Recording Video Editing Studio for Grassy youth

Layla Staats is organizing this fundraiser.

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I couldn’t believe it. I had a friend reach out to me from Grassy Narrows telling me they are in a state of emergency with 3 youth suicides in the last 2 months. I immediately knew I had to do something.

Nora Sneaks was a young girl from Grassy who shared her story for my documentary Boil Alert. Before the film could premier, she took her own life. Nora had an interest in film and editing and I had hoped to send her a camera and equipment but never got the chance.

My goal is to raise the funds to deliver a mini Recording studio complete with all the gear to record music, video and edit and produce. Giving these youth the tools to share their stories and voices is something I hope can help channel their energy into something positive and powerful and empowering them to see just how important their voices are.

Background:

Asubpeeschoseewagong – the Indigenous or Anishinaabe name for Grassy Narrows is situated 80 kilometers north of Kenora, Ontario in Canada. The band membership is approximately 1,000, and their traditional territory spans a forest of approximately 2,500 square miles. The community has lived sustainably for millennia, using the forests, rivers and lakes for physical, economic, cultural and spiritual sustenance. Approximately 50 percent of community still depend on hunting, trapping, and gathering berries and medicines from the land.

The Grassy Narrows community has been through many traumas including forced attendance in church-run residential schools, coerced relocation away from their traditional living areas, hydro damming flooding sacred sites and wild rice beds, mercury contamination, clearcut logging of their forests, and mining.

These traumas have led to many social, health and economic problems, as well as the devastation of the culture. For thousands of years this community has been strong and self-reliant. Now, as a result of the continued economic dispossession, racism, and cultural annihilation that they have suffered, Grassy Narrows exhibits the signs of distress that have become typical of First Nations communities across Canada.

Native people lead in the statistics of suicide, alcoholism, and family abuse.

In the face of this oppression, the people of Grassy Narrows are actively resisting the continued destruction of their territories, re-occupying their lands, reviving their culture and fighting for control over their lands and self-determination.

Environmental Poisoning:

Ninety per cent of the population in Grassy Narrows experiences symptoms of mercury poisoning, which include neurological problems ranging from numbness in fingers and toes to seizures and cognitive delays, according to a recent study by mercury specialists. Then there’s the psychological stress of seeing your friends and family stricken with these problems.

But health services are limited to a small nursing station, and mental health counselling on the reserve is nearly non-existent.