FSIN officials pay visit to Payepot School
- Fraser Needham | December 20, 2015
Civic engagement was the topic of discussion when Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations officials visited Payepot School on November 30.
FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron was joined by vice-chiefs Dutch Lerat, Heather Bear and Rob Merasty for the visit to the K-12 school, which is located on the Piapot First Nation, northeast of Regina.
Chief Cameron says amongst the many topics discussed with students the FSIN officials spoke about how the structure of their organization works and the vital importance of the treaties.
“The messages that we summed up was that our inherent and treaty rights guarantee us education, the treaty right to shelter, the treaty right to the medicine chest clause, our treaty justice issues – those were items we spoke about,” he says.
Cameron says they also discussed the challenges of being a young Indigenous person.
“The other big item was our youth and the struggles and some of the hardships they go through – peer pressure with alcohol and drugs. We spoke about the importance of being alcohol and drug free, the importance of the value they have. Even though some of our youth feel that they are not loved or they’re not valued, they are and that was our message.”
Piapot Chief Ira Lavallee says FSIN officials visited the community a few years ago and they felt the time was right to invite them again after the recent elections for chief and vice-chief this past October.
He says the First Nation also believes it is important for its young people to have face-to-face contact with high-level elected officials.
“I think it’s important because traditionally and culturally our people communicated in person and visited – you always hear that our people knew each other personally,” Lavallee says. “And we have been kind of moving away from that lately with this technology, Internet and all these other social media mediums out there. So it’s important to have a face-to-face meeting with people so we get to know them on a personal level, so that leadership doesn’t become unapproachable. It’s important to our youth to know who our leaders are and simply hear their stories and maybe be inspired by something one of the vice-chiefs might say.”
Chief Lavallee says they would like to invite the FSIN officials out to Payepot School again in the next few years.
About 160 students attend the school.