Donna Augustine
Elder Donna Augustine (Thunderbird Turtle Woman) is a Mi'kmaq Ceremonial Elder from Elsipogtog. She is the Elder Advisor at Elsipogtog School. She has been teaching culture and language for many years, including in the state of Maine. She is an official designate under NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act) since November 1990. She serves on an Indigenous Advisory Council for the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg, International Repatriation, the Native Women of Canada, and more. Her work has taken her throughout the world with other spiritual leaders including the Deli Lama. Through all this, she states that her heart and purpose belong to the children and our ancestors.
Remembering Who We Are
My presentation will consist of taking you back around fifty years when there was no evidence of the ceremonial ways of our people here in Mi'kmaki. There were no Pow Wows, no smudging or visuals in our native communities and schools. The drum was silent! Now, over fifty years later, our cultural ways have taken a big resurgence in our Wabanaki Territories. When I started teaching culture in 1977; I knew then and still today, how vitally important it was that our children get the opportunity to embrace every aspect of their culture. For years, our parents and grandparents were assimilated into thinking that their culture and language was no good. This was internalized by our people as "I am not good enough." My path has led me on a spiritual journey journey to "re-discover" who I am and who we truly are as a people. I have helped to shatter those misconceptions that were imposed upon us; and replaced it with a strong fast conviction of knowing the actual beauty of who we are as a people. It has become my life long commitment to uphold and teach our students to believe in themselves and to always take pride in who they are. My presentation includes my own personal spiritual journey of how I was led back to our culture. This story began when I was five years old. At the age of twenty two, a powerful experience happened when I attended my first ceremony in Manitoulin Island, Ontario. From that moment, I was committed to bring our ways back to my people. My journey has never stopped!
Awakening of the Masks Medicine
FRIDAY 10:30am - 12:00pm
Mi’gmaq artist Gordon Sparks, alongside Elders Donna Augustine (Thunderbird Turtle Woman) and Cyril Polchies (Wape'k Paqtism), will guide participants through the powerful story behind the creation of two traditional storytelling masks for the community of Elsipogtog. Born from a vision of healing and reconnection, the project began with the ceremonial harvesting of a tree from Virginia Park—a place marked by past loss, but chosen not to revisit pain, rather to rise from it.
With the guidance of Elders, the energy of student drum groups, and the hands of young learners, this initiative became a movement—rooted in humility, lifted by community, and shaped by traditional knowledge. The process honored the land, the medicines, and the stories that continue to teach us. These masks are more than carvings; they are teachers in themselves—carrying lessons of humility, the importance of traditional medicines, and the strength found in cultural identity.
Though the project addresses difficult truths, it does so in a good way—the right way—through ceremony, collaboration, and storytelling. What began in the school has since ignited a community-wide resurgence, inspiring new mask carvers and renewing commitments to ancestral ways of knowing. This keynote shares the journey of reclaiming teachings, honouring the past, and carving a future grounded in spirit, strength, and story