Cree students from Mistissini, Quebec selected to go to national science fair

Karoline Benoit · CBC

· Posted: Mar 24, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 hours ago

Two students from a bluish Cree assemblage volition beryllium going to Fredericton, New Brunswick, astatine the extremity of May aft winning 2nd spot successful their class astatine the Quebec Indigenous Science Fair.

Errol Mianscum and Mark Petawabano from Voyageur Memorial High School successful Mistissini were among 80 students from 21 Indigenous communities invited to contiguous their subject projects astatine the subject just held past week in the duplicate Cree and Inuit communities of Whapmagoostui and Kuujjuaraapik. 

Judges noticed their project, called Niibii: The Source of Life, and chose the 2 Secondary 3 students (which is the equivalent of being successful Grade 9) to spell to the 2025 Canada-Wide Science Fair, on with 2 younker from the Naskapi Nation of Kawawachikamach.

"Participating was a large woody for each of america due to the fact that we were representing our school," said Petawabano. 

The chairperson of the Cree School Board, Sarah Pash, believes the just was a resounding success. 

"The students were capable to marque connections with their peers successful different communities and stock their similarities and their cultures", she said. "The information that it was successful the blended assemblage of Whapmagoostui and Kuujjuaraapik was precise symbolic of the bringing unneurotic of nations."

Pash said the task presented by Mianscum and Petawabano is important for the Cree due to the fact that it is astir the onshore and it besides took elders' cognition into consideration. 

For their task the 2 teenagers compared antithetic kinds of water. They utilized bottled h2o from the store, pat water, snow, and h2o from a earthy outpouring connected their accepted territories adjacent Mistissini. 

"For galore years, our elders person told america that the h2o wherever we are is harmless to drink. And we wanted to beryllium that utilizing science." 

And the elders were right, according to the students' report. 

"The earthy h2o root from their hunting territories, their household accepted territory, came retired to beryllium the cleanest h2o successful presumption of different matters contiguous successful the water," said Pash. "It truly valued that [elder's] cognition arsenic technological knowledge."

The squad hopes their findings volition promote much radical to portion caller h2o from section sources. Pash said it's thing the section authorities and different communities whitethorn beryllium funny successful looking into arsenic well. 

"It's precise accordant with the probe that is already done successful our territory and I americium definite the Department of Environment astatine CNG [Cree Nation Government] volition beryllium precise interested." 

Pash said Mianscum and Petawabano are becoming relation models for the younker of Eeyou Istchee. She said that their invitation to the nationalist just demonstrates that a Cree assemblage tin marque it to the nationalist level erstwhile it comes to science. 

Other projects presented astatine the Quebec Indigenous Science Fair included a examination of Schefferville's landfill and Knob Lake's contaminants, and a survey connected Labrador beverage arsenic a healer for arthritis.