Annual Fort McMurray gala builds bridges, promotes positive contributions
When Tammie Tuccaro was in Grade 6, she made a habit of helping her teachers with the younger kids at her Fort Chipewyan school.
The 12-year-old Tuccaro didn’t think it was anything special—until she got an invitation in the mail one winter day.
“I won a junior achievement award for my community at the Regional Aboriginal Recognition Awards,” recalls Tuccaro with a smile. “Pretty exciting—I even got to go clothes-shopping for the awards ceremony.”
Tuccaro, the office manager with the Northeastern Alberta Aboriginal Business Association in Fort McMurray, has come full circle with the Regional Aboriginal Recognition Awards (RARA), which held their 29th annual gala and banquet on Saturday night at Shell Place.
Exactly 20 years later, in 2014, Tuccaro took home more RARA hardware—she won an adult student award while she pursued her accounting studies at Lethbridge College.
And when she moved back home last October, she figured it was time to start giving back to the Fort McMurray region’s annual celebration of Aboriginal community achievements—so she rolled up her sleeves and began volunteering.
“When I was a girl, just knowing that my achievements were being noticed gave me that push to keep on going,” she says. “It’s your teachers. It’s your peers. It’s everybody around you, noticing all the hard work and commitment you put into what you do.”
For nearly three decades, RARA has promoted the positive contributions of Aboriginal residents in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo—recognizing children, youth, adults and Elders in a variety of areas, including leadership, citizenship, volunteerism, traditional skills, entrepreneurship, art, athletics and academics.
“There is just so much positive energy in the room during our annual banquet. RARA really brings the community together,” says Nora Flett, a longtime RARA mentor. “The community really cherishes their contributions, but at the same time, these are unrecognized heroes. We’ve often had people tell us, ‘If you didn’t have these awards, we wouldn’t know about people like this.’
“And, ultimately, RARA builds bridges between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities.”
Enbridge believes in enhancing quality of life in the communities where we operate, and since 2009 we’ve supported RARA through a series of annual donations totaling $25,000.
While Tuccaro won her first RARA award in 1994, the rest of her family is also well acquainted with the organization. Her grandparents Eli and Rose Simpson won entrepreneur of the year in 1998 for their taxi business in Fort Chipewyan, which they operated for 42 years. Rose took elder-of-the-year honors in 2013, and Tuccaro’s mom Blue Eyes Simpson is a member of the RARA core planning committee.
“RARA has always been in the family for me,” says Tuccaro. “Once I returned home, I told them: ‘Whatever you need, just let me know.’ "
(TOP PHOTO: Melanie Antoine, centre, and her daughter Sadie Antoine are presented with RARA awards by Fort McMurray mayor Melissa Blake during the 2016 ceremony.)
