Interview: Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House
Photo: Jennie Yuen Photography
Jessie started working part-time with Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House (FHNH) last October, as a complement to the work she was already engaged with in a local Friendship Centre HIPPY program. The two threads of her work have blended well together and she has been able to introduce some new Indigenous families to the neighbourhood house program. Jessie comments that Gloria Tsui, the Project Lead, has been a great asset, bringing in cultural connectors and Elders to support the Heritage Project programing for the culturally diverse participants who participate in Frog Hollow’s Family Programs, and organizing a workshop on Canadian Indigenous history.
The Heritage Project started last autumn, and Jessie began with running a drum circle program, involving participants in FHNH’s Family Programs, and expanded to include intergenerational Storytelling circles and All Nations Cook-alongs. Jessie, who perceives herself as a Bear Mother, is mother to four boys, and has built up a stock of Indigenous storybooks for children, which she has been using in her work with the Family Programs.
When the COVID-19 global emergency struck, and onsite programming at the neighbourhood house had to be put on hold, staff looked at ways to support their participants, by individualized phone check-ins with participant families and using virtual tools to continue to engage with the group.
A lot of the participant families don’t have the capacity to access online gatherings using tools such as Zoom, so a decision was made to create storytelling video clips that families could access online via the Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House Facebook page and Clinton Park Fieldhouse Blog which can be accessed through the Frog Hollow website at www.froghollow.bc.ca and https://clintonparkfieldhouse.news.blog/.
Jessie, making it a family thing by engaging the participation of her four boys, is creating Indigenous storytelling video clips, in her role as Bear Mother, that incorporate songs so children can join in when watching. Participants from the Family Drop-In, as well as the Settlement and Seniors’ programs, with all of whom Jessie has been engaging over the past months, will be able to access the clips, continuing to bring community together in shared experience as we all engage together in the current forced ‘hibernation’.
In her work with the Frog Hollow community, Jessie has been excited to find how much people want to know about Canadian Indigenous Heritage and how much curiosity there is, but she has also become aware of how little knowledge there is available for so many people in the community. The familiarization of getting to know Jessie as an individual has broken down a lot of fear of asking questions, people’s fear of making mistakes or being judged for what they don’t know. Especially in her work with the Settlement groups, the availability of translators and translations has been key for participants. When planning their immigration to Canada, families have often been given a distorted understanding of the Indigenous community and have often been told terrible stereotypes about Indigenous people.
Getting to know Jessie, and learn more about the cultural richness of Canadian indigenous peoples has been a great help in tearing down misunderstandings. In her work with the wider community, Jessie focuses on keeping dialogue open and focusing on commonalities, especially emphasizing the value for new immigrants to Canada of being exposed to and getting to know as many people from different backgrounds as possible as they develop their new life in this diverse country.
Jessie’s initial focus in the video clips she is producing will be on existing Indigenous storybooks for children, supplemented by songs. As she builds her confidence in producing the clips, she hopes to be able to gain confidence to include some family heritage stories as well.
Jessie expresses her thanks to those who read this, and to all the participants she is engaging with in Frog Hollow’s programs, along with her other work in the community, for coming along on her journey.