08/16/2026
🧡4th Annual Makoonsiwi Empowerment Camp for Girls🧡
August 6th–9th at Sky Chief Park, we spent four days and three nights out on the land with 16 young girls. They set up tipis, learned empowerment self-defense, made moccasins and rattles, walked and identified plants, sang, sat in ceremony, and picked up life skills that will stay with them. We also enjoyed some camp fun - s'mores by the fire, outdoor movies under the stars, hide & seek in the dark, and a whole lot of laughing and fellowship.
Six Aunties stayed out there with us overnight, and many more came and went throughout the weekend - some just to bring food to share. That's what makes this work. Our girls were surrounded the entire time by people who showed up for them.
CHI MIIGWECH to our Youth Leaders, Ziah Henry and Jocelyn Nadeau - you were there for these girls physically, mentally, and emotionally all weekend long. You led by example, and our young ones looked up to you. True Warriors!!
CHI MIIGWECH to the Tribal programs who made this weekend possible: Mikinok Enterprise • Community Innovation & Development • TM Outreach Program • Home Visiting Program • TM Diabetes Program • TMBCI Natural Resource Parks & Recreation
CHI MIIGWECH to our local businesses who supplied what we needed:
BiiNi, Inc. • Rising Mountain Creations • T&S Portable Services
CHI MIIGWECH to the professional and cultural leaders who shared their cultural knowledge and valuable life lessons with our girls:
Siipiising Singers (Women's Drum Group) • Shellee Bercier, IHS Public Health • Stacie Laducer Blue • Connie Baker • Mona & Mariah Davis • Madonna Marcellais
We want to lift these women up. What they brought out to camp wasn't just a lesson plan - it was everything our girls need and don't always get a safe place to ask about. Sweat lodge ceremony, beading, traditional singing. Our changing bodies, our moon time, reproduction, how to keep ourselves healthy. Community safety. Our girls asked hard, honest, curious questions, and these women answered them with patience and care. That's how teachings get passed down. That's how our girls grow up knowing who they are.
And most of all, CHI MIIGWECH to our own Turtle Mountain IMPACT team - Loren Henry, James DeCoteau, Dorothy Henry, Angie DeCoteau, Monica Peltier, Shanda Poitra, and Talon DeCoteau. These seven didn't just create, organize, and host this camp - they hauled it, built it, fed it, taught it, and packed it all away at the end; they kept the fire during sweat, led ceremony and pipe ceremony, cooked every meal, taught rattle and moccasin making, tipi teachings, spirit plates, the Seven Grandfather Teachings, water ceremony, traditional singing, self-defense, Healthy Relationships, and sisterhood - and then tore it all down, cleaned it, and stored it away. Every bit of it, start to finish. Chi Miigwech, relatives. 🐢
To our 16 girls: you carried yourselves with strength all weekend. You belong to a long line of women who have done the same, and everything they knew is yours to claim. Remember what you learned out there. Use your voice - it matters, and you don't need permission to use it. Set your boundaries and hold them. Respect yourselves and respect one another. Always be a good relative.
And know this: we're not going anywhere. Whenever you need guidance, a teaching, or just an auntie to talk to - we're here. You are powerful. You are strong. That was true before you ever got to camp. 🐢🧡
