Goal 1
To maintain and formalize existing partnerships by
Goal 2
Partnerships that will assist WTCI Community Members to prepare for
Goal 3
Meet & Improve our Outcomes & Key Performance Measures
Natasha Sacobie: ESC provides a success story below.
Artist in Residence for 3 weeks at the Lord Beaverbrook Art Gallery
Received the “Heather Stone Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Craft East Buyers Expo in Halifax on February 11, 2023
Keeping the traditional art practices of the Maliseet people alive
Natasha Sacobie is an artist from the Maliseet community of Kingsclear First Nation in New Brunswick. Her dream was to improve her creative abilities through understanding Wabanaki practices and learning traditional art. A staff member of the Wolastoqey Tribal Council (WTC) encouraged Natasha to develop her skills. She enrolled in the 2-year Wabanaki Visual Arts Program offered through the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design.
The WTC is one of over 110 Indigenous organizations delivering the Government of Canada’s Indigenous Skills and Employment Training program across Canada. Organizations like the WTC deliver job-training services to Indigenous people in their communities.
Natasha had to learn to manage work and school at the same time. For many artists it is hard to create when the desire is not there, but she kept going. “There were many sleepless nights creating until the sun came up and then I had to be in class for 9 a.m.!”
Natasha graduated from the Wabanaki Visual Arts program with distinct honours in June 2022. She got a residency with the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and this opened many doors for her. Recently, she received the Heather Stone, Emerging Artist of 2023 Award. Her words of advice for others, “If you have the motivation and drive, then you are limitless when it comes to manifesting your goals and dreams”
Shelly Sabattis – Bilijk – 2022 Career Development Practitioner Achievement Award
Wolastoqey Tribal Council Inc. would like to congratulate Shelly Sabattis on being selected as a recipient of New Brunswick Career Development Association’s 2022 Career Development Practitioner Achievement Award for her outstanding contributions to the field of career development.
Shelly is our Employment and Training Officer (ETO) for Bilijk (Kingsclear) First Nation. She has worked in the Indigenous Skills Employment and Training Program (ISET P) role since the beginning of the program under it’s previous title Aboriginal Human
Resources Development Strategy back in 1998.
During her time as an ETO she has negotiated countless training agreements, has established a training center on her First Nation so her clients have easy accessibility to a number of training programs, promotes employment and training within her community and she is a cornerstone in helping members of her community find employment.
Congratulations on over 20 years of serving the people of Bilijk, Shelly!
Wolastoqew carpentry training program
Wolastoqew carpentry training program retrofits toys for N.S. kids with disabilities. The toys are retrofitted for easier accessibility so kids with mobility issues can still interact with them.
Wolastoqew carpenters-in-training in New Brunswick began retrofitting 52 toys for kids with disabilities at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax. The trainees are adding external accessible sensors to the toys so people with mobility issues can still have fun.
The retrofitting includes rewiring and soldering items like the yellow Boppin’ Beaver to include an external padded switch that triggers the toy’s animation and sound.
Ethan Paul, one of the trainees, says they’re happy to help.
“Nothing in the world beats seeing a kid smile and laugh, and it means the world to make another kid happy” said Paul, 21.
He said he knows how important it is for kids to play and interact, so he’s grateful to be part of the solution. Paul has a one-and-a-half-year-old son himself, so he said it was important for him to be involved.
Group of Bilijk youth get hands-on lessons in value of skilled trades
The group of six Bilijk youth including 15-year-old Enikws built benches on the first day of the workshop series. (Submitted by Gabe Issac)
After spending four Saturdays learning the basics of different skilled trades from plumbing and electrical to cooking, 12-year-old Sutter Dean says he has a newfound appreciation for these careers.
“I didn’t think there were as many as there were” he said. “I thought there were your standards: plumbing, electrical, carpentry, things like that. But I also learned cooking is a type of trade, welding is a type of trade”
Dean was one of six youth from Bilijk, about 40 kilometres west of Fredericton, who could be found one Saturday morning at the end of November cooking up a storm of bacon, eggs, bannock bread pizza, and squash soup.
Wolastoqey students learn ‘two-eyed seeing’ approach to marine conservation
Members and organizers want to see greater Indigenous representation in environmental fields
Summer Saulis spent a chilly recent morning observing seagull behavior on a quiet Saint John boardwalk surrounded by a salt marsh. Armed with binoculars and notepads, she and 16 others recorded the gulls’ behavior, noting they were calm, fed and undisturbed.
The observations made at the Irving Nature Park were part of a field observation exercise on the last day of a two-week course that fuses marine ecology studies with Indigenous elder experience.