was amazing to see the grocery store responding to this problem by allowing people to get the groceries they needed and return later to pay. Although Mistissini is growing rapidly, there obviously remains a strong sense of community spirit -- a major strength to be drawn on as we all pull together to ensure that our students are supported through collaboration, partnerships, and community.