Cherlyn Billy

Cherlyn Billy

Yesterday, I spoke with Cherlyn Billy, the British Columbia regional manager for the Nations Centre for First Nations Governance. The Centre helps build capacity within First Nations to get the tools and information that they need to self-govern in whatever way is best for them or as Billy said, “my job is actually just to support First Nations in their inherent right to self-government.”

She’s a member of the Shuswap Nation, near Cache Creek, but now works with the Centre on located on Squamish territory. She was first elected to band council at 30 and has a background is in law and anthropology. She’s been working with the Centre since February 2007.

I spoke with her about her work and what the Centre does in terms of self-governance.

Here are some parts of our conversation:

“First Nations people have been governing themselves prior to the Indian Act and the idea, all the work that we do is essentially support and assisting them and remembering that cause we’ve been doing it for thousands of years and it’s only now that we’re starting to remember the  work that we used to do before. Generally, we do a lot of it already and what I go back to and share with people is when it comes to family funerals, we don’t have anything written down that defines our role within that but we know what we’re supposed to do.”

“A lot of it has to do with the children. Whenever you’re looking at anything that you’re doing, you have to have a vision and a lot of times it’s not for yourself, it’s more for the children who are coming and the way we look at it is seven generations, thinking ahead for them and so what we need them to have in place.”

“I support and assist First Nations as they implement their inherent right to self-govern, not matter where they’re at. They could be implementing the treaty but it’s not my task to say that they’re, everyone has their own right to define how they want to move forward on self-government.”

“The idea is to make sure that we create a new memory. Our tag line at the Centre is, ‘Creating a new memory in the minds of our children,’ and the reason for that is because that’s essentially what we’re here to do is change the memories of the past, to creating new memories for the future so that they don’t have to deal with those same things that we’ve had to deal with. You have to change the story, right, to create something new for children.”

“We’ve worked this year with probably about 70 First Nations in British Columbia out of 202... a lot of what we do supports them so I think that kind of response speaks for itself in the sense that as a First Nations organization with First Nations people working within it, people have been really receptive to wanting to move forward and a lot of response that we get here at our organization and hear is, ‘it’s been a long time coming and it’s very appreciated.’”

“First Nations are beginning to define themselves and create what they want to see for their own nation and they’re doing in a way that honours and recognized the work of past leaders and assistors and elders before them.”

“I can’t tell people what works and what doesn’t work for their nations... we don’t stay the same and that’s probably been the best gift that we have as First Nations people is the fact that we don’t stay the same. If we were to implement, we kind of go with the flow, right and see how things can work for us. I don’t know if it’s the title for chief and council or if it’s the people themselves. A lot of times if you look at something, it’s not always the title of the individual but who they are as a person that defines their role in the governance structure... cause you’ll find that a lot of our people, they carry themselves with the values of our people, right, and those values, I think, are what maintain the leadership. They’re actually the ones that provide the foundation for our leadership, our values and our principals as people.”

“To be honest with you, B.C., we’re very complex. We have the most language grouping. We have the most nations and I think that we don’t compare ourselves. We can’t look at one model and say that’s going to fit all and that’s how we approach it hear because if you look at a lot of our court cases, they’ve all come, the major ones have come from B.C. and they’re not all the same basis and the reason for that has a lot to do with our diversity here, but I wouldn’t say that we would follow anyone’s model. I think that we’d probably define it the way we see best because that’s the way B.C. is. We look to things and develop it in the way that most fit our need, not the needs of the government.”

“You have to be very open-minded and you have to love the people that you’re working with and not try and impose your own views on them because we’re so complex again, like I said and I wouldn’t say that this one model would work for them because it all depends on what the community views as being valuable.”

“I have been involved in a lot of different areas with First Nations across the country, mainly in Ontario and British Columbia and saw that there was great need for a service such as this.”

“I think as First Nations, definitely that’s what keeps us going is our strength and our perceptions of things, but I think that what I’ve notices is that a lot of people, a lot of organizations are taking an interest in the area of governance. I think you see it not only all across B.C. but across the country. If even our National Chief is talking about moving beyond the Indian Act and beginning to strengthen our governance structures so not just the national centre but a lot of other nations, a lot of groups out there that are beginning to move ahead.”

“We’ve always had governance so I don’t know why it’s happening. It’s just people are becoming more vocal, that’s about it. We’ve always had this in place.”

“The more knowledge that people have about who they are, about knowing where they come from, I think that’s where you begin to find your voice in moving ahead. If there’s anything else, when you look at yourself, you become more, you can talk a bit more about a subject once you learn more about it and once you feel more comfortable with it, with the topic and the more that you hear people telling the story, the more you being to say, ‘OK, I’ve figured it out.’”

“A lot of education that people need for self-governance probably comes from knowing the past and understanding the past.”

“Different nations have different ways of moving forward but our nation has always been quite strong in terms of looking at our aboriginal rights and title... that’s one thing that I think has made our nation quite strong.”

“Communities are connected in some way through family so whenever I think about my nation, I think of it as being part of my family and I think that’s the way that they govern themselves is with that understanding.”

When I asked her what the most satisfying part of her work is , this is what she said: “It’s working with the people and seeing the change that’s happening within communities and seeing how our organization has grown in terms of the work that we do.”

“The Centre is doing what it’s intended to do and that’s to develop the materials that are needed to see the end result and see communities kind of evolve to where they were before and our role at the Centre is building capacity within nations and that’s where I see us moving forward is moving that along to another level, developing capacity in First Nations.”

 “When we’re looking at building our communities and our nations, we need to keep in mind all of the people who make up that community and that includes a lot of our young people and we need to make sure that we have, when we’re creating the new memory, is making sure that we’re providing our young people the tools that they need to be able to undertake the leadership of the community and move it forward because that’s what our ancestors did for us and it’s something that we have to continue to be mindful of doing in the future.”

  

Nicole Cahoose-Joseph

I did an interview with Nicole Cahoose-Joseph but after the fact, she requested that the article and photo of her be removed because of personal reasons.

Fred Fortier

Fred Fortier in Hello Toast in Kamloops.

When I got to Hello Toast, a breakfast restaurant in downtown Kamloops, the place was empty. That made it easy for Fred Fortier to spot me when he came in. For the last couple of weeks, we had been trying to connect for an interview for this project and finally we’d found a time and place that worked for both of us.

Fortier is a member of the Simpcw First Nation’s band council and has been for 21 years. Currently, he’s the acting Chief of the band until till May. Though he’s a member of the council and the band of the Simpcw First Nation, north of Barriere, he lives in Kamloops. He’s 53 years old and has hopes to move back to his community.

In addition to being a leader in his community, Fortier was integral in starting up the community’s school nearly 30 years ago. I spoke with him about his experience with education and with government in a wide-ranging conversation that lasted nearly an hour and a half.

Here are some parts of that conversation:

On education:

 “In my reflection on education, it plays quite an important role because after probably 30, 40 years of me living in that community, I really see the benefits of education not only in my own children but the other children who have gone on to get degrees and help their people with some coming back to the community which is really interesting. People who have teaching degrees, business management degrees come back and help our people and having their children actually come back and go to the Neqweyqwelsten School so I think that’s the most important thing because it builds our capacity to deal with self-governance and self-determination and without an education background is the we hire non-Simpcw people to work for us and I think that we need to build our own capacity for self-governance and I think we’re in the right direction.”

 “This concept of Indian control of Indian education, what did that mean to community member, what did that mean to parents when you have full control of Indian education for the children? And I think it reflects on the role when I went to school. I went to a very rural school up till Grade 7 in Chu Chua so I never went to Indian school, they call Indian school, residential school. I went to school at a rural school in a rural environment mixed with not only other Simpcw children but also with other non-Simpcw people. First of all I think my educational background is a lot different in the concept of how I think about education vs. how people think about education when they went to residential school and that really is an issue because for us going to a non-aboriginal school and growing up, six years of doing that, we almost got to be integrated, you know. We always knew the non-Simpcw people were people who were friends. I still have people that I went to school with Grade 1 to Grade 6 that are still my friends so I think that when we started developing our own school we always thought about this, what is Indian control of Indian education and so what can we do differently than a regular school is doing right now for our children. You include the language, the culture, the songs, spirituality and how do we integrate that into our schooling system so the concept was the parents got together and there was only, very few parents, there was probably six of us I think parents, six or seven of us and we had 11 students and two weeks to get our school in order so we went to a band meeting. All of the parents, we encouraged the band administration or the band itself to give us money. We borrowed $15,000. We hired a teacher within two weeks. We had a school which was the old band office which was two rooms, a bathroom and we brought in the power saws and cut out windows, we made tools for our school, bought desks in that time period and started up and running. Since then we’ve been able to be clear about who manages the school and that’s the parents. It’s a parent-run school. It’s not managed by band council, by the community, it’s managed by parents. If you send your child there, you get to be part of management committee, the parents’ committee and the band administration, the money for the administrator is through the band. We just have an agreement to do that so we’ve been very successful of encouraging students and along the ways, one of the biggest challenges for us was the Indian school concepts, that we were just another Indian school on the reservation land. In order to get by that we had to encourage our other parents of children who would be coming in the following year, to go and convince them that this school is important to us culturally and we can provide the same kind of school as Barriere plus. That I think was instrumental in the sort of concept and idea of how we would be building our Neqweyqwelsten School up like that and since them we’ve sort of got away from this Indian school, no this is Neqweyqwelsten School, this is your school and to be proud of that school system because without being proud of that school system, those children will not be proud. They won’t be proud to be Simpcw. They won’t be proud to be Secwepemc and I think also when we look at it, one thing that really won the school over and its children was the cultural component.”

“We have been putting the drumming back into our community so what’s the importance of the drum. That’s the question you’ve to ask yourself, why do you want to teach the drum. It teaches confidence. It teaches spirituality. It teaches the ability to be self-respectful not only to yourself but to the drum itself so there are certain rules on how you have to carry yourself when you’re drumming so no drugs or alcohol so you can’t be drunk or stoned when you’re playing the drum. You must refrain from all alcohol so it teaches you discipline and I think that where we’ve now been able to start teaching the young people of Head Start and moving up and once they start to sing, they start to be able to look at what the relationship is between the drumming and the singing and spirituality, the sweats because there’s a connection there and how we do that now is to be able to encourage the people to go to the sweats as young people and old people because the ability to heal yourself is through the sweats as well. You have to have a choice in life and that choice is either go your ways of destroying your inner being, your inner self, your self-esteem or moving in a direction of accepting your culture and your spirituality as a Secwepemc person.”

“I’ve seen a lot of reaction between parents and kids about language, how to in simple words to talk simple words for children and I think it’s quite difficult as a parent because I don’t speak the language. It was a generation of no language. My father is a fluent Secwepmectsin speaker, fluent. He’s one of few fluent speakers in our community. He hasn’t spoken his language in probably 20 years or more and so he’s 75 right now and it’s an opportunity for him to teach his, to talk with Charli and with his grandchildren about the language and the importance of it because his position  was that language teaches you nothing because it was beaten out of him and so in order to sort of get that language back, you have to teach the whole community not just the parents in the school. That’s the difficult part of it. It’s a challenge to the communities is to embrace that as grandparents, as elders and to be able to help people, doesn’t matter what age group they are and help them so they’re not embarrassed about their language. You don’t feel slanted about learning their language and I think that sort of attitude was there awhile ago and I think that’s the attitude that needs to come back into our community is our elders need to now start speaking the language, speaking it fluently amongst us so that we can start bring our language back because the language is part, if we understand the language, we’ll understand the land and without understanding the land, we’re not people.”

“The language provides you with the ability to, I think look at the world with a different viewpoint than anything else. Our language is based upon what we do, not what we have done.”

On self-government:

“Without our control of our people, their minds, is that the control of our young people’s minds as far as giving them information instead of them getting information from the public school system clouds their vision about who we are as people and I think that’s the most important thing to be able control our people in a way that we put information that they need because after Grade 5 everything repeats itself forever, everything. The way that you filter things in, the way you filter things out, your values, your attitudes. If you can bring up a child that has those great attributes of those things, you’ll have a good community.”

“If you’re going to look at where you want to be self-determining people, you can’t have that if you’re hiring people who don’t think like a Secwepemc or a Simpcw person, you need to be able to think like an Indian, that’s what our elders always say. It’s how do you get that attitude in them. First of all you own the land, that’s the attitude you have to take, If you own the land, I own the land as a Simpcw person, that’s the attitude you have to take as an aboriginal person, Simpcw, Secwepemc. If you don’t believe that then I think this whole philosophy of self-determination is a moot point because if you don’t come with an attitude of owning the land and making sure that land is looked after I think just in general you’ll lose sight of that, you’ll say oh ya, the province, Crown land OK, we’ll go ask permission, No it’s about we own the land and if we own the land then that land is part of our language, our culture, our spirituality. It feeds us. It clothes us. It provides economic development to us and so without land we are nothing, we’re ordinary citizens... The ability for us to be self-determining is based upon a good educational system that brings people forward that are going to be lawyers, doctors, policy people, resource managers, foresters and geologists because in our area we have a vast amount of responsibility. We have mines coming in, we have forests, fisheries, I think in this whole issue of self-determination we need to have those people to manage our resources now and into the future.”

“I think the way that self-determination is is you have to have a good base of education to find who you are and to control the future of what you’re going to do on the land because without that truly we won’t have anything. We’ll basically be fighting the government again like our elders did. I’m not going to do that when I’m old.”

“The true issue between us is revenue sharing between us and the province and the Federal government, the rest is gravy cause we know if we got the revenue sharing for all the natural resources in our territory, we don’t need government handouts any more...so when people look at the way First Nations are, they say, oh ya, you get government handouts. You get free houses, free everything, well we don’t need free everything if they give us our land and our resources and that’s the fight that our young people have today.”

“I see we’re taking on a lot more responsibilities than some of the, dealing with mining, I think the natural resources like forestry end of things...we’ve learned some hard lessons. Most of those hard lessons have come from having no control. If you want control of your destination, you have to control what you’re doing. You can’t give that control to anybody else to consultants, to management firms, you have to have that control all to yourself and I think that’s where education, the control of education, because without that control, you’re helpless.”

“In order to be a leader in the community, you have to be grounded. You have to be able to take what the community says and deal with a lot of things on a provincial and Federal level, right, so in order to negotiate as they say you have to be grounded in some really good values. Nobody gives anyone anything for nothing, especially First Nations, you go there and take it our negotiate it and you negotiate what you get, that’s the philosophy and I think if your not grounded right in who you are and truly believe that you are a good person as a Secwepemc or even as a Simpcw, you have to be grounded in that. You have to have those value systems that look at how you’re being respectful not only your own people but how you’re being respectful of other people.”

“It’s more reflective of a legal dominate culture in the way that we see ourselves as Secwepemc or Simpcw people and the way that the federal government sees us and the way that the provincial government see us.”

“I think we can still define who we are a people, regardless of what the Federal government does.”

“We control our own destiny and we’ve been doing it for a long time.”

Daniel Saul

Daniel Saul outside the museum.

Last week, I spoke with Daniel Saul. He’s the manager of the Secwepemc Museum in Kamloops but is from the Simpcw First Nation, north of Barriere. He looks after the staff, facilities and grounds. He’s been manager since 2006 and before that he worked for the Secwepemc Cultural Education Society.

He was born in 1949 and is 61 years old. He went to a school in Barriere then one in Moose Creek. He was taken to the Kamloops Residential School in 1958 and then paroled from the school ten years later.

I sat down with him outside the museum on a beautiful warm spring day. The view from the spot had the old residential school on one side and the museum facilities including a pit house on the other.  I spoke with him about his job at the museum, the role of education and his own experiences.

Here are some part of that conversation:

Role of the Secwepemc Museum:

“I think it’s a cultural and educational centre and that’s the big role. Most museums they play the same role but we have First Nations staff and interpreters so visitors come here get the whole gambit of the experience so we like to think it’s cultural education as well as tourism cause tourism’s actually a form of learning, formal education because they come to see us to learn, to learn about things and we also learn from them. I mean, it’s really interesting to see how things work and what they think and all this kind of things and a lot of is the way people thing we should be, like some of the questions we get asked like, how come you don’t have your outfit on or your regalia or costume is usually what they ask and then we explain it, this is the 21^st century and it’s really not practical to do that kind of stuff unless there’s special events or some kind of ceremony or things like that, right, to wear regalia. Number one, it’s too hot in the summertime plus you don’t want to damage them right cause getting the real material is getting scarcer and scarcer so like when you do have the regalia, you’d want to keep really good care of it so it wouldn’t get damaged.”

“The whole idea is for everyone to get to know each other, right so how can you do that if you don’t participate, if you don’t talk to each other, if you don’t mingle together and ask questions and learn from each other because if you don’t do that, then it’s like a segregation and when that happens, people don’t get the truth. They may read things in books, but that’s not all that’s true as you know, in newspaper and TV’s and movies, things that are actually not what is portrayed. We have in the museum a lot of information and we say is what you see is the First Nations point in history because we never get to write it so when the visitors come they get to see our point of view on all these things, how did it effect relative to them and most of the educational tools and books, it’s not so bad now, but in the past it had one point of view.”

“When you go to a place and you want what’s there, minerals, fish, trees, all that kind of stuff so what do you do, you get rid of the people who are there.”

“There’s real bad and there’s good. A lot of people just, Oh I didn’t realise that kind of thing and there some people like that, it’s good when they say that but a lot of people say, well I wasn’t there, I didn’t do it, whatever, stuff like that, well doesn’t matter but now that you know, you can help make things right. That’s all you can do basically.”

“The whole site is kind of like a historical site because it was a residential school, right. You know that’s not a very good topic but it was a part of our history so we can’t ignore it. The museum, it’s all together and it’s used as an administration building, etc. Etc., they had the buildings here, these are historical buildings and the park all within one location, rather than move somewhere and try to rebuild and all that stuff and we do the schools and it gives them a chance to get out of the classroom, come here and visit. We also go to schools but it gives the students, they remember more if they’re actually here inside a pit house or doing actually activities, they’ll remember that whereas in a classroom, it’s good in a classroom when they learn but it’s very sterile. Because when we bring people through the building, they’ll remember that... I think it’s the effect of being in the whole environment.”

Reclaiming the space of the old residential school for the Secwepemc Museum:

“Absolutely. There was a lot of discussion about that. It was some people’s opinion, well we should just tear the joint down and be done with that, like I think with Lytton and Williams Lake, correct me if I’m wrong and I get asked that quite a bit, right, how come it’s still there and I say, well, like I said before, it’s part of our history whether you like it or not. You can’t just block that out. People, you have to learn from that. History’s not always good, it’s painful a lot of times, but it’s still there. It does no good to hide it or try to ignore it because so many people have been affected by that you can’t so when I first started doing this, when I first came back here, it was pretty tough for me to actually go through that kind of stuff cause that was like, I don’t know, 25- 30 years later after I left here.”

“It was actually pretty strange because when you go actually through the buildings, you see the same places and the same rooms and the same physical surroundings and things start coming back to you and you start, ‘oh gee, I don’t know. I don’t know about this.’ When I was first asked to do a tour, I was pretty hesitant about it and I struggled with it, just looking around. I didn’t do a very good job and the people I explained to them so they understood right. It took me awhile right and after I’d done it maybe a dozen times, I started getting better, not easier but better and after awhile it was better and I used this. They say in counselling there’s things you have to confront whatever it was so I used that experience to look and overcome those kind of like fears.”

“You get the real hands on, like we’re the real, we’re the survivors. We were there. We experienced it and a lot of people don’t know the actual experiences, what did we do? What happened when we got up in the morning, what did we do then? So we go things like that with them and it’s way different from reading in a book like that’s fine there’s nothing wrong with books but you don’t get the experience of somebody who’s actually there, who can look at a book and say that was full of beans.”

“I was brought here when I was in Grade 3 which was 1958 and I got out of here in 1968 so I went through all the main buildings, junior boys dormitory, intermediate, senior boys and I think it was 1963, we transferred into the, this was called the Annex where the museum is. Even though we were surrounded by hundreds of kids, we were all very lonely because you’re lonesome for your family, you know and we were very poor and they didn’t have vehicle or anything like that to come all the time until the later years and then we had let’s say, 1965 or more when they started loosening up here and I think it was probably ’63 when they started transferring us to schools, public schools in Kamloops and then we’d come back here at the end of the day, the dormitories but being away from your parents and your family and stuff like that and after all that time you don’t even know who they are. In the summer, I’d go or during Christmas, I’d go if I had some place to go, someone to take me, right, but after that you don’t really know who they are. Even when I’d get to back home to where I lived, there’s people, ‘Oh, you go to the school down there kind of thing’ and the mistreatment, you know the bad food, the cruelty, that kind of stuff but in the end I felt it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t cause that. I didn’t do anything to be treated like that because my parents never punished me like that. They’d give me a stern warning or something but they’d never beat me. I was never beaten in my life until I got here.”

Abuse and issues at Kamloops Residential School:

“It was here. It just never came out until later on. I think the Native Brotherhood in the early ‘60s movement to shut these schools down because of all that and we weren’t learning anything. When I went to school in town, I noticed I was two or three grades behind and it was really tough trying to catch up. We just had any old teacher who came along. A lot of them weren’t teachers so consequently when we got over there and I thought I did really good on my first test and I was like, ‘holy Toledo’ but there was no incentive to really do anything here like it was just do this and shut up and do it and if you didn’t you got a good whooping basically so you just did things so you wouldn’t get punished. That’s not learning, that’s avoiding.”

“Most of the time was spent on religious stuff. We had to go to church every morning and Saturdays and three times on Sundays and more when it was a Saints day or something like that or Lent or something like that and then when we’d get to class and have another 45 minutes of religious instruction so the learning was, I’ll just give you an example, when you learn a times table right, one times two and all that so this nun would stand there and hit our desk and say one time one is and you’d have to go right up to 12 times 12 so if  we weren’t able to stand there and recite that, we got punished. Then OK, we could recite the whole thing by memory but we didn’t know how to multiply, they didn’t really explain to us.”

“It was pretty bad. It was pretty rough cause then people thought we were stupid and that’s wasn’t true. We were very bright but not schooled in the proper schooling techniques or learning techniques or stuff like that even how to study, they’d just say study. OK, so we’d sit around and draw cartoons and pass it to each other but they didn’t explain, OK study what do you actually do. Do we just read it or memorize it or what? It was pretty strange but when we got over to the other school, they assumed that we knew all that, how to do your whole chapter and that kind of stuff, we didn’t. Shot in the dark kind of thing.”

Disconnect with home communities that the residential schools caused:

“I knew everybody and who they were because I never forgot about it. That time away you kind of lose touch and things. When you’re together all that time, then you know but when you’re separated and there’s a lot of people from my community that were sent her and come back, you’re kind of isolated from the community simply because you’re not sure of what’s been going on and all that because we’re completely different. We’re isolated at the school. We didn’t get things from the outside. Rarely would we sneak over to town now and then. In the end, I was the youngest one in my family cause they all left here before I came here so there was whole years and years that I saw them rarely. I’d see them in passing or visit that kind of thing. I had six sisters and two brothers even then I’m still getting to know them and learning what I’m supposed to know because here, we had to learn everything differently, under threat of punishment. You don’t learn that way so a lot of that stuff and when you grow up or get a little older and you come out of here, residential school, what was normal here was not normal outside because here you had to look after yourself. You learn how to fight, you learn how to steal just to survive here but once you got out and got to say in the city, you were thrown in jail for things that were completely normal here.”

“What happened in the end, the people here, the other student were taking the place of my family so there was kind of a disconnect in that way because when I got back, I didn’t really have anything in common. I’d have more in common with the people I went to school with.”

On Sk’elep School of Excellence:

“I think it’s pretty awesome because my granddaughter goes there. To see our own people managing it and teaching in the schools and our own kids there and they’re setting the rules even though they’re adopt the B.C. curriculum, there’s all these added things that go along with it, culture and language and things like that and its new compared to these at the time so give you a certain, ‘we did this’ so that gives you a perspective of taking back what should have been yours in the first place.”

“Most bands are pushing education as much as they can and I truly believe that because no longer can the First Nations sit back. They have to have professional, master’s degrees so we get at the same level as everybody else with a lot of these big companies and governments and big groups that try to do stuff on our lands so we can deal with them table to table.”

“Number one with education, they have to be aware of the issues, what’s going on, what’s the position of this government part or the position of the minister or matter of fact your own people. What is our position? What do we think about it is number one, us, our community, our small group. We have to have a position and we have to do it with knowledge. We can’t just throw a dart on the wall and say OK, I like that guy or whatever so a big part of that is finding out who’s who and what’s the issues... education will give you that. It’ll show you how to do that.”

Taking back responsibly from the Federal government:

“We just have to be careful that through the years and stuff, the Federal governments sense of doing that, sooner or later they’re going to say here take it all, but when the say that they don’t slide the funds along with it so I’m neither saying it’s good or bad, I’m just we need to be very careful of what’s happening.”

“I’d like to see the majority of our people be very well educated. I know everyone cannot get a degree or masters and all that but there’s other things like trades and all that, which usually pay more right and those kind of things, whatever people are happy with... I think the main thing is to be happy with what you’re doing and be a good contributor to your society.”

“They will progress, they’ll be ahead. They’ll succeed. If you’re successful individually and if you’re successful as a group, then everybody’s successful and through that perhaps we can eliminate a lot of the negatives. There’s always going to be negatives like dependencies and things like that but that’s through everybody but to minimize that and ... when you’re occupied like that and have a good job, enjoying it and you’re committed to it, there’s really not much time be going out and doing whatever.”

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.”

Dolan Paul

Dolan Paul in his office.

I managed to meet with Dolan Paul after rescheduling with him twice. He was struggling with a cold when I sat down with him to chat about his role as a councillor with Tk’emlúps Indian Band. He holds the education portfolio. At just 37, he’s a young councillor but is quick to point out that there are others on the council who started when they were even younger than him.

I sat down with him in his office. It overlooks the band school, the Sk’elep School of Excellence and the old Kamloops Residential school building.

“They’re two very different buildings. One has a lot of negative history behind it and one is one of proudness, that will help us regain what was lost with the other building. Always having being aware of that history is an important part to understanding where we come from and not be held down by it,” he said.

For Paul, education plays an important role in the community and its future.

“I see it as a major point from where our community, our people have to really develop our numbers especially nationwide and in regards to First Nations people is very low in regards to any kind of post-secondary, masters, business, doctorates, anything like that, our numbers are very low and we’re working on bringing that up, the literacy as well. There’s a number of people, First Nations community members that have the leaving school certification opposed to the dogwood so to bring that up and to have a number of our community members with education only helps our community, to bring them to a point where we’re at a level with all the other communities,” he said.

“It’s important for people to actually be prominent, be helpful with not only themselves but every avenue with society.”

Part of the path to increasing the role of education in the lives of Tk’emlúps Indian band members is the Sk’elep school.

“It has many possibilities. Like a lot of our youth in today with the numbers we’ve seen with our studies is that we have under 10 people in our community that actually speak Secwepmectsin fluently and so the first thing is to actually realize why that is and to start with our youth, that’s the best place to start is the language, giving people that tie to our culture and to continue that on from those younger generations, hopefully that will have the same effect on the older, their parents. Myself, I’m only starting to learn my language as well. I wish had more access, like my mother doesn’t know, my grandmother barely knows the language anymore because she doesn’t practice it as much as she used to,” said Paul.

“Language and culture, it’s to identify ourselves and to create that pride that you’ve seen lost for a number of years with just certain things in history that have we practiced not to be, to not have that pride. That was instilled in probably the generation before me and so I’ve never looked into it myself, but getting back into it is really a major thing with our community and our people.”

When he took over the education portfolio, it was a lot to take in all as once.

“There was so much emphasis and so much things going on now with different levels of Federal, provincial government that is changing and it is really exciting to see it really starting to grow like with our school and having so many people phone and express their concerns on which direction we should go in regards to our different levels of education,” he said.

Tk’emlúps Indian Band’s ability to be in control of its own future is also tied to education in Paul’s eyes.

“It goes hand in hand because without the education to back that up there’s no real direction you can go in regards to self-determination and it’s not only with that, it always has to stay culturally sensitive in regards to education and that’s why we have those different schools,” he said.

Janet Deneault

Janet Deneault stands in front of the her old school.

When I arrived at the Secwepemc Museum, Janet Deneault was still in a meeting.

I spent the next half hour wandering around the museum looking at exhibits. There was historical looks at the Secwepemc people, an exhibit on the residential schools and some information on the present day people. It was interesting because I’d seen Deneault speak at the TRU during the Aboriginal Awareness Week and heard her talk about her experiences with residential school. In hearing her talk, I felt that I gained more insight into the residential school experience than I had in just reading about it.

Denault is  a museum educator from Skeetchestn, a Secwepemc community near Savona. Her job is to do tours for School District 73 and public. She also goes out to schools and teaches students about the Secwepemc people and some of their history. She’s been working in the job for four years and works under Dan Saul, the manager at the museum.

Here are some excerpts of our conversation:

 “I am a member of the Shuswap nation. I am a Secwepemc. I am a full-blooded Secwepemc, both my parents were full-blooded meaning that we were registered and we have an ancestral background that can go back five generations.”

‘I come from a large family and the history of my family is that we’ve learned our language since we were very young and culture was a big part of my growing up the years before I went to the residential school and I love children because I’m a grandmother myself and I really have a passion towards teaching our history of our people”
 “I was always very interested in history dating back to school, my school years. I always has a passion for not only Secwepemc history but Canadian history in general.”

“It was very rewarding learning kind of from one or two topics to now over a hundred topics and I learned a lot when I first started because boss, Dan Saul is the manager, he know a lot of the history so he’s taught me a lot of history as well as we’ve learned to do tours regarding the museum exhibits which are all museum interpretations so there’s a lot more to it so the more I’ve learned while I was here looking at old documents the better quality tours we produce.”

On her role at the museum:

“It’s been very very rewarding and also very promotional because I now go all the way to the university level which is something for myself, I don’t have a university degree but I’ve been rewarded by that by doing presentations not only at TRU but I’ve gone and done some ministry presentations for cross-cultural(MOF, environment) and I’ve done cross-cultural not only within my own nation but with other First Nations that want to come here and learn about our people.”

“Normally when they come, they have no information about our nation and a lot of them have been living in Kamloops all their lives and they have not known that we do have a museum and we have a history of the whole area.”

“I feel the role is a learning institute and when I say that it’s because we have people here and I mentioned Dan, he’s like a historian and he also has a lot of knowledge about the residential school, the historical history behind it all and I think the museum is a great tool not only for general tours about the history but there’s been a large trend for tourists and students coming here to gain some insight into the residential school so I feel the museum is probably by far the most sought after institute for gaining educational insight into our history and the era of the residential schools.”

How she thinks Secwepemc people see the museum:

“It should be a very honourable and rewarding though that we do have a place to house all our history and I think that the people in the communities are very proud of it. I know because I go out into the public and I always have positive feedback about the museum and what the museum has been offering because it’s been here since 1982 so it’s something that even the children can relate to when they come here that they have pride in knowing their history, that there is a place that they could come to.”

 “I think it’s very important that we continue recording our history and a lot of projects go on on-reserves now especially in the natural resources and the archaeology departments, they go out in the field and they are constantly finding artefacts so what I like about that is they’re willing to share with us and willing to store that history here with us for generations. We have so much oral tradition tapes that were done back in the 80s and it’s sad the elder that were recorded at that time are gone now but we do have the memory of those tapes and the history, the stories, the legends, the mythological, the language especially because the majority of them were all fluent speakers of the language and told those stories in our language with an interpreter to interpret them in English and that’s really unbelievable history right there and I can only see it continuing cause we’re getting a little bit more modern with technology now so we can digitize a lot of researched items.”

“As an educator, because I teach about the mad gold rush, the fur trade and I teach about the impacts of what’s happened to our Secwepemc people since colonization, since European contact and believe it or not members of the 17 Secwepemc communities have a lot of knowledge about those impacts already because they’re a big part of our history already in the process of modern day treaties, and land claims and that so a lot of community members are already aware of our history and the museum is a big part of that because during the tours we often get questions, that’s why when you work here, you pretty well have to be a historian and the timelines, the dates of what happened regarding the impacts so you have to have a really good clear timeline because not only the general public but First Nations themselves come here for information.”

“The significance of having the museum onsite is really great because we can combine history with residential schools. We’re within walking distance of a historical building and within walking distance of a 2,000 year winter pit home site of our Secwepemc people so we got a really good mixture when tourists come here they want to take in everything so I think it’s a good tool to have the history here all in one building.”

“The history of the residential school plays a big part in the museum because we have a museum exhibit that’s dedicated for that and within that exhibit it’s a great tool because we have several videos that we show if we’re doing a residential school tour. They get to view the video and look around the museum and then we stop at the exhibit that houses the historical history of the residential school going back to the industrial school for Indian Children which was first opened up in 1884 in eastern Canada, in Ontario and eventually by 1890, opened up in Kamloops so we had an industrial school for Indian children before this current old building was opened and build in 1923 so it’s a very big part of the museum and it’s a very good educational tool because they get to do all of that, the historical overview as well as go into the old building and actually go in there and see what the building looks like and gain insight into what life was like there by survivors cause Dan and I are both survivors of the residential school so they get a 120 per cent bonus by the time they leave because they’ve not only gained the history but they’ve gained insight and that’s really touching to a lot of people.”

“It was really hard because when I first got the job I kinda didn’t think I’d be doing residential school tours but when I got the job I was a bit nervous because hadn’t been back in the building for many years, I wasn’t sure how exactly I’d handle it or was I going to be able to tell some stories about what life was like in the school. The first two, three times were really hard but I had a lot of support from Dan because he’s been doing the job 10 years prior to when I took over was what he was doing so he’s been a really big support and kind of advising me, ‘you know, you can do it’ so with that I said, ‘OK, I’ll give it a try,’ but it was hard. It was hard because when I stepped back in the building, I just all of a sudden, I could almost like I could close my eyes and I could hear and see everybody was there almost like the day I stepped foot in that building. Ya, it was hard.”

“It’s a lot easier. I find that I can go in there now and do a really good quality tour but for some reason at certain times of the year, there’s something kinda, maybe it’s memories, something to do with at a certain thing that happened at a certain time of the year. Christmas time was always hard because a few times, I spent Christmas here so when I go in there and I have a memory of that and I think that it’s just certain times if the year that kinda feels difficult.”

What it was like for Deneault at the Kamloops Residential School:

“It was hard to get used to because for one thing, being apart from my siblings like my brothers and my sister and that and other kids that came here around the same time from my community so we were all together and when we came here and we have to be apart. That was really hard and then not being able to eat our own traditional food and that was really hard and not being able to do any fishing and stuff like that that we’d normally being doing at that time of the year at home so I think losing our culture was probably the hardest part and then having come to all of a suddenly having gone from that to living in an institution, what I call an institution because everything was done like an institution.”

“I spoke English but what I was saying is that my parents and grandparents they spoke to us in our language pretty much. My mother was fluent in English.”

“I got there and I just turned nine. I was nine. I got there in 1967. I wasn’t even really too sure until I got the records back. I thought I was there only like three years or something. When you were there, you lost track of time it seemed like it because when I got the records back and they were like, ‘Oh no, you were here six years,' I said, 'Oh.' It’s part of my life that I just left behind. I didn’t even ever want to revisit it or go there.”
“When I hear other people’s stories, you know, I always think to myself and the first thing I do is worry about how they’re doing and how I could be of any help to them and for some reason, there’s still a lot of support within the residential school survivors. They all still have a connection even though we might meet one another other once a year, maybe not even. I haven’t seen some of my friends for since 14 years and I finally just met one or two of them in the last year or so because they’re finally starting to have those residential school gatherings and that and I think that when we look back I always remember having the support of a lot of the older girls. They always took care of the younger girls so there’s still support there and I think that’s the good part about it. There is still the friendship and connection even though we’re older now. We’re grannies now.”

On the apology and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Federal apology:

“I think that was a really good step for the Canadian government to come forward and finally recognize, after all these years, the hurt and the suffering that the students have gone through and when I look back on it all, I think that it was probably a long time coming and I think that there’s still a lot of work to be done in the whole area of the residential schools whether it’s reconciliation or whether it’s being compensated. I think there’s still a lot of work needs to be done because there’s still a lot of memories and schools that are still, like this one over here is still part of a historical site now but I think there still needs to be something else put in place for maybe a once a year remembrance day or something of residential school survivors because a lot of them are gone now and their stories will never be heard by them and their families are still going to have to heal from it because it impacted not only the survivors but their families because for five generations it’s affecting them and the reason why I say that is because the effects of the residential school. When I did the presentation at Thompson Rivers University, I mentioned that some of the effects were that because some of the students were going to be working in First Nations communities, they might run in to a residential school survivor that half way, or hasn’t started, or three-quarters of the way through a healing process to get themselves better and be able to actually fulfill a job, actually sit at a job and do a job without falling through any effects such as anger or having issues with employers. There’s a lot of other effects that I didn’t mention and one of them was where there was where they hadn’t reached a part of their lives where they could actually function by getting involved, moving their self-esteem forward. There’s a lot of First Nations who belonged to the school that are still quite quiet and a lot of them are suffering because they were abused mentally or physically, psychologically in the school, have addiction problems as a result and another one, parenting was a big one for me because I was a parent at a very young age and I was pretty strict with my children and I think one of the things they got out of it was they graduated from school because I really pushed them really hard. At the time we had a limit for everything and I think that the effects they have are some of the physical effect where, when I said a lot of parents can’t hug their child and say, ‘I love you and that’ so that was a little bit I was missing I thought even though it’s changed today. It was hard for me to give some of those skills back.”
On the healing process after residential school:

“Yes, it was and I think that part of it will never end. I still find that we have to have a really good support system around ourselves because I have pretty good support with employers if I need to attend to something then they’ve got an understanding or at home in my community, there’s spiritual support so I go to the sweat lodge and talk to elders and things like that and we have councillors right on reserve now whereas before they never had that, they never had trained councillors dealing with trauma or residential school effects and that.”

“What happened in the early days when the school was opened up as the industrial school for Indian children prior to when this building was built, during that time the children were brought here, their main focus was not on education, but on actual child exploitation because the children were made to learn all the physical labour of working to produce not only the orchards but the farming and the ranching, blacksmithing and the girls were forced to do the inside work and the outside work too and they were made to do it at a very young age because some of them remember sewing already when they were six years old on the old treadle machines and made to do harsh cleaning of the floors at that very young age so not wait until they’re 13 or something before they could be introduced to scrubbing floors. They were made to do the physical cleaning on their hands and knees.”

 “I don’t think there was much change for the institutional side of it probably until the late ‘60s, early ‘70s. I feel like when I came we were still subject to the real heavy cleaning and that and I had no idea about how to get down on my knees and scrub a floor but I had to learn. I had to do it.”

About education today:

“It makes me really proud to start with because I think that when we look back at the history of why the residential schools were closed down because it’s very empowering too because what happened was the First Nations themselves, in each community too because they took over the jurisdiction of their own education and that’s why you see all the communities have a school like that because they’ve reached the capacity where they could have a band-run school as well as what you see, band-run businesses now.”

“ I think that it shows that our people have a lot of growth, and when I say that it means they’ve been empowered now to be self-governing, be self-reliant, self-sufficient and a lot of our leaders now have role within their position to better all aspects of our life whether it’s education, natural resources or business development and that and I find that now most all Indian reserves now have education as their number one goal and that’s what I like because rather it means they’re looking back at era of what happened in education, they’re moving forward to better educate our children and the schools, just by going by them you can see why cause it’s a state-of-the-art school.”

“I think it’s important that all the bands now and within our nations because we have 54 nations in all of Canada, 54 that’s quite a bit but that’s still only one third of the Canadian population...It’s very important to keep track of where we’re going with educations because we are moving up quite fast but still in my mine not fast enough, till I see a school on every reserve with a mixture of not only academic education but a lot of culture and that’s what a lot of schools are designed for now.”