Vernie Clement

Vernie Clement at The Gathering Place at TRU.

Vernie Clement is 27 and from the Lhoosk’uz Dene Nation, southern Carrier nation, about 200 kilometers west of Quesnel. He’s from a small band with under 200 members when he was there. He graduated in 2009 from Thompson Rivers University from the school’s business program.

I met up with him at the Gathering Place on the TRU campus to find out about his experiences at the school and growing up.

Here are some parts of our conversation:

“I chose this university for its location pretty much because I finished my last two years of high school at NorKam Secondary here. I liked the community so I stayed and decided to go to school here. I had the option of going pretty much where I wanted to with my grades and stuff and I just decided to keep it around here because it’s more comfortable and closer to home too.”

He started with a BA and then went to business admin and finished in human resources management.

“Most of my memories are not so much in the classroom but with my involvement with the First Nations Student Association and we helped to put on events and cultural activities here on the campus for years. Ya, I was vice-president for a couple years and then president for FNSA for three years.”

“It was challenging because a lot of the events we put on, we had to do straight from volunteering because none of us were paid or got honuorariums for anything we did, we just got together and we wanted to have more activities happening on campus and so we formed this good team and got a lot accomplished with little... it was a long road and people have left a lot for us to work with and pick up so it was a good challenge.”

 About the Gathering place:

 “When I first got here, they were asked to do an opening for this house, this aboriginal house 5 in 2003 and I was invited to participate in that in terms of singing with a group that I was practicing with so they wanted to put a student up there to help open this as well as with elders so they asked me to do a prayer and it’s funny how that happens. It so happens that someone from the same nation as me understood what I was talking and she came up and introduced herself and that was Joanne Brown so we connected right away there.”

 “It was like my second home up here. (laughs) I got to meet quite a few people, the people who were involved with the FSNA of course. We had another location on campus where we did our meetings at and hung out there as well but here was more like a social time. We had potlucks and stuff like that so we used it as it was called a gathering place so we got to meet other students and ya, got to meet quite a few of those people just from having this place here, available for us to use.”

He’s a drummer too and started in 2001. 

“You’ve got to learn your beat first before you can sing to it.”

About TRU being the number one choice for aboriginal students:

“You know like anything it takes a lot of work and it was a really bold move to move in that direction...I think that they still have a lot of work to do but you know the work that I’ve seen on my time on campus and witnessing and you know I think some things have changed but I think some things haven’t. It still needs to be a more welcoming environment but you know seeing the new building coming up and that structure that’s behind it... there’s some changes happening but I think it’s slowly happening and the more that the faculty, professors, the people running the board of governors, you know are part of more cultural aspects and have better understanding, the more that’s going to change and for the better I think.”

What it was like as a student at TRU:

“In terms of where I grew up and my experience, it was pretty challenging. A lot of my classes, a lot of students held jobs or had family who owned companies and that kind of stuff so I felt a little disadvantaged there not having those kind of experiences, even though my mom and both my parents owned their own companies. They ran logging companies back home, I was never really involved in that part. I was mostly raised by my grandmother so we lived out in the bush. For most part of my life, I was out in the bush for nine months of the year and around my language and my culture.”

“I’m one of the few younger people who are, growing up around it. Actually English was a second language I think for me because our home language was Dakelh.”

 “Coming to here, the campus, and learning about business and the whole system that kind of evolved around us and it was really eye-opening, challenging but at the same time, I think it was worth it to understand where that’s coming from so hopefully I take both with me wherever I walk.”

On taking business:

“Our people have traditionally been hard workers and all my family has worked hard all their lives. You know there was commerce here way before Columbus came around or got lost I should say, they followed the grease trails which incidentally ran right through our Kluskus. Alexander Mackenzie came right through our community back in the 1700s. We still have stories about our first contacts with them and also the introduction of moose to our country cause we didn’t traditionally have that so there was a lot of trading, still a lot of trading that happens between our communities, ya so we understand. My grandfather’s a business man too. I think about it. They ran ranches and had cattle and owned property... we understand the value of work from a little bit different perspective not in terms of profiting huge but maintaining the balance and providing for your families, the abilities to survive winters and giving away, gift giving was a lot different. A lot of the richest people were actually the poorest people on our reserve because they gave everything away that they owned or that they could afford to give away. It wasn’t collected to be kept, I guess or profit from it in that way.”

His thoughts on education in relation to self-determination:

“I think it’s important to have people understand all the context that’s not really taught in school, lot of information that are in books, textbooks are still somewhat outdated but getting better. I had a ministry placement with the Ministry of Education for nine months and got to see some of the new material that they’re pulling out that’s kind of good to see some of that a little more evident in the curriculum, but in terms of self-determination, I think people have to become somewhat educated, especially the language and that’s the key thing is having our language because within the language, as I understand it coming from understanding a lot of my own language, the names and stories, everything has a meaning, it has a purpose that there’s a connection to the land from each area that we’re from and that will be lost if people don’t pick that up, the language because the language come with the philosophy come with how you think about a situation, how you react to something and those teachings that are within the language, you use that one word or you use a phrase and it goes back to teaching, to a traditional teaching and that’ll guide a person on how they’re supposed to act, what they’re supposed to watch out for and how to treat other people, nations, other people who come into our country. All those things are important and within the language so that’s a key part of it.”

Why he wanted to go to post-secondary when so many other First Nations people don’t:

“It was a hard question to answer too. I spent a long time thinking about it. Like many small First Nations communities, we weren’t without our drug problems and our abuse problems and a lot of things that I think are a direct result from residential schools and my parents, my grandma went through there, my dad went through there, my uncles so it was struggling. I was really lucky. I had my grandmother who decided and I still remember when she use to drink and stuff, she decided to quit and a lot of the other women in our community went through some healing processes and decided to put that life that bottle away and it’s through their strength that some of us younger generation, we’re lucky to have that and they supported us and I’m just really fortunate, I think in a lot of ways, that rather like an example, I’m probably like an exception so it wasn’t until I stopped with my addiction too and decided to move away... I was 16 actually when I finished the program for my band operated school and at that time the ministry, B.C. Ministry of Education, wouldn’t recognize our band operated school as an institution capable of giving a Dogwood or a Grade 12 equivalent... I had to do some soul-searching in some ways, the result of course was me deciding that I needed to move away a bit to finish my Grade 12 with whatever I needed to do to get it...I was pretty mad at the world, mad at everything that was around and still trying to straighten up my own life and trying to lead a better example because I was one of the few people from our program who actually did finish and did well so I felt somewhat of a responsibility to them and to my family to continue on and I’d be one of the first to attend university if I did so it was for them that I really left because otherwise I would have been happy staying at home.”

In his life, he’s committed to being sober after making some poor choices in his teens. He’s been sober since November of 1999.

“I took those things out of my life so I could make better choices for my family and hopefully affect some change so I took on that responsibility and never really looked back.”

“I think that’s what it really takes is to heal ourselves and with that education, learning more about what’s around us and our own people and what’s around us, that’s really the foundation of what self-governance means is to have healthy people and to have healthy minds leading those organizations or our people. Our leaders need to show that.”

When he lived in his community, he was asked as just 16 to run for the chief of his band. 

“I do want to be involved in my community in leadership and I have been a continued support to whatever they’re doing and stuff. It’s just my grandma gave me some direction and I follow her teachings. She told me, ‘If you say yes to becoming chief, there’s no doubt that our relatives, our family will support and friend will support you in that but you know what good are you to our community if you don’t bring nothing to it, you’re raised around us and everything.’ So she told me to go out and get the education and understand more about everything else that’s happening around us cause that’s more valuable to our people right now. That’ what she told me so she said, ‘stay in school and keep doing that.’”

“There was no treaties signed in B.C. except for treaty 8 in the north and the Douglas treaties down in the Island, but other than that I think they just gave up on treaty making...before like anything is settled, we have to settle things between ourselves as First Nations.”

“It has to be settled before anything moves forward in B.C. I guess because it’s unceded land.”

“Self government, ya, I think it’s important. It’s going to have to happen. People should be, you know we’re naturally self-governing since time immemorial and they couldn’t understand our governance that’s the other thing. A total lack of respect and understanding for what was there and what was effective for the people here and developed over millennia and it’s sad to see it disappearing slowly and kudos to all those nations that are involved, still have those things in place and are using their traditional governance systems in effective ways.”

“The governance system right now isn’t working either. It’s not working for the education system. It’s not working for the, we’re still struggling with pollution. We haven’t answered those questions, long-term factors and all governments deal with that.”

“I do believe there’s going to be the ability to do self-governance but it’s got to change from the national level rather than just the municipal and provincial.”

“There’s this one clip I say on YouTube, good traditional teaching YouTube, (Laughs) so there’s this clip about change and this one guy gets up and starts doing this funky dance and it’s not until you get four other, five other people who were up there dancing with him and everyone wanted to be a part of that kind of thing you know and then there was the question about who’s the actual leader. Is it the person who steps up first or is it the person who steps up second or third or fourth to support that person? There’s different types of leadership all over and different ways of being a leader...You have a family, a group with strong, their own abilities and you can effectively use those people. Everybody’s useful. Has a place in this role and so I think when we figure those things out there’s going to be a big change” 

Today, he’s at a youth think tank on First Nations governance run by the National Centre for First Nations Governance in Prince George.

 “The really big key is to have the youth involved from the start and to get them to think about what they can do in order to become self-governing. What does it mean us in terms of what we can do individually cause like I said before not all of us are going to be that one person. It’s going to be a number of different people doing different level and understanding each others’ roles and their ability to be effective.”