Moontime Learning Lodge: Growing Moontime Teachings Across Wood Buffalo

Aunties Within Reach is an Indigenous-led, women-led nonprofit at Fireweed Wellness Lodge in Fort McMurray. Over one year, we will expand our Moontime Learning Lodge with our partners: Nistawoyou Friendship Centre, Fort McKay First Nation, Mikisew Cree First Nation, Chard Metis Nation and community based Youth Centres as well as  Keyano College.

The need: Colonization interrupted Moontime teachings that once honoured the cycle as a sacred time of strength. Many youth and adults now carry shame or silence about their cycle, and mainstream health education rarely offers culturally safe teachings. Our partners are asking for more sessions in more places.

What we'll do: We will deliver 12 culturally safe, trauma-informed, age-appropriate sessions at partner sites. Participants learn Moontime teachings and accurate information about their bodies, and take part in a Full Moon Ceremony. Each participant takes home a Moontime kit and the cycle tracking journal our organization created. The journal connects body, moon, land and teachings, so the learning continues all year.

Why it works: Our partners provide space, outreach and community trust. Our Aunties, Knowledge Keepers and the 17 facilitators we trained with Moontime Connections provide the teachings. This funding covers supplies only.

Impact: 150 youth and adults gain teachings, tools and pride. The teachings travel home to families and future generations. Participants learn when to seek care, and tracking their cycle helps them notice changes early. Our trained facilitators gain mentored experience, and our partnerships across urban, First Nations, Métis and college settings grow stronger.

We will track sessions, participants, and kits and journals distributed, gather participant and partner feedback, and share an impact story with Field Law.

This project will benefit Cree, Dene and Métis youth and their caregivers across the Wood Buffalo region, in urban Fort McMurray and in the communities of Janvier, Conklin, Anzac, Fort McKay and Fort Chipewyan.

Indigenous youth: Many of our young people are growing up without the Moontime teachings their grandmothers carried, teachings that honoured the cycle as sacred, powerful and connected to the moon, water and land. Through ceremony, teachings and their own Moontime kit and journal, youth will come to know their bodies with pride instead of shame and reclaim their place in these teachings.

Caregivers and kin: In our ways, youth are raised by a circle of relatives. Parents, grandparents, Aunties and Uncles will learn alongside youth so the teachings live at home. Many caregivers never received these teachings because of residential schools and colonization. Learning together restores what was interrupted and rebuilds the passing of knowledge between generations.

Urban Indigenous families: Through Nistawoyou Friendship Centre and Keyano College, urban Indigenous youth, families and students, many living away from their home communities, will have a culturally safe place to reconnect with ceremony and kin.

First Nations and Métis communities: In Janvier, Conklin, Anzac, Fort McKay and Fort Chipewyan, sessions will be held in community, guided by local Knowledge Keepers and protocols. Teachings will be shared among relatives and on the land. This removes travel barriers for families facing higher costs and fewer services, including in fly-in community of Fort Chipewyan.

Community leadership: Indigenous facilitators trained through our Moontime training will lead sessions in their own communities, strengthening Indigenous-led care that lasts.

Future generations: About 150 youth and caregivers will take part directly. The teachings will travel home to siblings, children and grandchildren, part of the cultural resurgence our communities are leading for the next seven generations.