Indigenous artists pass on traditional art, knowledge to children and youth

Artists have been stepping up and saying I'd like to teach this and I'd like to teach that. Here on Morris Street just off of Logan Avenue at the Indigenous Arts and Cultural Center, community members and artists of all disciplines are coming together to make sure inner-city youth can reclaim traditional art and practices. Hopefully I meet up with some young folks that are interested in stones and I could teach them a few tricks. Joe Spence from Sitchewiasset I would like to leave something for the children to look back to. We've got artists, letter painters, and beaders, and sewers, and everybody is just saying I'll come and teach that and so it's going to be a hub for people to learn and to share. This is going to be a land-based program that will be driven by the natural occurring activities of the season. So we hope that our kids are filleting fish, and smoking, tanning, and hides, and doing all the things that naturally you would do in the season. Culture's been lost. Traditions have been lost. People are working so hard to salvage language and traditional knowledge and to give that opportunity to Indigenous people. They don't have people or places to go where they can learn tradition or their culture or their language. I know it's like that. So things like this are very important. Jedrick Tarassi, a visual artist from Tadouli Lake First Nation, knows firsthand about the power of art. I went through a really hard time in my life. Really hard time. I lost my family and I know it sounds really cliche, but art saved my life. Have it be a place that is safe and is welcoming and lets kids just be kids doing what they should have always been able to do if it hadn't been stolen from them. The center's community hopes to open its doors to the public at the end of September. In Winnipeg, Joanne Roberts, CityNews.