Stream of Dreams organizes day camps for Indigenous children

The Burnaby non-profit Stream of Dreams is organizing weekend day camps for Indigenous children in Burnaby throughout November and December. The November camps, called “Salmon Saturdays,” will take place at Burnaby Lake, near the non-profit’s premises, and will be free of charge.

Salmon Saturdays will take place on Nov. 9, 16, and 30 and are open to self-identified Indigenous children ages 6-12. 

Another group of camps will take place over the winter holidays on Dec. 23, 27, and 30 and Jan. 2 and 3. Each day camp will have a maximum of 15 children. 

According to education coordinator Krystal Brennan, Salmon Saturdays will educate children about salmon spawning, streams, and the natural environment through scavenger hunts and arts and crafts like weaving cedar bracelets, dancing, and gardening. There will be workshops to teach the children about native plants and animals. 

“I hope the kids themselves will have a new connection to their culture and other Indigenous cultures and learn a little bit more about the natural environment because this is an urban area, but we’re really lucky on Burnaby Lake to have such a natural space,” Brennan said. “We’ve made medicine pouches before, and our Indigenous contractors and staff members have brought in sage and sweet grass to put in them.” 

The idea for the Indigenous camps started when the Stream of Dreams’ executive director, Louise Towell, who has Metis heritage, wanted to start an activity for Indigenous children to learn more about their cultural and natural heritage. 

“She noticed there was a lack of any kind of cultural education for Metis children to learn about their culture and things like that, being in BC a little bit removed from it. So, she initially was hoping to have some eco-education and cultural Metis programming. And then we had a huge response. We have a lot of kids and families interested,” Brennan said, describing the inspiration behind the program. 

Stream of Dreams started as an initiative by Towell to raise awareness about the natural environment and the local streams with its flagship Fish on Fences program. 

“In Burnaby, in the Edmonds Community, there was a massive fish kill in 1998 when somebody put something toxic down a storm drain, all the fish and organisms, and even some mammals and birds were killed in the Byrne Creek watershed,” Brennan said. “She wanted to make a difference in her community, so she teamed up with the stream keepers, and they went to every school in that creek’s watershed to tell them what happened and how to prevent storm drain pollution so that this wouldn’t happen in their community again. And then everybody painted these wooden fish to represent the fish that had died.” 

Since it started in 2000, the Fish on Fences program has expanded to other parts of Canada and has educated around 200,000 children. 

For more information about the Indigenous day camps, contact Krystal Brennan at [email protected].

This piece was made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.

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