Little Bone First Nation happy to open new community centre

Little Bone First Nation community centre WATCH: A community centre years in the making is opening its doors to people of Little Bone First Nation. Sierra D’Souza Butts has more.

Little Bone First Nation, Sask. — After years of planning, people of Little Bone First Nation are celebrating their new multi-purpose community centre.

Located 20 minutes outside of Yorkton, Little Bone is a reserve under Zagime Anishinabek First Nation, along with Minoahchak, Shesheep, and Sakimay First Nations.

"They've never had a community centre,” expressed Chief Lynn Acoose of Zagime Anishinabek First Nation.

“That means a lot of the family knowledge, the traditional knowledge, their history, doesn't get transmitted from the elders to the children so this will help with that.”

The Chief Little Bone Community Centre will provide a space for cultural gatherings, public events, outdoor recreation space, as well opportunities for health care services.

"It will improve the health of the people. There's less of a sense of isolation and there's more opportunities for them to take part in workshops and other clinics for the community,” Acoose explained.

“We’ve been delivering services within peoples’ houses which is not ideal. Here we can have a child immunization clinic, we can have prenatal classes, we could have foot care and diabetes clinics. The Yorkton Tribal Council, which we are a part of, they will also be delivering services out of this facility.”

The community’s youth coordinator, Cameron Peepeetch, said the new centre will provide various opportunities for children living on the reserve.

"There's not a lot to do when you live on a First Nations, but to be with your community, so this hall is a really good thing to bring our youth together,” Peepeetch expressed.

Acoose pointed out that the $3.6 million project was funded entirely by the local community.

“We received no funding from Indigenous Services Canada to build this facility, this was all self-funded,” Acoose said.

Although plans for the centre started about 10 years ago, people from the First Nation have envisioned it for decades.

“My grandma and my mushum used to struggle and strive to get a place to have everything on the reserve, it’s just awesome beginning it today,” Debbie Pelletier told CTV News on Friday.

Pelletier is one of six board members who worked towards planning and building the facility.

“This is awesome. We have a building now to work out of, we have a building for people to come in and help out with new things, it’s going to be awesome,” Pelletier said smiling.

“We’ve been striving for this for 51 years and now it’s come to reality.”