VOLUME 21.03 WIGWAM TO WIGWAM YOUR HOUSE TO HOUSE NEWS ONE TINY INVESTMENT SMALL STEPS NOW; BIG REWARDS LATER See page 2 for a job opportunity and some reminders WHAT’S A WAY FORWARD? IDEAS FOR WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY See page 3 for information on career coaching and more GOT SOME RAW TALENT? MAKE THE MOST OF THESE RESOURCES! See page 4 for more information FERTILE FOUNDATIONS BE INSPIRED BY THOSE WHO’VE GONE AHEAD Featured artist and craft ideas on page 5! 1 WIGWAM TO WIGWAM WHAT ONE TINY INVESTMENT? Summer Recreation Jobs with City of Toronto Want to be a Rink Guard? A Tram Driver? A Youth Leader? A Special Needs Coordinator? A Visual Arts Instructor? A Personal Trainer? A Lift Operator? You can find job descriptions and qualifications for these roles and more on https://jobs.toronto.ca/recreation/ • Some positions hire at 14 years of age • Most positions pay higher than minimum wage • Hours of work are flexible (after school and weekends) • Seasonal and year-round opportunities are available Commit to some new responsibilities, save up some cash, and gain valuable skills and experience to use in even bigger roles and responsibilities in the near future! Friendly Reminders for All Wigwamen Tenants 1. Report changes in your income, assets or household composition. A household receiving RGI assistance must report and provide documents of an increase in income or assets of more than $33 per month, within 30 calendar days of the change. Households who do not report changes may lose their eligibility for RGI assistance. 2. Keep stairways and hallways clear! Leaving personal items on walkways is a trip and fall hazard, especially to older residents and those with mobility issues. It also violates fire safety laws – you don’t want to further endanger people trying to get in and out of your area during a crisis. 3. Leave nothing behind in laundry rooms. No clothes or any other items are to be stored in the laundry/furnace rooms. Common areas are for the use of all residents. Please be responsible for your belongings and make room for others once you are finished using common facilities! 2 WIGWAM TO WIGWAM CHARTING A WAY FORWARD “A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for” ~ John Augustus Shedd TPL RESIDENT CAREER COACHES Toronto Public Library offers remote career & job search help for younger adults, with consultations, workshops & seminars. Coaches can help with general career advice, résumé and cover letters, job or employment searching, interview preparation, or developing personal marketing material for your LinkedIn profile, portfolio or website. Book a free one hour consultation with a Career Coach to get one-on-one advice on your career journey! For Career Coach Profiles and more information, go to https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/programs-and- classes/featured/career-coaches-in-residence/ IMFTO ADVERTISING WORKSHOP Do you have ideas about what should be the future of Toronto? Are you an 8-12 year old Indigenous, Black or Person of Color (POC) youth in the General Toronto Area? If you answer yes to both these questions, you can choose to join the "It's My Future Toronto" (IMFTO) project! The city is asking for fresh ideas on how it can recover from the COVID-19 pandemic & bring more justice to Indigenous, Black & POC communities. Sat Mar 20, 2021, 11:00am to 12:30pm This online synchronous workshop with advertising specialists from Sid Lee, Juliet, and OCAD University is open to 8-12 years old BIPOC youth. Connect your future ideas into a city wide advertising campaign to fund your ideas for the city. More information on COVID-19 Visit https://itsmyfutureto.ca/ to register! 3 WIGWAM TO WIGWAM COUPLE TALENT WITH HARD WORK With Help from People Who Want You to Succeed! From Dream to Reality Paola Gomez & Andrea Manica | Fri Mar 19, 2021, 2:00—3:00 pm Freelance illustrator, mural painter, and artist Andrea Manica joins Paola Gomez to share what we can learn from other artists' journeys and practic- es. Also learn how to establish a strong brand and discover tools to support your planning and organization process. The Artist's Presence in a Digital Era Paola Gomez & David Chinyama | Fri Mar 26, 2021, 2:00—3:00 pm Multi-disciplinary visual artist David Chinyama joins Paola Gomez to share best practices and tools for artists to promote their work online. The Inspiration behind Indigenous Artist Philip Cote Paola Gomez & Philip Cote | Mon Mar 29, 2021, 2:00—3:00 pm Join Paola Gomez in conversation with Indigenous Artist Philip Cote who will share his teachings and speak about what it means and how to become a successful artist. Philip Cote, is a Young Spiritual Elder, Indigenous artist, activist, educator, historian, and Ancestral Knowledge Keeper. He creates opportunities for artmaking & teaching methodologies through Indigenous symbolism, traditional ceremonies, history, oral stories, and land-based pedagogy. For more information on the above talks and other future programs, visit the TPL website or go to https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/programs-and-classes/featured/artrepreneur-in-residence.jsp 4 WIGWAM TO WIGWAM SHUVINI ASHOONA Shuvini Ashoona is an Inuk artist who is famous worldwide for her drawings. Her subject matter is sometimes taken from the everyday world around her and sometimes from her bold imagination. She experiments with large-scale drawings and challenges ideas about what Inuit art should be. In this three-dimensional artwork, she created a pencil crayon and ink drawing that can be folded into a cube. She is showing us Kinngait (Cape Dorset), the hamlet where she lives in the Far North, with its small houses against a background of rocky hills. As a child, Shuvinai lived in hunting © Shuvinai Ashoona, camps in the summer & Kinngait in the winter. Composition (Cube), 2009 / Courtesy of Dorset Fine Arts 2009 Shuvinai was born into a family of artists and like her cousin, Annie Pootoogook, learned to draw at Kinngait Studios in Cape Dorset (formerly the West Baffin Eskimo Coop. All information on this page was extracted & adapted from the Art Gallery of Ontario website. For more information, visit https://ago.ca/learn/ago-makes/three-dimensional-landscape AGO Makes From Home 3 Dimensional Landscape Watch AGO artist/instructor Melissa Pauw create a 3D landscape, inspired by Shuvinai Ashoona’s artwork called Composition (Cube). Grab a box, container, white gesso or paint, and your pencil crayons to make your own sculptural landscape. https://ago.ca/learn/ago-makes/three- dimensional-landscape-activity Fold Your Own Landscape Inspired by Shuvinai Ashoona’s 3-D landscape, Composition (Cube) pictured above, look around you to find a landscape you’d like to capture. See https://ago.ca/sites/default/files/ AGOMakes_AccordianLandscape_Nov2020_F A-tagged.pdf for more instructions on how to explore the horizon line, the background, middle ground, and foreground, while creating your own unique folded accordion-style story! 5 WIGWAMEN Incorporated provides safe and affordable housing to hundreds of Indigenous and non–Indigenous families, singles, and seniors throughout Toronto and Ottawa. • The Terrace (127 units for Indigenous seniors) 14 Spadina Road, Toronto, ON, M5R 3M4 • 20 Sewells Road (92 units for Indigenous/ non-Indigenous individuals & families) Scarborough, ON, M1B 3G5 • 228 Galloway Road (60 units for Indigenous/ non- Indigenous individuals & families) Scarborough, ON, M1E 5G6 • Pam Am (145 units for Indigenous/ non-Indigenous indi- Wigwamen Head Office viduals & families) 75 Cooperage Street, 23 Lesmill Road, Suite 106, Toronto, ON, M5A 0J5 Toronto, Ontario, M3B 3P6 • Scattered Housing (for Indigenous families) 214 homes located throughout the GTA Tel: 416-481-4451 | Fax: 416-481-5002 Email: [email protected] • Place Perrault (41 units for Indigenous/ non-Indigenous individuals & families) 205 Eric Czapnik Way, From York Mills Station take the 122 bus, which Ottawa, K1E0A5 stops directly in front of the building; or the 95 • 55 Thora Avenue (20 units for Indigenous individuals & bus (not the express), which stops at Upjohn, just families) Scarborough, ON, M1L 2P7 200 metres south of Head Office. Alternately, • 3738 St. Clair Avenue East (22 units for Indigenous from Pape Station, take the 25 Bus, get off at individuals & families) Scarborough, ON, M1M 1T7 York Mills and transfer to a westbound bus, or • 525 Markham Road, Scarborough, ON M1H 3H7 walk west for about 5 minutes. Wigwamen Maintenance If you have a maintenance issue, please contact Families & individuals of Indigenous descent should your building manager. If you do not have a fill out Wigwamen applications that are available: building manager on site, please call the Head Office at 416-481-4451. By mail: call 416-481-4451 to request; or Online Maintenance Request Form: Online: at www.wigwamen.com www.wigwamen.com/housing/maintenance- request-form/ You must submit proof of legal status in Canada and a In the event of an after-hours emergency (e.g. a copy of either your Status Card or an Affidavit of flood or heating failure), please call 416-481- Indigenous Descent for Housing Purposes with your 4451 (Toronto) or 613-805-9604 (Ottawa). application. Affidavits can be obtained from Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto. This newsletter issue was compiled by Aliza Tan. MEEGWETCH! Non–Indigenous Families & Individuals should Special thanks to the following for their assistance in fill out an application that is available: offering suggestions, forwarding content, reviewing drafts and giving feedback during the process of By mail: call 416-981-6111 (Toronto) compiling this issue of Wigwam to Wigwam: or 613-702-5358 (Ottawa) to request a form Angela Klassen-Hayes, Angus Palmer and Jodi Hetherington. Photo Credits: Sandie Clarke, Tijana Drndarski Online: at www.housingconnections.ca (Toronto) and Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash or www.placeperrault.ca (Ottawa) You must submit proof of legal status in Canada and Published in March 2021 by Wigwamen Incorporated.