New hunting, fishing initiative will provide access to training and cultural education for First Nations youth

The Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation (SWF) and the Saskatoon Tribal Council (STC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Thursday that will help educate First Nations youth on some of their treaty rights, like hunting and fishing.

Saskatoon Tribal Council Chief Mark Arcand says the wildlife federation’s respect for those treaty rights is what opened the doors to this agreement.

“We were approached by (SWF past-president) Robert (Freberg) and other members to promote treaty and inherent rights – hunting, fishing, trapping – to really make a difference and use it as an educational tool to support the younger kids to properly hunt, properly store their weapons, opportunities like that including the use of their gun range and their archery range,” said Arcand.

Freberg says this is a relationship that began with a conversation about how to support young people who were training for the North American Indigenous Games.

“A couple of years back, there was the North American Indigenous Games and the athletes from some of the First Nations communities were really looking for a facility to do some training and get some mentoring with regards to their coaching,” said Freberg.

Freberg says the experience working with the youth has been very positive, and it’s important they are able to take it to the next level. That includes an outdoor archery range that the federation has built in the inner-city.

Arcand says this partnership will go a long way towards helping the youth to train and learn more about one aspect of their culture.

“It’s all about safety, it’s all about education, it’s all about making sure people are doing the right things and if you know First Nations culture – it’s a livelihood for hunting, fishing and trapping – so for more education for young people to know how to properly store those firearms,” said Arcand.

Freberg says while the MOU with the STC is very important, they’ve also signed agreements with other First Nations. He says the federation has built a mobile unit with a trailer so the group can take their “facilities” into other communities.

“We signed an agreement with seven First Nations communities and we’ve been discussing how we can launch these programs into those communities,” said Freberg.

Freberg says the members are very excited and enthusiastic about being able to help educate the First Nations youth.