Youth in Île-à-la-Crosse will soon have a new cultural program to access. (Derek Cornet/larongeNOW Staff)

By Derek Cornet

Crime prevention

Île-à-la-Crosse secures funding for Healing on the Land project

Apr 24, 2019 | 5:05 PM

Leadership with the Northern Village of Île-à-la-Crosse is looking forward to launching a crime prevention initiative aimed at re-connected young people with their traditional Métis roots.

The funding for the project was announced Tuesday in Prince Albert by federal Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Ralph Goodale. Along with Pelican Lake First Nation and Witchekan Lake First Nation, Île-à-la-Crosse will receive $400,000 over the next two years to assess the prevalence of issues including youth gangs and violence, sex crimes, addictions, and mental health issues and come up with a plan to promote more positive and healthy lifestyle choices.

“At the Northern Village of Île-à-la-Crosse, we’ve been working on the project since June 2018,” Deputy-Mayor Gerald Roy said. “We’ve been going through a whole process of completing a community safety plan with the federal Public Safety Canada representatives. I guess they liked what they saw. At the end of the day, we used the community safety plan to form the base for the proposal itself.”

The initiative in Île-à-la-Crosse is called Healing on the Land and Roy stated the village has already received $112,000 to get it started. Earlier this month, the local community safety board met with local leadership, elders, youth, the RCMP and concerns citizens to come up with what it will entail. More discussions will soon occur with community agencies and traditional resource users.

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For one week each month for the next 12 months, the projects aims to bring groups of young people out on the land to learn traditional ways from local elders and residents. It will include trips to cabins and traplines, which is meant to get young people involved in their cultural roots.

“We are set up the way they wanted it set up and we had community involvement through the whole process,” Roy said about why Île-à-la-Crosse was chosen for the funding. “Maybe it was nice to have a Métis municipality or northern Métis community involved in the whole process.”

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derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno