This week I got to see one of our Skill Builders for Young Adults programs in action. And, I learned how to dry muskox meat.
We offered Skill Builders for Young Adults training to 16 people from NWT communities last October. Each person left knowing and understanding the nine essential skills - reading, writing, numeracy, document use, oral communication, thinking skills, working with others, computer use, and continuous learning. These skills provide a foundation for other learning.
Each person at our workshop returned to their community and organized a project that would interest and build essential skills among young adults in their community. I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of projects proposed.
Sachs Harbour, Deline, Tulita, and the North Slave Young Offender Facility in Yellowknife are doing a variety of traditional skills - snowshoe making, sewing mittens, drum making, and making dry meat. The Yellowknives Dene First Nation are developing a Wıı̀lıı̀deh- language play. In Nahanni Butte, young people are filming interviews with elders, some in South Slavey.
Young adults in Enterprise are creating a recipe book as part of a cooking and food safety project. In Fort Providence, project participants are learning how to use Photoshop software and will silk screen their digital images onto t-shirts.
On Monday, I was in Sachs Harbour where the skills builder project focuses on muskox and the various ways people can use the harvested animal. Last week and this week the project participants dried muskox and ground some meat for cooking. In the coming weeks they will learn to spin muskox wool.
It was great to see the young adults, aged 16 to 29 years, interacting with elders while learning and working on drying the meat. They cut the meat off the bones, sliced it and then laid the pieces on screens to dry overnight. After observing for a while, I figured I should give it a try. The elders made it look so easy to slice the meat with an ulu, but I soon found out how challenging it is to keep the thickness of each slice uniform. Clearly some practice is needed for this!
Thanks to everyone involved in the project for sharing their traditional skills with me, as well as the tasty meat. Next week I head to Deline and Tulita to see how the youth projects in these communities are going. Maybe I’ll try some sewing.
-- Amanda Grobbecker
