News Feature                                                            5/14/2009

Youth Education 2009 Water Festival

The Red Lake DNR held their annual 5th grade Water Festival at Concordia Language Village outside of Bemidji on Tuesday, May 12th 2009. The Water Festival is an interagency effort between the Red lake DNR, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Beltrami Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This year’s festival “The Wave of Knowledge: Learning the Language of Water” drew 227 fifth graders from all elementary schools located within the Red Lake watershed. Schools in attendance included Red Lake Elementary, Ponemah, St. Mary’s Mission, Kelliher, Northome and Blackduck.

In an effort to get kids interested and connected back to the land the kids were able to explore aspects of water and pollution prevention within their watershed. At the festival, students visited a dozen stations with themes ranging from wetlands to soils to water bugs, and frog to fire prevention and forestry. The kids had the opportunity to get their hands dirty while learning about soils, and had the opportunity to hold squirming frogs and bugs. The students visited a station where they became a water molecule and traveled through the hydrologic cycle, and participated in the Fish Olympics where they learned about fish advisories.

A few of the kids summed it up the best. “It’s just really fun,” Darren said from Red Lake Elementary School “We’ve been learning about nature and animals.” Ethan, a Blackduck Elementary School student noted that the festival gave him and other students ideas about taking care of the habitat of animals in nature. The kids were very impressive with there knowledge and interest in the station topics. This festival and other educational outreach programs like this are a great way to foster childrens’ interest in the environment. Through this program we hope to stimulate an interest in the kids that may lead them to furthering their education in the natural resources. Our hope is to spark an interest that might someday end with a career in the natural resources within the NRCS. Who knows we might have just found our next soil conservationist.

Submitted by:

Patty Burns, Tribal Liaison, Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians

Debe Walchuk, State Outreach Coordinator
 

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