Seven years ago, Ashley Pitawanakwat moved 700 kilometers across the province from Wikwemikong First Nation to Niagara Region with her three children to escape an abusive partner.
Pitawanakwat describes herself as lost in her trauma at the time. She hadn’t lived in her hometown of Fort Erie for 20 years and was nervous about reconnecting with the local urban Indigenous community. Gradually, though, she began to attend women’s drumming circles at the Fort Erie Native Friendship Centre (FENFC).
At one of these events, a Friendship Centre board member asked if she would consider participating in a new pilot program, Urban Indigenous Homeward Bound (UIHB). “I didn’t know what UIHB was, what the goals were, or even what being a pilot participant meant, but I said yes and jumped right into it,” she recalls.
To learn more about the Urban Indigenous Homeward Bound Program, please attend the session Urban Indigenous Homeward Bound: Connecting for the Dream at the 2024 OMSSA Exchange Conference on May 8th at 10:30 a.m.