RED LAKE — Students returning to classes at Endazhi-Nitaawiging Charter School on the Red Lake Nation will have a new natural playground as part of a schoolyard expansion.
Endazhi-Nitaawiging, which roughly translates from Ojibwe to “the place where it grows,” partnered with the Trust for Public Land to transform a field into an interactive green space, with walking paths around the grounds where students can learn more about the natural world.
The school hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new playground Tuesday, Aug. 25.
“As a charter school, one of the areas which we focus on is the environmental learning,” said Victoria Wind, the school’s new executive director.
“That will really help the school and the students to be able to focus on the different areas in the environment and also provide this space for the community, so the community can have access as well.”
Many plants in the area, such as goldenrod and wild ginger, have medicinal properties. Wind said a student recently used leaves of a plantain plant, a common weed, to treat a bee sting while he was playing on the grounds.
“[We] connect to those cultural teachings that are just part of who we are innately,” she said, “teaching our students to be able to identify them and how to harvest them and gather those and how to prepare them.”
The Trust for Public Land is a nonprofit that works across the country building green spaces. State Director Sophie Vorhoff said the work connects people to the benefits of the outdoors. She said the new natural schoolyard for Endazhi-Nitaawiging is just the start.
“The school is about to start work on building hoop houses and the real food sovereignty area, so there's going to be a new outdoor kitchen here as well,” she said. “Kids and students and community alike can learn about traditional growing techniques and food. It's really exciting to see what's taking shape here.”
Reconnecting communities to culturally relevant food is essential to Indigenous food sovereignty initiatives. The concept essentially decolonizes systems of getting food to the people: moving away from commodity boxes that contain little nutritional value and a return to self-reliance through hunting, fishing, gathering and gardening.
Endazhi-Nitaawiging's mission aligns with sovereignty goals by decolonizing education and restoring Indigenous knowledge.
The U.S. and Canada’s prior policies of residential boarding school systems frequently took Indigenous students out of their communities, where they were punished for speaking Indigenous languages or for practicing traditional customs, like boys wearing long hair, in addition to suffering other abuses.
The residential boarding school system’s sole objective was to “civilize” Indigenous children to mainstream American culture, and they were first established in the late 1800s. The U.S. government originally mandated attendance at these schools, and generations of passed-down Indigenous wisdom were almost wiped out.
Chelsey Jourdain is a cultural educator at Endazhi-Nitaawiging.
Jourdain said an outdoor kitchen would greatly assist her with cultural teachings around food gathering throughout the school year: boiling down maple sap, parching wild rice and even processing deer.
“[It’s] a shared experience you have with your friends, learning something that you might remember forever, and hopefully being able to pass it on to their own kids,” Jourdain said. “That's when generations are learning culture, more than just one at a time, because there was a lot of language and culture loss with the boarding schools, right?”
While many may associate apples and pumpkins with autumn and back-to-school time, for Jourdain’s students, this time of the year is the peak time for other harvests.
“Sage is just about ripe now. Grapes are doing well. Wild grapes, making some grape sauces. But also, the high bush cranberry is pretty ready right now, too,” she said. “And those, the cranberry and the wild rice, tend to be ready at about the same time.”
The charter school partners with the Red Lake Agricultural Department as it works toward its food sovereignty goals.
The school’s grounds also feature fruit trees and a raised bed vegetable garden.
Jourdain said hands-on learning is important for all kids, but especially for Indigenous students to succeed.
“When you're going to go out there and harvest something, you have the asema [tobacco] offering, right, to thank the spirits and thank the land for what it's provided,” she explained. “It's that reciprocity of gratitude for this land being able to offer us something, and having all these students see how we do that. They're more prone to only harvest what they need.”
After the ribbon-cutting, attendees were treated to a meal of Red Lake-raised bison, as well as tasty offerings from the Ag Department’s gardens: cantaloupe, watermelon, coleslaw and grilled green beans.
Classes start at Endazhi-Nitaawiging after Labor Day, with enrollment options available to interested families.
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