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WHATI/LAC LA MARTRE
Janelle Nitsiza is only 18 years old, but she's already an author, artist, community activist and youth leader.

Janelle Nitsiza takes a walk in the bush with Stephanie Beaverho during a paddle-making workshop in Whati last week. Nitsiza is a leader for the Tlicho Imbe Program, a cultural and contemporary skill building program. - photo courtesy of Rasinda Beaverho.

She attends mining companies' public meetings, attended the Dene National Assembly in July and participates in any workshop that comes to Whati.

She said she believes it's important to educate herself about municipal and territorial issues.

"I can learn what's going on in my community, region and territory so I can form my own opinions and not have to base them on what other people are saying," Nitsiza said. "I can get the information myself."

She said going to public meetings also helps to show elders that some young people are concerned about issues, too.

"It's just so the elders understand that youth do care and we don't avoid things like that," she said. "I just want to give elders a different point of view of youth."

Nitsiza took her understanding of public forums and wrote a story that earned her seventh place in the 2011 Canadian Aboriginal Writing and Arts Challenge.

Her story, Gonaewo: Our Way of Life, told of the 2010 hunting ban on the Bathurst caribou herd and its affect on the Tlicho.

"It was because I've been to a lot of meetings, I know how they go," she said. "I wrote it as if you were there."

The story includes the voices of five individuals with differing opinions, including those both in favour of and against the ban.

"Caribou is a part of my life, it's part of our culture," she said.

"I feel strongly about it. I was trying to form my own opinion about it."

Nitsiza said she used the voices in the story to help her sort out her own thoughts on the subject.

"I had a pro and con list," she said. "I came up with all these different scenarios."

Nitsiza is also a youth leader with the Tlicho Imbe Program, a cultural and modern skills-building summer program taking place in Behchoko, Gameti, Whati and Wekweeti.

The lessons she learns will assist her when she attends the Aboriginal Education Program through Calgary's Mount Royal University this fall, she said.

Nitsiza said she wants to earn a bachelor's degree in political science with a minor in aboriginal studies and then go on to earn her teaching degree.

Her goal is to spend time teaching in the North's isolated communities before returning to Whati to possibly pursue a job with the Tlicho government.

For now though, Nitsiza said she is happy finishing the final activities of this year's Tlicho Imbe Program where learning to fashion handmade paddles from elder Pierre Beaverho is now a cherished skill.

"Paddle-making was by far my favourite event. We had one of the oldest people here in Whati, we had him as an instructor," she said. "It was amazing to learn from an elder."

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