FORT FRANCES – Imagine yourself on a dog sled with a team of hard-working canines in front of you and snowy winter environment all around you.
You’ll get a chance to do that and more, virtually, next week as the Fort Frances Museum and Cultural Centre hosts Science North’s travelling Indigenous Ingenuity exhibition from March 25 to April 12.
The exhibition also includes simulated deer hunting by bow and arrow, wild rice harvesting, igloo building and much more.
“Fort Frances will be our 15th stop on the tour,” Sarah Chisnell, Science North’s director of education, said Monday from Toronto, where she’s attending a science education conference.
“We’ve had great connections with communities across Northern Ontario with Indigenous Ingenuity: Timeless Inventions,” she added.
“Folks from all over are getting to see this in their community,” she said. “It comes with ‘bluecoats’ (science educators) that are engaging in the experience and are able to interact with visitors when they come to see it.
“We’ve had some great host partners, the Fort Frances Museum and Cultural Centre is our next partner and we’re thrilled to be working with them.”
Science North also has “some great school programs,” she said. “Schools and classrooms have been able to visit the exhibit and engage with not only the exhibit itself but some supplementary school programming that goes along with it.”
Science North’s website says Indigenous Ingenuity: Timeless Inventions “presents a clever and novel mix of science and culture intended to stir a sense of pride among First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities and celebrate the diversity, interconnectedness and resourceful ways of knowing and being that Indigenous knowledge and innovations provide in the global community.”
The exhibition, presented by Science North and Indigenous Tourism Ontario, has previously been in Kenora and Red Lake and many other cities and towns in Ontario’s North since launching in September 2022, and is scheduled to hit Atikokan and Dryden later this spring.
Chisnell said Indigenous Ingenuity has its roots in “a much larger, 500-square-metre experience from the Montreal Science Centre.”
Science North adopted “a portion of that” to fit a “tour-size format for Northern Ontario, and we’ve added new content inclusive of Northern Ontario,” she said.
This celebration of Indigenous knowledge and culture has been popular wherever it’s been, Chisnell said.
Samantha Manty, the Fort Frances museum’s program director, said she and the museum’s curator Danielle Marshall “hopped on” the opportunity to work with Science North.
“I’ve worked with them in the past with my prior job at the Fort Frances Public Library, and Science North – they’re just amazing. They get people out, they get them learning, exploring, wondering,” Manty said.
The exhibition’s theme is well suited to Fort Frances and surrounding communities, she remarked.
“It’s an opportunity to bring people into the museum, knowing that we’re a part of the community and that we want to bring in things that our community and our surrounding communities will really enjoy. So it’s a great opportunity.”
Admission to Indigenous Ingenuity is by donation. It will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with the last entry at 3 p.m., and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (last entry at 5 p.m.) on Wednesday.
