Youth Summit, 2022: Recap

Post your youth summit photos in the comments!

By Andrew Fletcher, Executive Assistant
Education & Employment Sector

The Education and Employment Sector hosted our annual Youth Summit on August 15 and16 with 34 Youth in attendance.

Day One was held at ʔaq̓am’s Dan Joe Gym, and Day Two at the St. Eugene Mission pavilion.

Day One began with a grand entry which was led by Nasuʔkin Joe Pierre with Councilors Garrett Gravelle, Vickie Thomas, Avery Gravelle, Jason Andrew, and Kyle Shottanana also in attendance.

After the Grand Entry it was such a pleasure to have some of the leadership available to have lunch with the youth and for us all to gather from across the nation.

The afternoon was dedicated to a rotation of presentations intended to provide youth with insight into some of the KNC initiatives and opportunities.

Lands and Resources provided a presentation by Caytlyn Luke, Chad Luke, and Kerri Garner on Qat’muk and IPCA; Bertha Andrew and Brandon Hunt opened up the SEM Interpretive Centre to show the Red Brick School video; and Jared Basil provided an inspiring presentation where he talked about being proud to be Ktunaxa.

Day Two was dedicated to providing youth with time to meet the various ʔa·knusti staff and to learn about their diverse positions through interactive activities.

The ʔa·knusti Rangers represented by Jared Cayenne and Dean Nicholas shared with youth the work that they have been doing on the ʔaq̓am trap line and gave them the opportunity to scrape a hide.

Group two was led by Jaydon Francis and Lance Thomas who took youth to the riverside to see some of the bugs they have been catching, and to describe how these bugs provide them with data on the health of the stream.

Jesse Thomas and Cisco Jimmy provided an Archeology presentation that explained a bit about this career and showed some pictures from actual worksites they have been involved with.

They also took the youth to visit some archeological sites in the ʔaq̓am community.

Thanks to the various sponsors of the event we were able to provide many great prizes throughout the event including the grand prizes of two electric scooters & two Apple MacBook Pro’s.

Congratulations to the winners, who were Micah Gilhuly, Nateesha Johnson, Tabatha Capilo, Ashton Jolin.

We would like to thank all of the youth for attending this year’s event and for the great feedback that will determine next year’s agenda.