Blog Post: Meet Shki-Ziigwan LaPointe, Camp Programs Coordinator

Aaniin! Hey everyone, my name is Shki-Ziigwan LaPointe, but people call me Ziigwan. I’m Anishinaabe from Ardoch First Nation and Métis from Penetanguishene. I live in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough and I’m attending Toronto Metropolitan University for my fourth and final year of Sociology. I started working with TRACKS a long time ago and have been involved with TRACKS in different ways for about 5 years. This year I’m working as the Camp Programs Coordinator and I could not be more excited for what we have planned for this year.

I’ve always been interested in combining different sciences together to see the overlap and the similarities but also the different perspectives used in observing the same thing, and being able to use that to find a more whole image of a single thing. TRACKS has really interested me in the past and still does because it combines and teaches things using both a western scientific approach and traditional Indigenous land based knowledge systems together.

I spent the past two years as an educational instructor, delivering programming in classrooms and at camp and I had a fantastic time learning at how these things are understood by youth and I had so many ideas about how programs and things could continue to change and create new workshops and programs and this year I’m excited to be a part of it again.

I always thought, now more than ever, that braiding together knowledge is critically important and that teaching it is important, especially to youth. The goal of braiding Indigenous knowledge and teachings with western knowledge is effective to teach as well as demonstrating how multiple knowledge systems when used together can often be more effective than coming from a singular perspective.