A storytelling session centering on insights in leadership and intergenerational emergency management. In this session, participants will have the opportunity to learn from the lived experiences and intergenerational perspectives of First Nations youth, mentors, and Elders from across Turtle Island. This interactive workshop will cover topics and offer resources to support participants in their own work and leadership development within community emergency preparedness. Throughout the session, a strong focus will be placed on the importance of mentorship, as well as peer-to-peer and community-to-community learning, as means to further strengthen intergenerational emergency management.
Facilitators:
John Leonard has been fighting fires for 40 years. Through the watchfulness that he developed over the years connected to his ancestral relationship to the land, he can read the landscape and fire behaviours in a way one watches an old friend. John is actively involved with the Interior Salish Firekeepers Society, contributing to a growing movement of Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and fire ecologists who are reviving the traditional practice of cultural burning. By advocating and building support networks for cultural land management practices, the future generations of Fire Keepers will be built. John is a Mentor with Preparing Our Home.
Sheri Lysons is a Secwepemc leader, Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, and former Fire Chief, Adams Lake Indian Band. As the Fire Chief, she led a diverse Fire Department, made up of youth, women and men, Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples working together. The team was formed during the 2021 Sparks Lake wildfire, which coincided with the ongoing pandemic and the discovery of 215 children near the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Through her work with Elders, youth and culture, Sheri fosters reconciliation in action, advancing trauma-informed approaches to building community safety capacity across ages. In 2023, as part of the Preparing Our Home matriarch team, Sheri was announced as a recipient of the Women, Peace, and Security Civil Society Leadership Award. Sheri is a Mentor and Board Director for Preparing Our Home.
Astokomii Smith is from the Siksika First Nation. Her Blackfoot name means “Calling Thunder.” In 2018, she attended the Preparing Our Home program herself. Following which, Astokomii took the knowledge and skills in emergency preparedness and disaster resilience that she had gained from the program, and together with her grandmother, Elder Darlene Yellow Old Woman-Munro, planned and facilitated a Preparing Our Home workshop for youth in their home community of Siksika First Nation rooted in intergenerational emergency management. As the Indigenous Liaison for the Town of Strathmore, she has been helping build bridges and break down the barriers between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples. Astokomii was the 2019 Calgary Stampede First Nations Princess, and she used her platform to raise awareness for mental health, specifically anxiety. From being scared to speak in front of a classroom to speaking in front of 30,000 people during the Grand Stand Show, she is showing others that it is okay to have difficult feelings, mental health issues are not a weakness, and that she is happy to share her coping mechanisms. Astokomii is a youth mentor with Preparing Our Home.
Aaliyah Calliou is an artist, hockey fan, and Youth Leader from Whitefish Lake First Nation #459. They have represented Preparing Our Home during previous conference workshops as a facilitator, including at the 2024 Assembly of First Nations Emergency Management Forum, where they shared stories and advice for intergenerational emergency management. Drawing on their lived experience with evacuations, they have been involved in the Preparing Our Home projects, such as the development “Aunties’ advice for safer evacuations”. Aaliyah is a 2023 Preparing Our Home graduate.
Lily Yumagulova is a Bashkir woman and an immigrant and settler in Canada. Lily’s academic and professional background includes emergency management, risk analysis, and a PhD in resilience planning. Within emergency management, Lily brings over 20 years of experience in government, NGOs, media, Indigenous communities, and international organizations in Europe and North America. She is the Program Director for the
Preparing Our Home Program.
