June 2, 2026
Sarah Deckert, Aiden Hindmarch, Majestic Moerland and Ashly Persaud
On May 21, 2026, Just Waters participated in the Louis Riel School Division’s 2nd annual Learning With the Land: A Gathering to Celebrate and Dream. Held at The Forks, students and staff came together with community organizations to celebrate and learn more about land-based learning, Indigenous worldviews, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Just Waters Indigenous Summer Intern Majestic Moerland, Centre for Earth Observation Studies student researcher Aiden Hindmarch, and Centre for Human Rights Research student researcher Ashly Persaud planned and facilitated an interactive booth exploring issues of water and justice. Read on for their reflections!
This event was an exciting opportunity to engage with young people on various topics regarding the environment and our relationship with water as humans.
Majestic moerland
Our interactive booth varied with presentations highlighting PH testing, and density tank demonstrations of salt water and fresh water, relating them to current on-going climate issues. It was a great experience listening to and connecting with students on what they observed through the examples. Allowing students to engage and communicate with own hypothesis on the tests was insightful and interesting.
As youth watched and listened to demonstrations, they were able to practice their artistic abilities and create buttons to take home from the event. Students were prompted with the question “What does water mean to you?” and asked to creatively design their personal button in response.
This activity allowed not only students, but everyone present to reflect on what water truly means to them. It was powerful and refreshing to connect with students on their relations to water. While students expressed their creativity with button making, we were able to witness our youth think holistically about their answers and consider all living things such as animals, plants, and insects. These buttons represent a deeper reflection into personal connection and relation with water.
The Learning With the Land event was an exciting opportunity to teach and learn from young brilliant minds who were equally passionate about protecting and living with our relative nibi (water).
Participating in the Learning with the Land event was so much fun. One thing I love to talk about is encouraging the youth to look at our environment from a different perspective. Normally, from my experience, many children see rivers and lakes as places for recreation, like fishing, swimming, or transportation… while they aren’t wrong, there are many ways to look at water such as understanding how these systems function, the biodiversity they support, the wildlife that depends on them and the important role they play in sustaining communities.
Aiden HindMarch
To help students think more critically about how our water systems are being used, we held three demonstrations that students were free to explore. They could learn about the pH scale and what happens when water systems skew too far on both ends of the pH scale, discover what happens when salt water and freshwater mix, or reflect on their personal connection to water by creating a button based on a word, phrase or symbol that is meaningful to them.
For me, the best part of the day was when I made a mistake during one of my demonstrations, and the group of students was quick to point it out. I found it inspiring to see the courage in that group to correct a university student, their enthusiasm and engagement, and it left me with a reinforced belief that learning goes both ways, especially when connecting different perspectives, and that experience highlights the importance of these events.
