YOUTH PROGRAMS
At AAI, we are restoring the health of our community with integrated food and leadership development programs. Based in the Pine Point Village of the White Earth reservation, we see the adverse childhood experiences caused by extreme poverty and disconnection from our Anishinaabe intergenerational teachings, spirit and land. Our work is focused on horses, farming, and traditional skills.
HORSE NATION ACADEMY
Dakota, Lakota and western Anishinaabe people have a long relationship with horses. Over the past decades, horse cultures have returned, as a part of our healing.
Anishinaabe Agriculture Institute is building an intertribal horse cultural program, focused on strengthening our youth, healing our communities, and growing food— with the benefit of the horse nation’s power.
Community Horse Cultural Program
The horse herd is in good shape, and with the weather now excellent, we’ve brought in some horse people to work with our youth and horse programs. This will expand over the summer and will expand in breadth to the working horse program as well.
We have supported a number of cultural and spiritual teachings with horses and will expand this. We received support from the Windrose Foundation towards horse culture work in our region.
Youth Horse Cultural Clinics
We are finally getting our horse programs underway, focused on horse therapy and youth, as well as Indigenous Horse Cultural teachings. Jessica White Plume came out from Mandan Territory and did a horse workshop with us in the spring, at the Straight River Stable. The workshop was really youth-oriented, and included cultural teachings, obstacle courses, and horse care. The workshop included l0 children over two days from the Pine Point community.
We now have our training round pens installed at the farm. This is exciting for our Youth Horse Cultural Trainings - Teaching relationships and connections with the horses.
YOUNG WOMENS LEADERSHIP
Through our young women’s program we organize cultural events such as a trip to Madeline Island in July, where they worked on Martin Curry’s farm and attended the stretching ceremony for the first jiiman, that's a dug-out canoe, carved on Madeline Island in two hundred and fifty years. Two of our young women were selected to travel to New York City to visit our newest partner organization, the Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund, for their inaugural fundraising event, where they met and tasted over 200 local chef and artisan food producers' goods. While there, they took the opportunity to visit similar farming projects at the Brooklyn Grange, and the National Museum of the American Indian.
Madeline Island Trip
Food Preparation for Community
Trip to New York City
PINE POINT COMMUNITY
Engaging with the local Pine Point Community, young people have access to our farms. Learning to press apples, and processing hemp, among many other exciting educational opportunities.
