The Prince Albert Indian and Metis Friendship Centre will host their annual community gathering entitled ‘Sharing our Voices to Heal’ later this month.
The fourth annual gathering will feature guest speakers Patrick Mitsuing and Family and will be about lifting everyone in the community.
Jennifer Sanderson, the Indigenous Women’s Wellness Coordinator at the Friendship Centre and Conference Support for the conference, explained the focus is on creating the circle for everyone to come and share good healing space and time with one another.
“We are putting this together for all of community to come and share space in a good way to bring about the whole idea of it’s okay to share our voice,” Sanderson said. “It’s okay to come together as community and to be a part of something and to know that your space is being held in a good way.”
The gathering runs from Feb. 23-25 from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. at the Ches Leach Lounge in the Art Hauser Centre. This is a free three day gathering for women, men, youth, elders and 2Spirit.
Sanderson said that the idea to have Patrick Mitsuing, Marissa Mitsuing and family, the owners of Powwow Times and champion pow wow dancers and entrepreneurs came from seeing Patrick at a conference last year.
She also follows a lot of the work he does on social media, and thought he would be a good fit for a conference in Prince Albert.
“I just put it towards the committee and asked, ‘do you think that it would be a good opportunity to ask him and his family to come and be our main presenters?’ We agreed that it would be and so, I approached him and he was very excited to be a part of it,” Sanderson explained.
Mitsuing is from Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation in Saskatchewan and performed at the Super Bowl in 2023.
Sanderson said that each day is broken up into who is in attendance with day one being about men and 2spirit, day two being about women and 2spirit.
“And then day three, we have morning designated for our elders. And then in the afternoon, we have it designated for our youth,” Sanderson said.
Sanderson explained that splitting the three days into each designation was part of the vision for the gathering.
“Our other vision behind this is when we come together and we speak in a good way with vulnerability, we’re still trying to, in society and in our traditions, we’re trying to find a way to support one another.
Sanderson said the point is to hold up everyone in the space up on each day.
“An example would be, say everybody is in the room on day one and men, elders, youth, two-spirit, women, and the women are being held up by the whole community that is there,” Sanderson said.
“Then day two, the whole community comes and it’s designated for the men, so everybody’s holding the men up in support of what is being brought forward.”
She said that everyone is going to be learning and holding space for one another.
“(It’s) to stand, sit with one another in a vulnerable way and to just to be a community,” she explained.
Sanderson said it is great to host the event at the Ches Leach Lounge this year. She said they will also have vendors in the concourse.
“We have about 19 vendors that we are all placing up on the above concourse,” she said. “They’ll be a short distance from the conference room, but they’ll be easily accessible for everybody.”
Sanderson added that they are excited for the conference.
“This is our fourth annual and the previous three years we’ve mainly focused on women,” she said. “It just brings us so much joy and gratitude to be able to hold space for the entire community as a whole because we’re really trying to focus on sharing that good energy and that good storytelling.”
She said that there is still time to register for the gathering.
“If anybody has questions or want to register, they can go to the Prince Albert Indian Metis Facebook page and follow down on the page and there’s a registration link there,” Sanderson said. The link to register is : https://forms.gle/rF5vCgRwE58svzDKA
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
