National Indigenous Peoples Day

Hope

Hope is an 11-year-old Ojibwe girl from Wikwemkoong, Ontario. Her family is part of the Three Fires Confederacy. Hope loves to plant corn, beans and squash in her traditional Three Sisters' garden. Every year she harvests some of the vegetables and enters the finest looking ones in a local Fall Fair competition. Hope wins a first and second place medal for her squash. Her Dad teaches her how to braid the corn husks, to honour the Three Sisters and to dry the corn for next year's seeds. At home, Hope helps out by gathering the eggs from the family's chicken coop. She has three cats, a dog and a rabbit as pets! In her bedroom, she shows us her hoops for dancing and her calendar that she loves to keep organized. She introduces us to her friends Kenzie and Hailey who get together to do arts and crafts with Hope. They also like to hang out on the swings and do cartwheels! Hope's special word in Ojibwe is "gitigaan" which means "garden".