Shannen Koostachin

It was May 2008, in Ottawa.

Three young people from Attawapiskat First Nation met with a minister. Among them was a thirteen-year-old Cree girl. Her name was Shannen Koostachin.

To get there, her class had made a choice. It had given up its graduation trip to Niagara Falls. The money had paid for this trip instead.

Shannen had been born on July 12, 1994, in Attawapiskat, on the James Bay coast, in Ontario. As a child, she was called Shan Shan.

She had almost never known a real school.

In 1979, diesel had leaked into the ground under J. R. Nakogee Elementary School. The leak had never been properly cleaned up. In 2000, the school closed.

In its place, portables were set up on the playground. A "temporary school." About 400 children took their classes there. The walls were poorly insulated. The air moved poorly.

The years went by. Three ministers promised a new school. None kept their word.

So the students launched a campaign: writing to the federal government. They wanted a "safe and comfy" school. Nothing more.

In 2008, Minister Chuck Strahl replied that the government could not pay for a new school.

That was why Shannen was in Ottawa that day in May.

The minister told them the same thing. There was no money.

Shannen did not give up. On Parliament Hill, she spoke out. She promised to keep going.

That same year, she was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize.

In 2009, in Toronto, she spoke again, before 500 other children gathered for the right to education.

To go to high school, she had to leave her community. At fourteen, she left with her sister Serena, about 600 kilometres away, for New Liskeard.

She left other young people a simple piece of advice:

In 2010, Shannen died in a car accident near Temagami. She was fifteen.

After her death, the campaign took her name: Shannen's Dream. A safe and comfy school for every First Nations child.

On February 27, 2012, in Ottawa, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion put forward by MP Charlie Angus, Motion 201.

On June 22, 2012, construction began on the new Attawapiskat school. It was the day Shannen would have graduated.

It opened its doors in 2014. It is called Kattawapiskak School.

In 2015, a statue of Shannen was unveiled in New Liskeard. Filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin told the story of her fight in a film, Hi-Ho Mistahey! It was one of her favourite expressions. It means: "I love you forever."

She was Cree, a daughter of Attawapiskat. The way her community, and so many children with it, carried her dream together echoes Ubuntu, without being the same.

A teenage girl had asked for a school. She never saw it. But since 2014, in Attawapiskat, children have gone to the school she called for.