Our next session of Upstanders Academy starts this Thursday! It is going to be amazing. We have room for a few more awesome kids to join us.
This session builds off of our last session where we prepared for the Draw the Line March and my amazing Upstanders all got the chance to speak at that event. From that, we learned about Kebaowek First Nation’s fight against the proposed nuclear waste dump on their territory, at Chalk River, 1.1 km from the Ottawa River – and we determined that we should all be standing in solidarity with them to protect our water.
So we then attended the Rally of Allies for Court Support – where the Federal Court of Appeal heard Kebaowek’s case against the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.
We had made this video about all this to share our learning with the world – and that led to the most magical thing happening at this Rally – Justin Roy, Councillor for Kebaowek First Nation, mentioned in his speech that he saw a beautiful, inspiring video from World-Changing Kids in support of Kebaowek’s fight and that it made him very emotional to see that kids in Ottawa are standing with them. And I got very excited and yelled that this was us!! And then we got to meet Justin after. Part of this session of Upstanders will definitely include a collaboration with Justin and his community.
And then another magical thing happened at the Rally – we got to meet Leah Gazan, NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre. She suggested my Upstanders contact her office to create a petition in support of Kebaowek First Nation – to show how many Canadians do not want the nuclear waste dump built in its current proposed location. And she said when we get 500 signatures, she will read it in the House of Commons and she invited us to be there to witness that! So we will be working on that too!
And then another magical thing happened after the Rally – I ended up speaking to, and then going for coffee with, the awesome MC – Levin Chamberlain, Campaigns Specialist at Raven Trust – which works to support Indigenous Nations who are upholding their rights in court. And we are going to work with Levin to learn about the cases they are currently working on.
Raven Trust has an amazing online, free course you can take – “Home on Native Land”, a self-guided course about how Canadian law has impacted Indigenous people throughout history. Through a series of 10 videos, cartoons & lessons, you’ll take a walk down the back alley of history — and the frontlines of legal action. So we will be looking into that too!
There is so much to do. My Upstanders and I are so excited to get to work!
Send me an email at worldchangingkids@gmail.com if you want to chat more about this!
For more information, check out our Facebook event page here.