Shannens spirit lives on! Jeff Lemire, an illustrator and cartoonist from Toronto, told the CBC that Shannens courageous spirit and story helped inspire the new character. Shannen was 13 years old in 2008 when an elementary school closure forced students at the Attawapiskat reserve to study in freezing portable classrooms for years. The young activist not only arranged protests and letter-writing campaigns to Canada’s government, but also met with the Indian Affairs Minister, afterwards speaking to a crowd of over 5,000 people on the steps of Parliament Hill in Ottawa. In 2009, at the age of 14, Koostachin was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize for her work to improve educational access. Tragically, Shannen was killed in a car accident in 2010, but her work lives on in Shannen’s Dream, which advocates for safe and comfortable schools and culturally-based education for First Nations children across Canada, and in the new school in Attawapiskat that will bear her name
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 22:17:54 +0000