‘Something real to hold onto’

City Centre

Ka Ni Kanichihk invited the community in from the cold for a first-look at its fresh, newly expanded campus and cultural space at 455 McDermot Ave.

Ka Ni Kanichihk is a non-profit, community-based human services organization, founded in 2001, offering everything from sexual health education to work experience, and it now has a lot more room to fit everyone inside. The project cost $14 million, was 10 years in the making, and will serve as the home base of several Indigenous-led programs with focus on culture, education, recovery, and family support.

Kaelei Knutson, a former participant in the organization’s social innovation and community development program, spoke of the importance of Ka Ni Kanichihk from her experience as someone who had struggled to fit in during her first go at post-secondary education, as she struggled with the grief of leaving her community and the difficulty of finding stable housing.

“It gives people something real to hold on to,” Knutson said. “It gives people another chance to rewrite their story.”

Now a student at RRC Polytechnic and the mother of a young son, Knutson described the opening of the new space as a “full circle,” moment and stressed the importance of having accessible programs such as those Ka Ni Kanichihk offers, which helped her navigate an unhealthy situation and find a system of support.

“Everyone who comes through the doors should feel welcome,” said Wally Chartrand, a cultural adviser to Ka Ni Kanichihk.

The project received funding from all three levels of government, as well as private and community funders. The University of Winnipeg’s Community Renewal Corporation (2.0) served as project manager. The building includes child-care spaces and ample room for cultural practices such as smudging, as well as recreation for students and the community.

Jackie Anderson, Ka Ni Kanichihk executive director, assumed her current role in the spring. She described herself as “coming in at the tail-end of it all,” and commended the work done by the non-profit’s team of leaders.

“It’s a beautiful space,” she said, adding that the opportunity to be “the place of medicine” and healing for the surrounding community “really, truly means a lot.”

Anderson said that, during construction, a section of the older building — which had included a mural favoured by one of Ka Ni Kanichihk’s original founders, Leslie Spillett — was torn down, but staff eventually recreated the mural in Spillett’s honour, an act which represented the overall team morale during the entire endeavour.

Anderson also acknowledged the “next generation of leaders” in the form of the Butterfly Club, a youth leadership program offered to Indigenous girls and two-spirit people aged nine to 13. Members of the club — who regularly meet in a separate site on Notre Dame Avenue — were the first to perform a drum song in the new cultural space during the Dec. 2 opening event.

Although the campus is open for business, the final piece of the puzzle — an indoor sweat lodge — will be completed next spring.

Visit kanikanichihk.ca for more information on the organization and its programs.