b'RECOGNITION AWARDSCELEBRATING 50 YEARS AWARD:ELDER MARLENE PIERREElder Marlene Pierre was recognized with the Celebrating 50 Years Award for her role in ONWAs development as one of its founders and executive directors, as well as her ongoing work as a community advocate for Anishinaabe families and, now, as an honoured Elder in her 70s.It means a tremendous amount of pride for me, in recognition of all of the women who contributed to the movement, that they decided that I was worthy of that beautiful award, Pierre says. We started as and continued to be a volunteer group when we formed the Thunder Bay Native Womens Association, and then we organ-ized a provincewide gathering of women from the west to the east of Ontario and had the founding meeting here. From that moment on it was a steady movement of development and creating local womens groups across the country.Pierre says one of the Thunder Bay Anishinabequewoks first major projects was to set up one of the only Indigenous-run crisis homes for women and their children, Beendigen. And Beendigen still exists today, she says. It wasnt just to provide emergency service; it was to give women opportunity to heal and to adapt to a new way of life.More recently, Pierre began working with her son Jeordi Pierre on the School of Indigenous Learning (SOIL) that he established a few years ago on the land south of Thunder Bay. So far weve served up to 500 people, Pierre says. What it does is reintroduce our spirituality, our traditions, our culture. We focus on young people as a priority because its the young people who are going to be our future leaders, and they have to have a strong relationship with their Anishinaabe culture and know the history of what happened to our people across the country.For Pierre, SOIL represents their contribution to reconciliation. Were seeing a kind of uplift in the minds and the hearts of our own people when they know that change is happening, she says. And we can be a part of it by helping to make that change occur.We focus on young people as a priority because its the young people who are going to be ourDeveloping Prevention - New Beginnings services to future leaders meet the needs of communities, children Elder Marlene Pierre and families. kunuwanimano.comOntario Native Womens Association63'