A couple of hundred Quesnel students rallied for the Moose Hide Campaign Day.
The Moose Hide Campaign spreads awareness against and advocates for victims of gender-based violence, which started in Northern B.C.
Students from Quesnel Junior Secondary, Riverview Elementary, and the McNaughton Centre gathered at Quesnel’s College of New Caledonia Campus for workshops, smudging, and an opening ceremony. Then the students walked from the college to the Helen Dixon Centre.
“This is our sixth year, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger,” says Tammy Burrows, one of the organizers for the event in Quesnel.
“The students love it, and we are working towards monthly groups. We want the kids to start taking this over and run the Moose Hide campaign on their own, and we’re hoping to lay the groundwork for that this year.”
Burrows says a few students had prepared poems to read this year, and the students are already planning on what they want to do for the next Moose Hide Campaign. The students are already on board to participate in the Moose Hide Day fast, which is held annually in communities.
“It’s just very cool to me, that they, the students, are taking action on this themselves,” says Burrows. “I get phone calls starting in April asking when do we start the campaign. There’s a lot of love for it in our community.”
The Moose Hide Campaign started in B.C by father and daughter duo Raven and Paul Lacerte.
Raven is a member of the Lake Babine First Nation in North-Central B.C, and is part of the Bear Clan. Father, Paul, is a member of the Nadelh Whuten Band and belongs to the Carrier First Nation in Northern B.C.
The pair came up with the idea in 2011, when they were hunting along the Highway of Tears. The Lacertes cut squares out of the moose hides they collected. The Moose Hide represents a symbol of the moose’s spirit and medicine, to help healing, and ending gender-based violence.
The Moose Hide Campaign Day is now participated by communities across the country.
Something going on in the Cariboo you think people should know about?
Send us a news tip by emailing cariboonews@vistaradio.ca.
