Indigenous Role Model Story Gallery

Ajuawak Kapashesit has done a lot of different jobs throughout his life, but right now, his focus is working as a writer, actor, and director.

Kapashesit was born in Moose Factory, Ontario, a community that takes multiple avenues of transportation to get to. He also spent a lot of time in White Earth Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota because he has dual citizenship between the United States and Canada.

He was motivated to become an actor when he was working for a non-profit and it wasn’t fulfilling him in the way he wanted. He decided to move to White Earth to be closer to family and to “reset.”

From there, he was trying to figure out what he wanted to do next and knew he wanted to do something that resonated with him. So he started looking around for options and started picking up odd jobs here and there to explore.

“I was watching I think a movie one night and this kind of clicked in my head that everybody on that movie they were all just people working. It was a job,” said Kapashesit.

“They get to ride on horses or drive cars or do whatever it is they want to do. Because some days this actor is a doctor, the next day he’s a gangster. He gets to be all these different things.”

From there, he started looking into what his options were and living in Minnesota at the time, the film industry wasn’t as big as the major cities. But the community theatre was big and he decided to take that route.

He started doing small productions such as student films or short films, and realized he wanted to see more characters that reflected the “world he came from” and people who looked like him. So he started writing around the same time.

“A lot of people weren’t writing for me, a lot of them didn’t come from my experience so they didn’t really have that view,” said Kapashesit.

From his writings, Kapashesit ended up writing a play, which was put up, and he performed in.

Since then, he’s gone on to appear in movies like Indian Horse and Incredible 25th year of Mitzi Bearclaw, along with TV shows like Outlander and Bad Blood. He most recently worked on a TV show called Power Voice as a story editor.

Kapashesit’s education for acting is different than what many might think. For him, he learned a lot about performance from the storytellers in his community, and for acting in front of a camera it was just “doing it.”

“I just was thrown in front of the camera. I had no idea what I was doing…one of the things that I’ve found and I’ve experienced is that you’re going to learn so much more by doing it than by sitting in a classroom talking about it,” said Kapashesit.

But just going out and doing it doesn’t mean there’s no point in studying. Kapashesit thinks there’s still a lot to be gained by being in a classroom and “workshopping the work.”

He didn’t take his first acting class until he was already acting, but took a course in Minnesota at Macalester College to develop new tools for his work.

Most recently, Kapashesit was at the CBC Actor’s Conservatory with the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto, where he got a lot of training and got to explore a lot of different approaches in acting with trainers.

But still, he says a lot of the work is just going for it and doing it.

“It’s okay if you don’t do it great in the first time or you don’t do it great 100th time. It’s about exploring and experimentation. You have to give yourself the opportunity to fail. You have to be okay with failing, because that’s a great way to learn about what works and what doesn’t work,” said Kapashesit.

Much of fashion is putting your best foot forward and when it comes to the work of Alicia Stephens, that foot is wearing modern footwear with beautiful, traditional designs that stand out in a crowd, on the runway and on the internet. She is a First Nations artist and founder of a company called Alicia Design where she has been creating First Nations art and fashion accessories for the past eight years.

Vancouver has been home for the past 20 years after growing up in Victoria. Moving from a small city to a big city, she found it difficult to survive at times. Stephens is from the Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw nations and for her whole life, she has been an artist. As a child, she enjoyed making First Nations art, sketching and drawing traditional designs. In elementary school, she took First Nations art and she’s been around art her whole life. Her uncles were artists and she’s always been surrounded by First Nations carvers and artists.

In 2012, she found herself out of work and she started drawing all day with nothing else to do. She even drew on her shoes and posted them on Facebook, receiving a tremendous response. She started taking orders and her business grew and grew until she found herself in New York Fashion Week.

She’s learned how to create balance for herself so she still has a home life and not just constant work, making time for exercise, for her kids, housework and everything else she needs to do. Her daughter is looking at moving back to their home community after college to do community work. At the beginning of her teenage years, her daughter struggled but she’s thriving now. Stephens herself has been sober for 8 years now and wanted to raise them in a good home.

Her daughter helps her with the shipping and admin in her business but she hasn’t brought in other artists because it’s very detailed work. Stephens hand paints on purses, boots, shoes, high heels, earrings, and has a printing company that puts her art on clothes. She uses bright and modern colour combinations and even neons in her vibrant designs.

Her advice for anybody who wants to get a start in fashion design or art is “Just follow your gut. Follow your passion. Stay dedicated. Don't get discouraged. I wanted to quit probably 20 times. I had a baby. Lots of life happened…. But I just kept pushing and pushing. Just keep going."

To youth considering leaving their hometowns  she says, “Pursue it, if you want it.” She also points out that the work she does is online and can be done from anywhere, so you don’t necessarily have to move to a big city to find opportunities. Your work can find its way to the big city and you don’t always have to go with it.

Selling her work online to an audience of 27,000 followers has been exciting, but not everyone is kind. Sometimes negativity can be discouraging and she thinks about getting a nine to five job and getting out of business. Somehow, she finds the strength to keep going and the strength to hold her tongue in sometimes frustrating situations.

With much of fashion focused on putting your best foot forward, Alicia Stephens makes sure more feet are wearing modern footwear with beautiful, traditional designs that stand out in a crowd, on the runway and on the internet. As a First Nations artist and founder of Alicia Design, she’s made a life and a living from her creations and she’s shown her own daughter that it can be done, one step at a time, in beautiful shoes.

Sharing stories and teachings that heal, he’s in business for himself but what he does benefits everyone. Carl Jr. Kodakin-Yakeleya lives in Yellowknife, grew up in Tulita and is originally from Deline First Nation. He owns two businesses, one called Ever Good Medicine, teaching about plant medicines and Shuta Productions, a digital and film production company.

He started his medicine business because people in his community were talking about the need to continue their medicinal practices. Kodakin-Yakeleya was curious and asked a lot of questions, eager to absorb everything he could. Based on what he’s learned from elders and community members, he shares teachings through workshops, school talks, and medicine walks. What he loves most about what he does is seeing the excitement of people talking about medicines and their own experiences with them.

Shuta Productions got its name because he is Shutagot'ine (Mountain People) and he wanted his company to capture his culture and its stories. He sees the work as not just sharing stories but oral history. One day he hopes to create a book, share elders’ stories and make a virtual medicine walk.

He doesn’t do it all alone, though. Kodakin-Yakeleya is always collaborating on ideas with his wife and asking lots of questions and brainstorming with his dad. He’s been trying to learn everything he can from his dad and documenting his wisdom.

As a younger person, he was very shy and introverted but he wanted to learn to be more social and put himself out there. He started to put himself out there more. and people started to notice. Once, he was asked to MC an event and the power went out so he had to yell because the microphone stopped working. His advice to people who are shy of public speaking is to focus on people you know in the crowd and pretend you’re talking directly to them. In the end, even though he was very nervous he still had a lot of fun.

Growing up living in the bush, Kodakin-Yakeleya learned to build fire, shelter, gather food, and trap. He went to elementary and high school and then to the University of Alberta in Edmonton taking open studies while he decided what to take. At first, he wanted to take music, playing guitar, bass, piano, cello, harmonica and he sang. At the same time, he wanted to pursue something that felt more “solid”, so he opted for business administration.

Business administration made sense for him because his dad was an engineer who worked in business and taught him a lot about it. He found it easy and took office administration. For a while, he worked as a math tutor at Aurora College in Fort Smith and Yellowknife and was a substitute teacher in Tulita. Numbers have always made sense to him, while he’s struggled with English and spelling.

While he’s had amazing contract and employment opportunities working with different organizations, he wanted to pursue his own path. With the help of Inspire NWT, he was able to get his business started. He doesn’t make or sell medicines but rather educates about their properties and about harvesting them. Kodakin-Yakeleya only teaches some of what he knows as he is not allowed to teach everything that he has been taught. Some of the teachings he has received are only for him and his family. Eventually, he would like to write a book about what he has learned.

His advice for students trying to find their way is to reflect on what they want to do, think about solid things they can rely on, and what their communities need. Kodakin-Yakeleya also suggests thinking about what they are truly passionate about. From there, he recommends looking online for resources to learn about what they are considering. He adds words of encouragement, “I always tell people, just go for it… Even if you fail, it's okay to fail. I failed many times… Just take a breather, it's okay to bounce back… Just keep going.” He suggests against trying to do too many different things, instead taking a break and trying again.

To maintain his mental health, Kodakin-Yakeleya has been in therapy for ten years. He plays video games, sports and music, and goes for walks, even if it’s just to get a pop. Taking the time to enjoy the little things like listening to music or going shopping with the kids also brings him joy. With the responsibilities of entrepreneurship and family life, sometimes he just needs time to himself and he and his wife take turns having time outs to collect themselves in small ways throughout the day.

In closing, Kodakin-Yakeleya encourages youth to pursue their passions. “Just do something that you love. If you start your own business, and if you don't enjoy or you don't love it, it's just another job,” he explains. Thinking back to one of his first business ideas, flies on strings for parents who wanted to get pets for their kids. He saw it as an open market and a hilarious concept.

He supports himself by sharing stories and medicinal teachings that heal in the businesses he built. At the same time, Carl Jr Kodakin-Yakeleya’s work benefits everyone who gathers to listen. Raising his family and sharing his culture, he gets to spend his time connecting and helping people help themselves. Once shy, he’s come out of his shell and learned how to shine doing what he loves most.

 “My calling was to be an entrepreneur. My calling was to build a massive scale up. I love it. I love that I found it. I love that I did it,” exclaims Bobbie Racette, founder and CEO of Virtual Gurus. Originally from Regina, Saskatchewan, she now lives in Calgary, Alberta.

She moved to Alberta from Montreal to work in oil and gas, becoming a foreman and making a lot of money in 2016. When she and her crew were laid off, she struggled to find work as a queer Indigenous woman with tattoos. Racette created Virtual Gurus to create a job for herself, hiring herself out as a virtual assistant working from home.

In 2017-2018, she hired her first virtual assistant and then in 2020 she closed her first funding round. Before that, Racette bootstrapped through virtual groups and generated 1.8 million in revenue from the company's services alone. She raised money to invest in technology to grow.

Racette now has 50 full-time employees and 900 people working through the platform, with plans to hire 2000 more. “We're the largest in Canada, the fourth largest in the US and we're taking the US by storm. We launched into the US a year and a half ago and now about 60% of our revenue is US based. We're roughly around a 70 to 80 million valuation right now,” she continues. 

What she went through keeps her moving forward. “I did it to provide a job for myself because nobody would hire me so now it's about providing work-from-home jobs to those that also won't get hired….that's what makes me wake up every day and put all my hard-earned work into this company because I want to give those a chance that might not have had the chance, like myself."

She didn’t think she had the direction to be an entrepreneur but proved herself wrong in a trial of fire. She learned she had to jump in, be fearless and trust herself. “There were many times I wanted to throw the flag in and just say ‘I'm done. I can't do this.’ But it was about persevering and just pushing through and saying, ‘You know what? I'm onto something. I've got to do this. There's nobody better to do it than me.’ I just had to really push through,” she recounts.  

People didn’t take her seriously at first, but she proved them wrong, too.  “Now we're at this massive scale up and people are seeing what we're doing and now people are taking me seriously, but it took a long time to get to that and we shouldn't have to do that,” she shares. 

When it comes to enjoying her downtimes and self-care, Racette likes to travel, golf, spend time with her partner and dogs and soak in the hot tub. She likes camping, dinner parties and getting involved in whatever she can. She enjoys mentoring young women in business to scalability and is an entrepreneur in residence for other companies. While all that activity means she’s spread herself thin, she loves consulting and helping other women grow their companies. 

Racette talks wistfully about the hope she has for Indigenous youth. “It would be that they wouldn't be afraid to take their ideas and come out and just do it. If there's one thing about Indigenous folks, in general, is we typically don't like asking for things. Contrary to what people might believe, we really don't. It's one of those things where I really truly believe that if more people like myself, or Jeff Ward, or Jenn Harper from Cheekbone Beauty and all these amazing Indigenous people in Canada, they're making big names, and we're paving the way for the next generation to come,” she dreams aloud. 

In her travels, Racette has met Indigenous youth with big ideas and she wants them to have the resources they need to succeed. Starting her company, she had no support but eventually became the first Indigenous woman in Canada to close a series A funding round. “While I love that title, it just shows that we have so much more work to do. My hope is that we can just keep inspiring them to come out and to start their ideas, and not take ‘no’ for an answer like I did, and just continue pushing forward,” she reflects. 

In closing, she wants to say to Indigenous youth, “Be bold, be brave. But most importantly, always be you. Doesn't matter where you are, what you know, anything, gender, creed, what anything is, just always be you and stay true to who you are and then the rest will follow the way it's supposed to be.” She learned the hard way it was going to take everything she was, not what she was pretending to be, to grow and scale her company. 

For all the winning, Racette knows firsthand what it’s like to lose sometimes, too. “It's okay to fail. We're all human and things are never going to always go our way… Failing is just a part of what's going to build you and make you stronger. Get back up and just wipe yourself off and just keep going. Oftentimes, people beat themselves up a little bit too much when something doesn't go the right way. Let it fuel your fire to be stronger,” she continues. 

"I chose volleyball because it's such a communal game. Baseball or basketball, one player can dominate that game, even though they’re team sports. But in volleyball, the whole team is involved in every single play. I think that's why I liked it so much and I think that's why it's so popular in our communities all over… because everybody's always involved,"  reflects Dallas Soonias. He is a Cree and Ojibwe athlete who played on the national volleyball team and professionally for over a decade. These days he coaches volleyball at a college in Calgary and is a color commentary personality for International volleyball games on tv.

Raised in an urban centre, he got to play many different sports. He played volleyball in high school, then he played club and provincial volleyball, playing year round in ninth grade and progressing to the junior national team. He went on to play at Red Deer college for a couple years.

Soonias tried to go to Brigham Young University, a Mormon University in Utah, on a scholarship but only lasted a month. He returned to Canada to the University of Alberta where he did well. He became a professional volleyball player but retired two months before the Olympics in 2016 when his knee blew out. He finished his university education in psychology and got a graduate certificate in high performance coaching. It’s his fourth year of coaching and his first year of colour commentary.

“The ability to be adaptable, when others can't, this puts you in a huge advantage. Finding ways to find success is enormous,” he coaches his team. At first, he was terrible at the highly technical sport of volleyball and didn’t know the rules. “The whole point is to learn and enjoy it and get better and accept the failure…Understand you're gonna fail, do a bunch of failing, and then feel good when you start to get those little wins,” he advises. The fun and the challenge of volleyball inspires him to coach and the novelty of the experience got him pumped to do commentary.

Being terrible can be a terrifying experience but he learned to push through that, something he says successful people do constantly. Even as he’s perfecting his ability to provide commentary, he hopes others see him and think of him for other projects. Soonias also sees the opportunity to recommend and change the lives of others as he grows in his career and pay it forward with opportunities.

“When I left school, when I was 22… I realized my body can only last so long, and it will explode, which it did. I was right. Time is undefeated. But schools, they would be there when I was done…I kept that promise to myself. ‘I'm going to get this education,’” he recounts. He offered to help his old coach at University of Calgary and worked as an assistant coach, which led to an opportunity to be a head coach at the college.  His journey of adaptability is taking everything he learned as a player and applying it to coaching.

After his own experiences, his advice to youth considering leaving their home community in search of work or school is “the most important thing to understand and accept is it's going to be very, very hard. But it's worth it in the long run. You become an expert on a different way of life and you become educated and you make money. Then you can bring that all home and strengthen your own community, or not."

He didn’t always stick with things in his career. Playing volleyball in Russia in the top league in the world, he was playing the worst volleyball of his life. He lasted about three months before moving onto a team in France, feeling like a failure. His new team finished the best it had in the club’s history and his career started to grow.

When he shares his story, he uses a metaphor of the iceberg where 90% of the story isn’t visible, with all the trials and tribulations of life as an athlete, but people only see the Instagram posts in Team Canada Jerseys. When he was injured in Puerto Rico, he lost money, had to get surgery and rehabilitation on a torn rotator cuff while his friends and coworkers were making money and living their dreams.

Fortunately, he recovered and got back into the national team program. His team made the final round of the world league, the last six teams after ranking 20th in the world. They beat the Olympic champions on the biggest stage there was that year. He advises injured players to seek mental health support for the trauma, but to stick with it because you often come out the other side stronger and better able to help people.

If he could give his younger self a message it would be to play baseball, he laughs, thinking of the financial and career longevity advantages he would have had. He would also want to tell himself about working so hard for fifteen years to get to the Olympics then getting sidelined two months before the games to see if he still would have chosen this path. "You have to dedicate so much to it. You're away from your family. You're always in a country where no one speaks your language. It's your job to adapt them," he confides.

What he’s learned along the way is that twenty minutes a day of regular physical activity is beneficial for your health and that the medicine wheel concept of balance is a helpful way to look at holistic wellness and to seek out that balance. Inspired by good music and the good work of others, he has learned to find his own way. “You'll never be able to mimic a master's work because they've worked so long and hard to get to that point. But that's completely fine. Because doing something slightly adjacent to a master's work is just your own spin on something,” he urges.

He chose a communal sport where everyone works together and one player doesn’t outshine the others and in doing so, Dallas Soonias found his own way to shine. Playing a game where everyone is always involved, he learned to be adaptable and work together, sharing opportunities for success. He brought that spirit into his new role as a coach and now serves up volleyball wisdom with a new generation of players.

“My journey to get to where I am right now has been very nonlinear,” reflects Cameron Bishop. They live in Kingston, Ontario and go to Queen's University where they are working towards a Master of Applied Science in Computer Engineering and AI. A member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, their family has ties to the Red River settlement. Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, their family moved to Ontario when he was 16.

Deciding what they wanted to study was a challenge for Bishop. They thought they wanted to pursue medical school because of their interest in neuroscience but their interest in problem solving and working with their hands meant that engineering made a lot of sense for them. They picked Queens because of their general first year Engineering program that leaves things more open which was attractive given they hadn’t settled on a specific direction yet. The flexibility left space for them to explore and decide. 

The path they ultimately chose was computer engineering, something that interests them even if they don’t get to work with their hands as much. Bishop was invited to an accelerated Masters program which ended up being the best fit for them, though they had some concerns and reservations. 

Working on their master’s degree on a project basis, they are building off the contribution of others. The project they are working on works with Inuktitut and a dialect of Cree and AI technologies to see if AI can translate the languages into English. The work is interesting and they find the project is cool and full of potential, but they have some concerns about the field of AI from an ethical standpoint. The field is evolving rapidly and like many other researchers, Bishop finds it hard to keep up with the latest news and research that comes in as a constant stream of information. They also don’t speak Inuktitut or Cree himself. 

Leading up to his university experience, Bishop had two very different high school experiences. In Calgary, they were able to attend a charter school for gifted students where they had an exceptional experience that honoured their neurodiversity and academic talents. When they moved to Ontario, their educational options were a lot more lackluster. They went from a very diverse school to a much more homogenous learning environment and they experienced a great deal of culture shock in the process. The experience was unsatisfying but they graduated in the end. 

Moving away from where they considered home was hard in high school but it made things a bit easier in university. Bishop benefited from the Indigenous support networks at the university. Queens has a more general STEM Indigenous academics program and an Indigenous futures in Engineering program alongside their Indigenous student centre which made finding community and support a lot easier for them. Their advice for students moving away from their home communities to go to school is “There are support networks. You’ve just got to find the right people and stick with them.”

As much as their overall journey has been non-linear, so has their master’s research. Working through a number of projects before finally landing on this one, Bishop has had some ethical issues with the project around the need for it to support community and be community driven and to work with data in a way that was aligned with their values. Overcoming those internal barriers, they found a more ethically-aligned methodology that allowed them to move forward confidently.

If they could give advice to their younger self it would be, “It's important to be able to be resilient, and adaptable, but at the same time know what works for you and know what doesn't, and be able to not be stuck in one place for too long, if it doesn't work with you.” They have learned a lot of life lessons from the path they've taken and have found every time things haven’t worked out has been an opportunity to learn. 

The other message they would give their younger self would be, “make sure you have good support.” Their Master’s supervisors have been very supportive and understanding on their journey. Bishop describes them as guiding lights during a difficult time and very patient given how challenging their degree program has been. 

To keep their mental health in check has been a real challenge for Bishop given how isolating they have found academia to be. They have found they have to put in the effort to socialize and to separate their school from their life since they don’t have dedicated office space. Making sure they're chatting and interacting with people as well as getting outside and eating well has been important for their wellness. Living near Lake Ontario and Breakwater Park and enjoying lakefront views has been helpful. “Being able to access nature, I find, it's very relaxing for me,” they affirm.

When it comes to inspiration, Bishop looks to people in their life like Melanie who works in the Indigenous STEM program on campus and who has an extensive network. They also had a chance to compete in NASA's First Nations Launch competition with the Queen's AISES Rocket Team, which was led by Maranda Cherry, a fellow Métis student from BC, who is now studying aerospace engineering at MIT. Otherwise, Bishop draws inspiration from everything and everyone around them.  

To inspire Indigenous youth, Bishop says, “Just to be true to yourself and to your values. It's going to be really difficult and it's going to be a struggle if your work isn't aligned with your ideals and who you are.. Just do what interests you. Stay excited, stay curious. Passion is just such an important thing so try to cultivate and maintain that passion because it's something that really can take you far.”

Their journey to get to where they are has been very non-linear but Cameron Bishop is on their way. Exploring computer engineering and artificial intelligence, they are making intelligent choices for themself, following their passions and their values in their work. Inspired by everything around them, they arestaying curious and looking for their next chance to learn and grow.

From Igloolik to Iqaluit and then Ottawa, Charlotte Qamaniq’s journey to find herself and her culture has taken her far. Once a banned practice, Qamaniq and her friend Cynthia Pitsiulak were driven to learn throat singing and formed a band called Silla and Rise in 2015.They released their first album in 2016, their next in 2019 and a third is in progress. With two Juno nominations already, they are hoping maybe third time's the charm. 

Charlotte Carlton recently joined the band after Cynthia and Charlotte Qamaniq have been throat singing together for over 15 years, performing all over the world for at least a decade. Producer and beatmaker Rise rounds out their music and adds his own flare. Their collaboration with Rise was intended to be one-off but continued. The blend of modern beats and ancient throat singing makes for a unique sound. 

Outside of music, Qamaniq is taking the language revitalization course affiliated with UVIC and she’s a mom of two. She teaches government departments and other corporations about Inuit culture and issues. 

“As Inuit we were the last indigenous group to be colonized. It was only within the last hundred years where Inuit were forcefully relocated into settlements in the Arctic. Because of colonization and because of the church, they were assimilating Inuit into Canadian society. Speaking Inuktitut was not allowed, throat singing, jump dancing, practicing our spirituality, anything that basically made us Inuit or anything to do with our culture was banned. We were punished for practicing any of these things,” she explained. 

Qamaniq and Pitsiulak’s music came from so many people sharing knowledge and their collective longing to become throat singers. Qamaniq sang to her kids their whole lives so they now throat sing. “We're still very protective of throat singing and so we're teaching the next generation and I think it's making a comeback for sure,” she beamed. Over the pandemic, they performed online and recorded in a COVID-safe way. 

It’s been an adjustment, like moving South. “Coming from a small community in the Arctic where there's no trees and no highways, very secluded and immersed in my own culture and then moving to a city, it was quite difficult,” she recalled. After graduation, she moved to Vancouver to attend the Native Education Centre and then took tourism training back in Ottawa.

She took a program in Ottawa called Nunavut Sivuniksavut which helps Inuit high school graduates get extra support moving into the city while learning about their culture. “That was really when my passion for my own identity kind of blossomed because I learned so many things that I didn't know about our history, about our people and about colonization and how strong and resilient indigenous people are, all of the things that we've gone through, and we're still here and we're still so proud and our languages are being spoken, we're reclaiming our spirituality,” she elaborated. 

Qamaniq learned to speak English in Iqaluit and started losing her language. She went through a phase of being ashamed of her culture but later began to reclaim her language through an online program. In Ottawa, she met Indigenous youth who helped her see how lucky she was to practice her culture.

Her advice to youth considering leaving their home community for travel? “The best thing I've ever done was to branch out and take risks and do things that take a lot of courage. Go and learn as much as you can!” She recommends establishing a support network of family, friends and Indigenous organizations. 

One of her biggest struggles has been mental health, but through self care like sleep, exercise, hydration and attention to nutrition, Qamaniq has learned to take better care of her mental health. She’s also found solace in journaling. 

Qamaniq is inspired by learning her language and exploring her culture and spirituality. That makes her want to make clothing, music, paint, draw and write. She’s also explored traditional tattooing. “Each tattoo has its own meaning, its own significance and each person who carries those tattoos has their own stories. Tattooing is considered so beautiful and it's so highly regarded that before a woman has her first child, she tattoos her thighs so that the first thing the child sees into the world is a thing of beauty,” she shared. 

Learning about her culture has left beautiful, permanent marks on Qamaniq’s skin and her music has left a permanent mark on the Canadian music scene. She and her bandmates are revitalizing the practice of throat singing, introducing it to a new generation. The sound of cultural reclamation is as enduring as her tattoos and just as beautiful. 

“I remember growing up as a child drawing on the walls of my bedrooms, and worrying about getting in trouble. Now I'm actually building murals in my hometown,” muses Inuvik-based muralist Brian Kowikchuk. He was raised in the Northwest Territories and lived in Tuktoyaktuk before moving a decade ago. Growing up in foster care, he was trying to figure out his identity as an Inuvialuit person and used art to express himself. He wants to share that gift with others. 

As creative lead for some of Canada-Inuit Nunangat-United Kingdom research programs, he’s working on a mural project to bridge mental health and climate change through art. He is also, separately,  illustrating and writing a children’s book. Community engagement is his passion and flourishing as he looks into the intersections of mental health and art.

In grade 12, his art teacher inspired and encouraged him as she helped him apply to Emily Carr art school in Vancouver. “Once she saw the light, she just kept on trying to feed it. All it takes is one person to believe in you and you just keep walking, and then it sticks in your head... She was so much more confident in me than myself, and she planted a seed… Seeds always grow in the dark, so during my dark times, that seed grew, and I've been able to be me,” he recalls. 

Looking forward, he dreams of moving into a leadership role but doesn’t feel ready yet, wanting to be healthy in body, mind and spirit when he leads. He has a lot he wants to learn and he’s building the foundations and self-confidence he will need in the future. 

His advice for youth who want to make a difference like he does with art is “surround yourself with people who believe in you because it's very easy to get distracted… It's always okay to backslide… just always remember to get up. You'll soon learn that the right people that should be around you will be around if that's what you want.”

If he could give his younger self a message it would be, “It's okay to be sensitive. It's okay to feel.” He remembers how he used to gaslight himself that he shouldn’t be feeling things. To maintain mental wellness, Kowikchuk recommends listening to the people around you who can see you starting to slip. 

When it comes to leaving home to an urban setting, he encourages staying connected. “They say that home is where your heart is. Just make sure that you keep in touch with family no matter what, because it really is easy to feel isolated and lonely in the city… Everyone becomes strangers but we’ve got to remember that our best friends were strangers at one point.”

When he moved to Mexico for a year, he was in awe of the beauty and colour in contrast with the North which is often plunged in darkness. He dreams of adding colour to his community so the next generation can understand who they are by seeing it, hearing it and being part of it through art. He wants to share culture through his art.

His favourite types of murals are those made by Indigenous people for Indigenous people. “It wasn't too long ago our people were put into residential schools and our land was taken. It's really amazing to see mural work being done for and from our people, because that means we're slowly taking back our space. It's not too long ago, we’re fresh off the ice and fresh off the land so it's important for the next generations to understand who they are instead of who they were,” he reflects.

His advice to students who want to pursue mural work is to work on their craft weekly, advising, “There's no such thing as perfect; it takes a lot of practice.” Kowikchuk recommends looking into government funding for art projects and to start small and build towards bigger things, like he did. From drawing on walls as a child, to making paintings, drawing, doing painting classes, building to 20 foot by 24 foot murals and digital art, his work progressed. “It's not Snakes and Ladders, you actually need to go all the way, take it step by step,” he continues. 

He uses a program called Procreate on his ipad with a stylus which allows him to scale his work in size. A billboard printer in Hay River called Poison Graphics prints his work on eight by four panels that can be assembled to make a durable and weatherproof twenty by twenty-four mural. 

This technique offers an advantage over plywood and outdoor paint because Northern weather only allows for that in the summer, whereas digital art can happen year round. Otherwise, he paints acrylic on canvases, often ordered through Opus. While he prefers to touch the brushes he buys, he researches on YouTube and Tiktok to figure out what will work best for his desired effect.   

Sharing his talents, Kowikchuk teaches painting classes for students through Connected North. Setting up his easel in front of his laptop, he demonstrates his techniques. He’s moving towards using a camera that will hover over his artwork and more easily capture it all so he can show how to mix and blend paint and which processes need drying periods. He’s working on a tutorial video to share with classes. 

He’s grateful for the opportunity to teach that he didn’t get to learn from growing up without the internet. Having an art teacher who inspired him planted seeds and started a fire of passion for the arts. He’s hoping to do the same through his work with Connected North. He wants to encourage youth, “If this interests you, don't stop. The danger is distraction. So just keep going.” 

He started off drawing on his bedroom walls and now Brian Kowikchuk is asked to make art all over his hometown. Using murals as mirrors for Northern youth to see themselves in his expression, his paintings have become a form of reflection. He’s hoping they can see a future in art in his creations, building a better tomorrow stroke by stroke.  

A post secondary application sent during pandemic boredom opened a new chapter in Caley Anderson’s life. A Cree and South Sudanese woman, Anderson was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario. She has  moved to Regina to study Indigenous social work at First Nations University of Canada, a field she picked because she wanted to work with kids on the autism spectrum. She wasn’t sure if she would get in but looking at the programs, Indigenous social work spoke to her the most. She wanted to work on reserve and she remembered how much she appreciated social workers as a child. Her acceptance arrived within days and a new journey began.

Before university, her education experience had her switching schools often and then going to a very rich school where she didn’t feel like she fit in. Anderson dreaded going to school until she became motivated to finish it so she could graduate. Her grandmother held her accountable and she took a bridging program at a college in Ottawa. Because of her cross enrollment, she ended up having two graduations and won three awards. Algonquin College’s Indigenous Studies program was her next stop for a one year program and she found the essays tiresome. She took a year off before trying school again.

Losing family members has been one of her biggest obstacles Anderson has encountered along the way. After losing a grandparent, she just wanted to spend time with family on the reserve and to retreat from school. Her interactions with teachers left her feeling stupid and she played sports like rugby to deal with the stress. Going to school through family struggles was tough. “There's everything happening around you. You're like, ‘this does not feel like it's the most important thing to be doing.’ But we just have to push through it because we all have to do school. It sucks, but you need your diploma to do things,” she lamented.

If she could give her younger self a message it would be that it does get better after high school. “High school at the time feels like it's everything, you have to do the best or if you're not doing as well as you hoped, it sucks, the world is ending.  But honestly, just keep pushing through, finish it, try to stay as positive as you can when it comes to school, even though it will feel like it's very hard and you can't do it. You'll be happy with the decisions that you've made to continue in school,” Anderson elaborates. Now, Anderson loves school.

To maintain her mental wellness during tough times, she leans  on friends, gets outside, spends time on the land and out  walking. “Outside, you feel so much better. The fresh air, it's just so good for you,” Anderson advises. Something else she loves to do that brings her joy is beading, making earrings and bigger pieces. She used to make medallions, bracelets, barrettes and matching jewelry sets. Her grandmother, a designer, would give her patterns and her home looked like a beadwork store.

For inspiration, Anderson looks to the strong women in her life, like her sister, her grandma  and her mom who raised her as a single mom.  Her grandma is talented and kind and always amazes. She loves her aunties, too and her three brothers  are her best friends.

Thinking of those important relationships, her advice to youth is, “Talk to people. Tell people how you're feeling… Make sure to connect with people, especially elders or knowledge keepers in your community. They're there for you always, even if you don't really know them. Just connect with others. You'll feel so much better."

A moment of boredom got Caley Anderson back to school, even though her learning experiences growing up were tough. Remembering the social workers she knew as a child, she was inspired to give school another chance, and to give herself another chance to be a student and learn and grow. Inspired by the strong women in her family and the people who love her, she’s on a path towards a new future, carrying all the lessons she’s learned along the way (and some beautiful beadwork!) to First Nations University.  

A serious accident almost sideswiped his dreams, but determination and a strong support network added up to a bright future for chartered public accountant Christian Toupin. He is from the small town of St. Claude, Manitoba, near Winnipeg where he went to university to get a business degree with a major in accounting. He now works at MNP and loves it.. 

Growing up, he knew he wanted to go into business, to think outside the box and do something with numbers but he didn’t expect to become an accountant and study seven years after high school. His dad had his own business and that inspired him. During university, he worked with a bank to get finance experience and then with his current employer for a summer. 

He found himself hooked on accounting and really enjoyed the work. After he got his degree, he studied another two and a half years and wrote an exam for his designation. He’s still learning on the job, getting better at what he does and evolving. 

His journey to his dream job had some bumps along the way. In the fall semester of his last year of university, he and his friends were in an accident on their way out for a hunting trip. He lost over a week of his memory and was lucky his friends were able to help him on the scene. They were taken to hospital by air ambulance and the extent of his injuries and the recovery he needed meant he had to take a break. 

Toupin remembers coming to in the hospital and trying to figure out how he was going to get back to his studies and keep moving towards his goals. His first order of business was recovering as quickly as possible so he could get out of the hospital. Within a few weeks he was transferred to a different hospital with a brain injury program. There were few spots and he was lucky to get into the program.

For four weeks he did daily treatments to get himself back on track physically, mentally and emotionally. After his release, he did some assessments and was given clearance to continue in his studies. By taking courses in the summer, he was able to catch up at school.  

The accident left him with cuts, scratches and scars. He suffered a traumatic brain injury and broke his C2 vertebra, which connects the skull to the spine. Toupin had surgery on his spine and one of the things he struggled with in recovery was finding the right words for things. Some of the pathways in his brain had to be re-established but he was fortunate not to have had a more severe injury. 

Friends, family, athletic therapists and mental health professionals helped him through school. He didn’t want to be treated differently from other students and he had to learn how to adapt after his injuries. His temperament shifted from always being in a rush to being a lot more laidback, having gained perspective about how things could always be worse. Toupin was left with gratitude, feeling  lucky to be alive and a desire to give back.

“I want to be able to be part of these things that show students or anybody else who may be going through a tough time that there's always a way, a path that you can make,” he explains. He enjoys being part of advertising and events for the air ambulance service that helped him survive. His friends had less significant injuries and the group is back to having fun together. 

He loves spending time with his friends and also loves his job. He likes working with different clients and businesses and helping them work towards their goals. Beyond looking at financial statements of the past, he functions as a business advisor, working with them in real time to help them succeed and make the best possible choices. Beyond just numbers, there’s a strong focus on relationships and need for professional connections. 

As he looks to the future, he wants to work his way up through the ranks in his accounting firm and explore all the opportunities for growth in his company. He wants to keep being involved in community, volunteering and giving back in his hometown and helping to promote it so it can grow. 

Even after a serious accident almost sideswiped his dreams, chartered public accountant Christian Toupin is looking to the future, not just his own but that of the place where he grew up.  With determination and a strong support network, he hopes it all adds up to a brighter future for everyone in his community.

Angela Amarualik is only getting started with her career, but it’s something that’s already showing promise.

Amarualik was born and raised in Igloolik, NU, and works as a singer/songwriter, playing the ukulele and singing in Inuktitut, and has been recording this summer working on her second album. She also previously worked at kids camps and summer camps.

Amarualik says she started singing when she was 7 years old and eventually went to an entrepreneurship program to learn more about businesses and that’s what made her start really thinking about what she wanted to do.

“I like sewing and I like making mitts and earrings, but my main profession would be an entertainer or performer,” said Amarualik.

Her education journey has had a few bumps along the road, but is something she is actively working on to complete.

In grade 10, Amarualik started recording and travelling for her work but in the process ended up failing most of her classes.

Having to come back to school two years later, Amarualik is currently still working on completing her education and says she used to cry a lot because she chose music over education.

But even though she hasn’t finished, she’s glad for the people that understand why.

“I’m glad my principal understands that I have other things to do. And my parents support me even if I’m not doing well in school. But the people I look up to tell me that at least I’m going back to school,” said Amarualik.

And if there were anything she could tell students thinking of leaving their community it would be to finish school first, something that she wishes she had done.

“I encourage them to ask for help if they’re struggling with math or maybe Inuktitut. Any class. It’s okay to ask for help. Don’t be ashamed to be not smart enough,” said Amarualik.

School is just one of the obstacles that Amarualik has faced, with the other one being her shyness and says she had to work really hard to step up for what she wanted.

“It’s tough. It felt like that it’s never going to end, that I’m always going to be behind the wall, but I had to work hard for that,” said Amarualik.

She says growing up in a small town was very rewarding, and says “everyone” is almost shy like herself as well because they “don’t have a lot of social interaction.”

And when it comes to having a message for her younger self, she wishes somebody had told her that being shy won’t do anything for you.

“I’m still shy today, but it’s so much better than before. Like even last year, and being able to talk in front of people was my dream and I’m slowly getting there and I wish someone told me I should always go for what I want,” said Amarualik.

“There's a reason why our ancestors signed treaties and ways to give future generations access to education. They understood that the world was changing around them and they understood the importance of educating ourselves,” Alex Allard-Gray explains. A member of Listuguj Mi'gmaq First Nation, on the Gaspe Peninsula in QC, he has lived in Montreal for ten years.

He completed a bachelor’s degree in Physiology at McGill and now works there as program manager for the Indigenous Health Professions Program. It’s a students support unit for Indigenous students interested in health which also is intended to get more students into the health professions programs through science activities and outreach. 

Allard-Gray grew up interested in science, natural health and the environment as the son of the community’s cultural teacher who brought traditional practices to students in kindergarten through grade 8. Spending time with his mother in the summers, he developed an aptitude for traditional skills and storytelling. 

As a basketball player and participant in the youth elite sports initiative, Eagle Spirit Camp at McGill, he played sports, learned about career options and what was available to Indigenous post secondary students. Eventually he became a junior counselor and was admitted to study at McGill. 

He struggled with being disconnected from community, imposter syndrome and academics until he was expelled. Allard-Gray doubted himself, took a year off and helped at his mom’s school with students who were struggling. He became a substitute teacher and the experience ignited his passion for education, mirroring what he saw in his mother all his life.

Buoyed by praise on his teaching, he mustered the confidence to reapply to McGill and got in. Allard-Gray struggled with his studies but reached out for support and connected with other Indigenous students on campus. He stayed involved with the Eagle Spirit Initiative and after graduation the department that took over the camp offered him outreach work. 

Now in his work Allard-Gray integrates cultural knowledge, recognizing the difficulty in bridging euro western sciences with traditional knowledge. “They think that integrating Indigenous ways of thinking into sciences is supplementing an already set science lesson with Indigenous facts or examples. I find that disregards a lot of the rich knowledge that exists in our ways of thinking,” he explains. He uses culturally relevant storytelling, continuing the tradition of his own education where contemporary science was paired with land-based knowledge and skills development. 

When asked for his advice for students leaving home for school, Allard-Gray reinforces the importance of peer support, especially in a mostly non-Indigenous environment, to build the resilience to graduate. “We, traditionally, were not supposed to be in these spaces. We have asserted ourselves as Indigenous people and times have changed, people are a lot more open. The hardships still can exist. But there are Indigenous people who work in these spaces to make it comfortable and welcoming for you as a student. It's important to reach out to get support,” he advises.  

Ultimately, Allard-Gray found success in the process of being himself. “I started to excel in my studies when I incorporated my identity in the classroom. If you remind yourself that you have a space at this school, your knowledge you've learned from your community, from your people is valid and there is space for that in the classroom, you're going to find yourself so driven to share that,” he reflects. He was motivated by connecting what he learned to things that were important to his community, which is why he considers it important to stay in touch from university. 

“Go with where your heart goes,” Allard-Gray encourages. “Sometimes it feels like you’ve got to fit this mold that is expected of you in school and I think as indigenous peoples we have a skill set that works very contrary to that. It's okay to not fit into that cookie cutter mold. Expanding yourself beyond that and putting yourself into programs or classes that really speak to you is where you're going to find your success,” he continues.  

In managing his mental health during the pandemic, Allard-Gray has connected with hobbies that involve working with his hands or thinking creatively, connecting with culture and community from afar through traditional practices. That culture and community inspires his work, he shares, “It's our stories. It's our culture that really drives me forward in the work that I do.”

Working at McGill University, Alex Allard-Gray bridges traditional knowledge with western academics, showcasing his community’s knowledge and shows Indigenous learners they have a place in higher education.  “I think people are starting to understand that there are things to learn from how we look at things as Indigenous people,” he says with hope in his voice. Holding fast to traditions of generations before him, he opens doors to new generations of health professionals, building community capacity and adding much needed perspective to a field of study where Indigenous people have been underrepresented for far too long.

“You're still young. It's good to know what's out there and to not be afraid to just do what you want. Because really, at the end of the day, if something makes you happy, then I think that that's always the way to go.” Those are the words of inspiration Aliyhia Bushie wants to share with today’s youth. She’s come to these realizations on her own path of career and educational discovery.

Bushie is from Winnipeg, Manitoba and her family is from Hollow Water First Nation. She’s a first year university student at the University of Manitoba, dreaming of a career in healthcare. Throughout her time in high school, she was fascinated by the sciences and worked hard in those courses. Now in post secondary, she wants to apply that science to helping people and give back to her community, possibly through nursing.

What she found along the way was that high school was a lot less challenging than her current studies, which include many heavy courses. Initially, she wanted to do dentistry but she’s changed her mind after realizing you need nine chemistry classes. Chemistry is something she finds challenging and she would rather do something else. What she misses about high school was the way she was able to take challenging science courses and still have time to volunteer.

She used to be able to work with different Indigenous organizations or with her school, sharing her experiences with teachers as part of their professional development or leading student groups. With her current pace, she’s not as available for volunteering but it’s something she hopes to get back into. Living an hour away from campus, attending school five days a week, life is very full.

Reflecting on the advice she would give to students thinking about pursuing post secondary education, she says it’s a big step and can seem overwhelming, but it’s a step she feels anyone can take. Arriving at university, she cautions that they might feel like they don’t know what they are doing, especially as first year students, but she confides that everyone is in the same boat. What she recommends is going in with an open mind, knowing you might change your career and study path and to connect with the people who are there to help guide you academically in terms of what you need to take.

While going to school, she’s faced obstacles balancing her workload and homelife. “Grades are very important, especially if you want to get into a competitive field, but it's definitely worth it to think about your own mental health or maintaining relationships,” she offers, thinking about how she’s had to say no to social engagements to get things done. Balance is a work in progress for Bushie, finding time to play guitar, do yoga, exercise, or dance to maintain her mental wellness. 

If she could give her younger self advice, it would be to not be so hard on herself and that it’s okay to change her mind. Bushie is someone who prefers to have everything figured out in terms of what she wants and how to get there and has learned to get more comfortable with uncertainty. She wishes she knew when she was younger that everyone goes through that and it’s not a bad thing.

Driving all her hard work is inspiration and what inspires Aliyhia Bushie are the youth in the programs where she’s volunteered, the people who create opportunities for youth and the dream of doing just that in the future. She loves seeing people empowering youth and wants to help people, especially youth, down the road. For now, she’s sharing her message of encouragement that young people should pursue their passions, doing what makes them happy. It’s what she’s doing and it’s helped her become an inspiration herself.

July 2024 Updates: Aliyhia Bushie will be entering her second year at the University of Manitoba in the fall. Although she found the transition from high school to university challenging and the tough courses made her want to change career paths, she is looking to pursue dentistry once again. In fact, chemistry was the most difficult course for her, but she developed study techniques that worked well to help her succeed and will now be tutoring chemistry at the UofM in the fall to help other students that were in the same position as her. Her advice to other first year students is to give yourself time to adjust to the university setting and understand that it might take time, but don't let your pace doubt your abilities. Moving forward, Aliyhia is also excited to be getting more involved with Indigenous student groups on campus this school year!

His path to a communications career started when Ben Borne made home movies with a camcorder as a child, revelling in storytelling. In high school he took a program called Media School, spending a semester in grade 11 learning how to produce videos and television and make movies, shooting and editing footage himself. He also joined the yearbook committee and learned how to shoot and edit photos using Adobe software from YouTube tutorials. “It was because I self-taught myself those skills, with a mix of communications courses that I took that I was able to get my first job,” he remembers. He’s come a long way from there. 

After graduating from high school in Saskatoon in 2008, Borne got his undergraduate degree with a minor in communications at university in Winnipeg. He returned to Saskatoon to work with the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority as a communications officer, sparking his love of his field. Borne levelled up his skills with a diploma in Public Relations at the University of Victoria, craving more learning opportunities to grow as a communicator. He is also certified as a Communication Management Professional, a global standard for communicators. 

From there, he worked in social media and email marketing with the Gaming Authority, then left to be Director of Strategy at a tech company called Salon Scale. He worked on business strategy and planning, overseeing finance, HR and marketing communications until he lost his job due to the pandemic. Bored at home, Borne decided to start a business with his former boss at the Gaming Authority. Three years later, the business is going strong and he’s going back to get his master’s degree.

His advice for students leaving home for work and school is empathetic. “Leaving home is a really, really tough thing. But eventually, if you start taking time to get to know the people around you and build community and build some really solid relationships with like your classmates and your dorm mates and find your people, that makes adjusting and connecting a lot better than just being on your own,” he shares, reflecting on his own experience of leaving for university at 19 and feeling homesick living in the dorms on campus.  

He also struggled with gruelling summer jobs, both working them and finding them, but the university’s career services department helped him with his job hunts. Finding a supportive employer after graduation was also a challenge, but the Gaming Authority was a really nurturing place to land. Leaving secure employment at an organization he’d outgrown was a mental obstacle.

Another obstacle he faced was managing chronic illness after being diagnosed with epilepsy. Borne sees a therapist to help manage the stress and process overwhelming feelings. He’s also learned to get around town by bike, bus and on foot since he can’t drive anymore.

Growing up in a chaotic home environment, Borne was anxious and unsettled. If he could give his 10-12-year-old self a message it would be “Everything's gonna work out. You just need to chill, bro. But also, don't forget you have a really good community, you have really good friends and you're 100% worthy of love and belonging.”  

The message he needed in his late teens and early twenties was different; he would say, “Just give yourself permission to explore to be curious about your interests. pay attention to what you're good at, pay attention to your passions and your hobbies, and lean into that, and you might be extremely successful.” Borne remembers how he excelled in English, communications, technology and writing but struggled in science, math and music theory, though he really wanted to be a musician. 

Outside of work and school, to maintain his wellness, Borne prioritizes rest, eats healthy and surrounds himself with a healthy community.  He maintains strong boundaries, gets help from friends when he needs it and consumes a lot of self-help material to learn about emotional health. He also has fun spending time in nature, practicing mindfulness and spirituality.  

When he needs inspiration, he looks to icons and changemakers, by people in his community who give back, his friends, the books he reads and people doing cool things in the world. Entrepreneurs inspire him, particularly entrepreneurs in his industry, and the opportunity to learn from their processes, mistakes and methodologies.

What started off as home movies produced on a camcorder turned into a thriving business brought to life during a pandemic. From hobbies to high school, from youtube tutorials to post-secondary studies, he learned every way he could to develop his skills. Ben Borne has come a long way, moving from student to teacher, and yearbook committee member to managing partner in news media, and from employee to entrepreneur. He’s turned obstacles into bridges and passion into profit as a skilled communicator and life-long learner in his field. 

“It's like, a tinge of glamour with just hours of sitting around eating cold pizza, crying. It's like tissue and a tinge of glamour here and there. But it turns out that it's what I love for sure.” That’s who Carleigh Baker describes her career as a writer and creative writing teacher. Baker is of Cree, Métis and mixed European descent and lives in Vancouver. 

While she is planning to write a novel, she mostly writes short fiction and articles about conservationism and Indigenous land sovereignty. Recently, she co edited an anthology called Carving Space with Jordan Abel and Madeleine Reddon, marking the five year anniversary of the Indigenous Voices Awards. 

Her career as a writer came as she was recovering from an unhappy marriage and a drug addiction. “ I think writing was one of those things that I was always doing. But for some reason, it took me a long time to realize that I could do it as a career,” she recalls. “I had to go slowly, and be gentle with myself and not expect to just be sort of a brilliant writer right out of the gate. It takes a lot of practice, a lot of time,” she remembers. 

Baker studied writing at Douglas College because it was so close there was no excuse not to go. Poetry was where she thought she would land but fiction captivated her. She went onto a one year certificate program at the Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University. Working with a mentor as part of a group of ten students and coming back a year later as a teaching assistant, she built up her writing practice and her skills. 

After that experience, she decided to continue on for a master's degree in creative writing at UBC so that she could teach, building on her undergraduate degree in theatre. Her parents are retired teachers, she loved the idea of helping emerging writers and she knew making a living solely off of writing was rare. She started connecting with emerging Indigenous writers and took classes in Indigenous studies. 

Her advice for Indigenous students thinking of leaving their home community for education is to find some kind of community in their new location. “The good news is there are many places to find community at school,” she beams. She found hers through the student-run Indigenous radio program “Unceded Airwaves” and by starting a weekly Indigenous literature reading group. They read together in a circle, outloud or not, and then discuss what was happening in their school or personal lives. 

While many of the activities she undertook had more extroverted dimensions, there are often opportunities for introverts to connect and work together quietly and Baker encourages students to seek out those opportunities to find connection in more conducive ways.

One of the biggest obstacles Baker faced was believing in herself. Beyond the individual work she’s done to try and overcome it, her family and friends have provided support and guidance, too. Giving back to communities she’s part of has created a feedback loop to refill her cup when it felt like she had nothing left to give.

If she could give her younger self advice it would be to treasure her youthful energy while it lasted. Otherwise, she would say, “All those things, the weird and awkward things about you, are going to make you an interesting person and a great writer later on in life. All those things that seem so ‘I'll never fit in. I just will always be sort of strange-o out there in the world’ those make for great stories later on.”

In the early stages of her writing career, she thought operating in chaos while depleted would make her more creative but what ended up being the game changer was working on her mental health. Positive self-talk has been something that seemed silly at first but has made a big difference for her.  

When she needs inspiration, Baker likes to go walking. She wanted to be inspired by running but she hates it and has resigned herself to being a walker, a practice where she often gets her best ideas. Another place she finds inspiration is watching youtube videos, finding connection to Generation Z, representing many of her students, and also watching people playing video games like The Sims or learning about writing craft techniques from passionate creators.

Thinking about how how some people look down on how youth today use technology, Baker says, “I used to just play in the backyard all day when I was a kid and if I could wish that for the upcoming generation, it would be that folks are still getting an opportunity to play in in their backyards when they can, but the way that the upcoming generations use technology is amazing and absolutely educational and it's super exciting.”

With a tinge of glamour, and all the cold pizza and crying into tissues, Carleigh Baker rewrote her life after an unhappy marriage and drug addiction. She created a new chapter she loved doing something she already enjoyed but never dreamed could be a career. Committing words to the page and her talents to emerging writers, she’s helping others write their own stories as she creates her own

He had to leave home to find his career but now that he’s found it, he gets to share the history of his home with his students as part of his job. Daniel Sims is a member of Tsay Keh Dene First Nation, a community that is eight to ten hours north of Prince George, BC. He was born in Prince George and lives there now, working as a faculty member of the University of Northern British Columbia. He teaches First Nations studies and has worked with the history department and the School of Education. Outside of teaching, he also does research. 

Getting started on his academic career he did his undergraduate degree at the Concordia University of Edmonton, first studying philosophy then switching to history and then Indigenous studies. He did his Masters and Doctoral degrees at the University of Alberta and got his first teaching job there. Eventually, he was offered his current job which allowed him to work closer to his home community. 

His advice for youth leaving home to study based on his experiences is to be prepared for culture shock and to have a sense of why you are going so you can anchor into that during times of isolation. Building your network is a way he suggests coping with being away, making friends and connections through social clubs and the Indigenous student centre at your university. 

To make things work financially in his own studies, Sims had student loans, band sponsorships, scholarships and bursaries. During his undergraduate degree he took two years off to work full time and he had roommates and got creative with his grocery budget to help offset his cost of living as a student.

Taking time away from school created challenges for Sims, given many of his friends graduated by the time he returned. Stepping away was devastating for him, but he grew a lot as a person working a blue collar job in industrial boiler repair. Outside of trades and academia, he’s also worked retail, door to door sales and tech support, experiences that shaped his worldview. 

Outside of finances, Sims faced challenges figuring out what he wanted to do and how to make things happen for himself in a university environment, given the path and his trajectory wasn’t always obvious. “It can be really easy to see them as insurmountable barriers. But often there are ways of actually getting over them, overcoming them,” he offers. Going into his Masters degree he had to do a year of qualifying studies, something he was not excited about, but in the end, he was able to start his PhD before he finished his Master’s program. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, there are other factors that come into play,” Sims says. 

As a professor, he had to make decisions about what classes to teach and which research to undertake without the guidance he was used to having as a student. Stepping back and finding perspective, he was able to identify people to help him make big decisions professionally. Sims learned valuable lessons along the way. “Just because you start down one path doesn't mean that you necessarily need to stay on that path till the end of time. If you find that things aren't working out, it's okay to change your mind to change what you're doing,” he reflects. 

He’s also learned to think about adversity differently. “Recognize that even when things haven't worked out, at least in my view, you learn from it. It enriched your life, built your character.... It has a purpose. Even if you think something didn't need to happen, or it would have been better if it didn't happen, it still makes you ‘you’. I think that's one of the things to bear in mind when you're going through those hardships,” he offers. He also learned that while he felt like he was failing in front of an audience, most people are more concerned with themselves and not really paying attention to whether or not he’s succeeding. 

If he could give advice to his younger self it would be to exercise more and save his money. Outside of those more basic lessons, he would say, “It kind of all works out. It might not work out the way you want it to work out, and things might not go the way you want it to go, but it all works out. At the end of the day, your life is richer because of it.” 

To maintain his mental health, Sims takes the time to play, whether that’s video games, board games or with his pets. While he does some work on the weekends, he tries to maintain a balance of keeping that time for himself and that he doesn’t feel guilty about taking time off. He sees rest as integral to mental, physical and spiritual health. His research supervisor encouraged him that there would be days that he wouldn’t get things done and that would be okay. Sims works hard to build a network of people like his supervisor who he can talk to during good times and bad. 

While his job is important to him, Sims doesn’t make where he works his whole identity. When he introduces himself, he talks about coming from his home community. Where he comes from inspires his research as well, spending time learning about the history of his territories, his language and genealogy as a means of self discovery. He’s had the chance to make maps of his home community based on homestead records and to explore the relationships and family trees of the people in the area. Throughout the isolation of the pandemic, he was inspired by his family history on the trapline, knowing if they could spend months in isolation so could he. 

He had to leave home to find his career but now that he’s found it, Daniel Sims gets to share the history of his home community with his students as part of his job as an Associate Professor at the University of Northern British Columbia. Engaging in self-study and academic instruction, his journey has come full circle and to the front of the classroom. Things didn’t always go the way he planned, but he and his students are richer for the adversity he faced and the lessons he’s learned along the way.

“I'm hoping that I can bring changes where we see more improvement in language revitalization and also language service. We can spend all the time we want learning a language, but if we don't hear it in our service providers, then it becomes a problem. That's what I'm really hoping that I start to see in my term,” Brenda Gauthier, Languages Commissioner of the Northwest Territories, asserts.

She lives in Fort Smith and is originally from Fort Providence. Before she was married, she was known as Brenda McLeod. A survivor of two residential schools, she’s always lived in the Northwest Territories and is a member of the Deh Gáh Got’įę First Nation. She has worked in government for over 30 year in a wide range of positions.

Her career started out when she was a community social worker in Fort Providence. Next, she was a student counselor at Aurora College and later a probation or parole officer, then the warden of the Territorial Women's Correctional Center. The facility merged into the Fort Smith Correctional Complex under the leadership of a single warden. She moved to Yellowknife to work as a director of Human Resource Management next.

From there, she became an Intergovernmental relations analyst, then Special Adviser to the Minister responsible for the Status of Women and later Chief Operating Officer for the Fort Smith region of the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority. She has a big vision for her new work in the Language Commissioner’s Office. It wasn’t a role she plannedto take on, but she did with the encouragement of her husband and friends. “I’m enjoying it, it’s a very rewarding career,” she adds.

Making a change didn’t always come easily. “A majority of my career was in the Corrections field. At some point, you need to do something different. When you work in one career for as long as I did… sometimes it's hard to get out of that into a different field,” she shares. After applying unsuccessfully on many jobs, she was feeling discouraged. An unexpected phone call from someone supportive renewed Gauthier’s confidence and helped her look at things from a different perspective and with new motivation.

Motivation was something she lacked when she was first a student in school. She graduated from high school and didn’t feel inspired to do more. Given the lack of employment opportunities in her home town, she went back to school because there wasn’t anything else to do. She got a diploma in social work, then one in management studies, and while she resolved not to go further, she ended up going back again.

Gauthier got her Bachelor of Social Work online while working full tiem during the day. Her husband knew that was not the end, as much as she said it would be. He bought her a laptop for Christmas because he was sure she would continue onto a master’s degree (which she did!). To this day, she’s still looking for learning opportunities, a lifelong learner out of interest.

Her advice for Indigenous youth considering leaving home to get an education is to focus on how short an academic year is, with only eight months to get through. Looking back on the first year, time really flies and doesn’t take as much sacrifice as anticipated in retrospect. She encourages youth to stay on top of their studies because catching up can be tough and to socialize after homework is done.

The other thing Gauthier suggests is staying in touch with home through technology and remembering the world is actually pretty small. Being away creates new opportunities to make friends and learn new things. Reaching out to staff for support is another recommendation she has. They want you to succeed, she explains. Finally, she suggests to surround yourself with people and things that make you happy.

Reflecting on the barriers she’s overcome in her life to get to where she is, Gauthier shares that she was a special needs student who needed one on oe support as a young child. Her struggles with comprehension held her back from initially enthusiastically pursuing higher education. “I realized when I was young that I didn't learn the same way that everyone else learned. I had to find a way that worked for me. I knew that I needed to take a little more time to read and to understand things,” she recalls. Relying on memorization, she got though her education. As she got older, she lost her extra support, which made things more difficult, but she found a way that led her all the way up to the Language Commissioner’s office.

She longs to see transformation in her term as Languages Commissioner of the Northwest Territories and she’s doing what she can to make it happen. Brenda Gauthier knows we can spend all the time we want learning a language, but if we don't hear it in our service providers, then it becomes a problem. Drawing on three decades of government experience, she’s taken the next step in a memorable career in hopes that languages will not be forgotten.

Sateana Goupil has always been fascinated with electricity, so when he had the opportunity to become an electrician he took it.

Goupil is from Iqaluit, Nunavut, and has lived in various places in Canada and the U.S., such as Quebec, Ontario, Kansas, Connecticut, and more.

Goupil works as an electrician, and says he had always been fascinated with electricity since it is used in everyday life. He became interested in the trade when he was living in Wichita, Kansas, where his partner at the time had a family friend that worked at a construction electrical company.

Knowing he wanted to get into the trade, he used his family and friends network and was able to start an electrical apprenticeship.

“When I was presented with the opportunity, I started off as green as you could be. And they had me digging trenches. And eventually helping out setting up the circuitry, inside three separate buildings,” said Goupil.

“At that construction site, I was able to learn how to do an equivalent of residential applications, and commercial, and industrial electrical wiring.”

But before he became an electrician, Goupil played junior hockey in Ottawa when a former coach offered an opportunity for him where he was able to go for a 10 game try-out in Danbury, Connecticut.

Through networking, he was able to meet Todd Stirling, who ran Puck Masters, a master’s hockey school and through communicating with him, he was able to head to Connecticut.

“After the 10 game trial, I had outplayed the other rookies on the team, and they decided to keep me for the remainder of the year. And through the travels in the US, I was able to also go to Bloomington, Illinois, Wichita, Kansas, Laredo, Texas, and Alexandra Bay, New York,” said Goupil.

He says those experiences helped him learn not only about himself but also about the different types of cultures within one country.

“I’m grateful for those opportunities. And I feel that recently, having received my Journeyman electrical ticket, I’ve been able to reflect and appreciate the experiences a little more,” said Goupil.

Even though Goupil has had an interesting journey, it’s one that has also been met with obstacles.

For Goupil, one of the major obstacles was moving away from his father and stepmother’s home. He says he found that challenging at first, because it was hard to find a new normal in a setting he wasn’t familiar with.

He says that while being in Connecticut enabled him to be away from home, it was also a seven-hour drive for his father to come see him, which helped ease the anxiousness he was feeling.

Goupil also says when playing hockey, growing up he was used to playing people within a three to four year age gap but was all of a sudden playing against men with that were sometimes 10–12 years older than him.

“You realize that these, your new peers at that point are more mature. They’re stronger. They’re mentally fit. And they’re capable of staying consistent,” said Goupil.

“I found that was one of the things that was the most challenging. Trying to be consistent while learning to be comfortable away from everything that I was used to.”

Goupil is still involved in hockey and coaches children. He feels he was very fortunate to be given opportunities to play on high-level teams and learn from excellent coaches during his career, so he felt it was important to give back.

“It’s fulfilling to be able to see some of the traits you’re wishing to pass on to those you’re coaching. I feel that sport is so powerful. And it enables the youth to hone in on some life skills that they’ll use later on,” said Goupil.

“You’re trying to teach concepts and systems, but ultimately, you’re preparing the youth for their future jobs, and trying to teach them some of the values that you were taught growing up.”

And for people thinking of leaving their community for post-secondary or a career, Goupil encourages anyone to chase their dreams.

“Be passionate about what you choose to do. If it is a path through college or university, recognize that your family will be there. Many of the things that you enjoy doing at home, cherish those moments when you have an opportunity to go.”

“I'm really grateful for what my first job in aviation was, because it really made me open my eyes to see different things and gave me a good base and confidence to move on to take the leap to get my pilot license,” says Melissa Haney who captains a 737 with Air Inuit. She grew up in Nunavik, having lived in a number of places including Kuujjuaq and Inukjuak before moving to Montreal. She’s moved around since then but found her way back to the Northern skies through a career she says she came upon by chance. 

In many Northern and remote communities, aviation is a way of life but not all youth raised there understand they could have an aviation career there. Eventually she became a flight attendant. Without having ever seen anyone like her as a pilot, she thought, “if I don't see it, it's something that I can't do.” She had a perception of what a pilot looked like and it wasn’t her. After meeting Indigenous pilots and  craving the incredible view from the front of the plane, she started taking pilot lessons, confident she could do it. 

“I think mentorship is very important, no matter what field you're in, what career you're in, or what you're looking to do in your life,” she reflects, encouraging youth or anyone looking to change careers to seek out a mentor who can guide and support them on their journey. Haney is trying to pay it forward herself by mentoring the next generation of pilots, having had the thrill of flying alongside her own mentors before they retired. 

A lot of people think you have to have perfect eyesight and be a math genius to fly but Haney assures that’s not the case, noting you can fly with glasses and you need to know math but it’s mostly adding numbers together and solving problems. Graduating from high school is an important qualification before attending flight school, working your way through license classes to become a commercial pilot. Some people take aviation degree programs so that they have a degree to fall back on if they change their mind. Another approach is a modular program, where you get to work at your own pace.

Her advice to Indigenous youth with an interest in aviation is to find a mentor or talk to a school guidance counsellor. Haney works with a group called Elevate Aviation which mentors women and underrepresented groups who aspire to a career in aviation, providing them with resources and flight schools in their area.

When it comes to Indigenous youth who want to leave their community for school for the first time, Haney knows it can be tough, learning how to live by yourself and also a new trade or new things at school. She suggests drawing on one’s support network, family, friends, and guidance counsellors to find answers to questions and get help when needed. 

Haney’s first big obstacle was self-confidence, believing in herself and her abilities. Bit by bit, with victories small to large, she built her confidence and self-worth, celebrating with her family and friends by her side. If she could give her younger self advice, it would be to not sweat the small stuff. Otherwise, she wouldn’t change much, as she’s happy with how everything turned out, looking at the big picture. That’s why she encourages youth to move past the small struggles and onto what’s next. 

To balance her mental health, something important in her line of work, she listens to her body, maintains a good sleep schedule to get all the rest she needs and gets fresh air every day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Her job can have ups and downs beyond just take offs and landings and when she needs inspiration, she thinks of how she longed for the view from the pilot’s seat when she got her start as a flight attendant. She thinks about the happy faces of community members excited to see a plane after a long blizzard, about the sunrises and the sunsets and the hopes she has for the next generation of Indigenous pilots. “I want the next group of Indigenous aviators to do more than I did,” she proclaims.  

From her strong foundation as a flight attendant, Melissa Haney took off towards her new favourite place as a pilot, settling into a career where her dreams could really soar. She never saw someone like her take to the skies as a child, and she couldn’t be what she could not see. Now she’s seeing a new level of success, broadening her horizons as she savours the view from the captain’s seat of a 737. 

“I think as Dene people we've changed the world many times. We've changed this entire world…and it's not because we want to, it’s just because it's needed,” says Deneze Nakehk’o. He is Dene, originally from Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories and is related to the Antoine family. He took steps to reclaim the traditional name that was taken from them. “It's not that I'm ashamed of Antoine and my family, it's the opposite. I'm so proud and I'm so happy to be part of the family that I wanted to have our own name, because I'm Dene and it's a big part of who I am in my identity,” he reflects.

“That's a part of the thing about colonization, other people telling us who we are, what we are. I think part of the process for a lot of Dene and Indigenous folks out there is to do a deep dive within their own self and their own families and their own family histories…the more you do the little research talking to relatives and aunties and uncles… the more amazing stories you find and the more you just learn how strong, how smart, how intelligent, and how freaking amazing Dene people are,” he continues.

His journey in uncovering his true family name made him proud. Growing up, Nakehk'o faced a lot of discrimination and racism and went through a period where he was ashamed to be Dene. He felt being white would be easier but he overcame that phase with the help of his family.

After high school, Nakehk’o wasn’t sure what he wanted to do until he saw actor Gary Farmer present about Indigenous representation in media and how Indigenous people needed to be able to tell their own stories. He shared how all media about Indigenous people at the time was from a non-Indigenous perspective. The presentation inspired Nakehk’o to figure out how to become a filmmaker. He went to school in Oregon and Chicago and planned to come home to share the stories of his community. He ended up becoming a parent and while traditionally Dene men live with their spouse’s family, they decided to move up North to give their child the best possible chance.

With nobody in his home community hiring documentary filmmakers, he eventually got a job with the Native Communication Society and CKLB. He was hired by the TV department and he helped with radio production, making ads and cleaning up audio, working his way up. He worked at a country music station and found it was a steep learning curve, sometimes filling in for the announcer while knowing nothing about country music. He did his best and ended up becoming a video journalist with APTN, then with CBC. 

From broadcasting, Nakehk’o went into education and worked in the high schools. Then, when Idle No More was taking place, he and some others organized some events and were recognized for their good work. They established the organization, Dene Nahjo, which means “someone who's smart and capable, but also innately talented.” That was what they aspired to, being smart and capable on the land as a group and to work together in a good way. Together, they created cultural programming, creating safe Indigenous spaces where people could learn the skills they didn’t get a chance to learn due to colonization.

Dene Nahjo is somewhere Indigenous people could reconnect with their culture and learn what was not passed down to them due to the disruption in culture they experienced. Their programming targets women and children as they have been most often impacted by colonization. “The women are actually the center and the heart and the strength of who we are as Dene people,” he explains, reflecting on the way they look to put power back where it should be by empowering women. Similarly, they empower young people with Indigenous leadership workshops.

Now, Nakehk'o works with organizations facilitating and hosting conferences, providing training in cultural competency, cultural safety and anti-racism. He does cross cultural facilitation, strategic planning and visioning, tending to be selective about what he takes on and is inspired by young people like his children. He wants to leave something good for them and to make a good path for people to follow and expand on themselves.

Something he hopes youth will learn is that colonial ways of knowing and understanding aren’t the only ways of knowing and understanding. “We have our own ways of knowing, … and gaining knowledge and information within that way of knowing. There's protocol, there's culture, there's things that we need to do in order to gain knowledge within our system and it's not just about reading books,” he shares, elaborating on his people’s kinesthetic way of learning. He sees reconnecting with those practices as a way of healing.

As he travels for work, Nakehk'o is learning to help his community back home, even if he has to face some silly questions. That’s why he thinks travelling is good for young people, particularly for education. “Life experience and being away from home, really helps you out in a lot of different ways, make you a better person, and a person that appreciates where they come from a little bit more, if you have that opportunity to travel and to live in another place,” he explains.

Overcoming obstacles in his life, Nakehk’o has been working to understand his own trauma responses, like trauma survivors in his community do. He takes responsibility for his own wellness and carries with him good lessons he’s learned. Those lessons have allowed him to do what his people have done for so long - change the world, not because he wanted to, but because it was needed. Creating cultural connections, organizing for Idle No More, telling the stories of his people, Deneze Nakehk’o is making change and centering what matters: women, children and the land.

“I went from being a rebel without a cause to like a resistance fighter with a cause.” That’s how Gabrielle Fayant describes her journey. She comes from Fishing Lake, a land-based Metis settlement and she’s part of the Bear clan. She’s one of the co-CEOs for the Assembly of Seven Generations, also known as A7G, a grassroots, community-based, youth-led Indigenous organization.  

Fayant considers herself a mother of all trades. She does program development, fundraising, recruitment and training, research, has produced documentaries and worked with radio. In that way, she follows in her Kokom’s footsteps.

Her Kokom was a woman of many hats - administrator, mail clerk, seamstress, she even had cows and chickens to provide milk and eggs to the community. She was a medicine woman. midwife and an undertaker. “She helped bring life into the world, then she also helped help that transition into the next world,” Fayant remembered.

Fayant’s own organization was inspired by what she observed during the winter of Idle No More, when youth were mobilized, but something was missing. “What we recognized is that there really weren't a lot of young people that were the voice of the movement. Even though young people were mobilizing and doing the work on the ground, you didn't actually hear directly from young people,” Fayant noticed.

For that reason, they decided to create a platform to help support youth voices and mobilize around the needs of youth directly. “A7G just started as a spark. It was just an idea. And it was also fuelled by a lot of those prophecies and creation stories. Today we continue to do programming for indigenous youth. We try to create as safe a space as possible. We do land camps, round dances, and then we've also transitioned online,” Fayant recalled.

A7G is somewhere Fayant fits in, but she hasn’t always found fitting in easy. “I had a really hard time in high school. I didn't fit into the Western styles of learning. I didn't like the social aspect of high school. It just didn't feel good to me at all. I actually dropped out of high school when I was a teenager,” Fayant recounted.

Dropping out of school didn’t mean the learning ended. She found ways to educate herself through adult and alternative education and later, university. For Fayant, learning didn’t stop in the classroom. “The best education that I could have ever received or asked for really happened in community, happened through ceremony from being on the land. I wish I could get a diploma or a certificate for all of that work, but they just don't exist,” she relayed.  

Being on the land was a getaway for Fayant, who grew up in the north end of Edmonton, watching her family members being involved with gangs. She and her mother moved to Ottawa where they lived in Vanier, still feeling the sting of poverty. “Living in poverty, it makes you really vulnerable,” she shared.

While she didn’t learn about residential schools until she was 19 or 20, when she finally did realize the intergenerational impacts, she was struck by how much they were reflected in her own life. “There was a lot of residue from residential schools that I was living with that I didn't even know about. Sometimes it's hard to really understand what's causing you trouble, what's causing the trauma, but when you finally are able to name it, it's so empowering,” Fayant explained.

Fayant has overcome challenges and kept her mental health in check by staying busy. “Growing up around a lot of chaos, I need to stay busy. I don't like it when things are too quiet. It's actually really uncomfortable when things are too quiet or are not busy,” she clarified. She uses video games as an escape and spends time smudging and using her medicines.  She’s been nervous of leaving the house but is looking forward to time on the land in warmer weather.

Throughout the pandemic, Fayant has found community through regular zoom calls. She’s inspired by other Indigenous women like Cindy Blackstock and Christi Belcourt, but also by the young people she works with who hold her accountable. She thinks about her Kokom and the matriarchs who are now ancestors and all that they struggled against and the traditional wisdom they held.  

Looking back on her own history, when asked what she would tell her younger self she said, “Not to worry too much about not to worry too much about everyone's expectations of where you should be in life. There's going to be hurdles and challenges in the way but you'll get through them. One decision isn't gonna change your whole life. Those decisions that you make, you can work through them. If you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world.”

Inspired by the generations before her and by the youth she is surrounded by, Fayant gives back to her community. What started as a spark lights up the spirits of the youth they serve and serves as a gathering place for those seeking connection and opportunity. Raised in poverty, Fayant is rich in love for her people and has a heart of service.

“It's never easy seeing your friends in crisis and I like to help people,” says Joshua Bear, reflecting on why he’s choosing to pursue medical studies. He is a student athlete from Ochapowace First Nation in Saskatchewan who has played hockey within the AAA leagues of Saskatchewan, as well as Junior A and Junior B. Bear is now in his third year of university taking a Bachelor of Science majoring in biology. 

He chose to pursue medicine because he’s had to help his teammates during times of crisis and it’s also why he certified for EMR, a more advanced form of first aid training. Bear would like to become a doctor or surgeon and serve in his home community to help address their 45 minute to an hour medical response time crisis because community members are waiting too long for care. 

Injury isn’t the only risk that he’s faced playing hockey;  Bear has also faced racism on the ice and it isn’t something he has a lot of patience for. “I have no time for racism. That doesn't really belong in any sport, and I believe we all bleed red, and we're all the same person and on the same level,” he reflects.

He remembers standing up to racism as a young person and how much that took out of him mentally. ”I didn't really know how to cope with it but with the help of my family, friends and community and even ceremony to really, really brought me back and made me proud to be First Nations. I'll always be proud of my heritage,” he explains. 

That same support and his spirit of perseverance also got him through racism in school. His advice for Indigenous youth facing racism is “Just keep pushing through and never give up because that stuff's obviously not right, and speak up if it's ever getting too much.” He talks about the struggle of trying to play sports in school and how much harder Indigenous student athletes have to work to be taken seriously.

Bear started playing street hockey at a young age and the experience of winning a championship excited fans of his peewee/atom team made him fall in love with the sport. He advises other aspiring Indigenous athletes thinking about getting into hockey, “Get out there and give it a try. Even if hockey isn't your sport, any sport is always good.” 

He grew up playing multiple sports and encourages youth to give it their best shot in sports and in school.  He went to boarding school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan in grade nine and found it was a good but tough experience being so far from home. He played on a variety of teams during his hockey career and found the structure of boarding school was good for him and his goal of avoiding drugs and alcohol.

The highlight of his hockey career was his first Junior A game. In his second year of Midget his season was over and he got a call to play with the Melfort Mustangs. His dad drove him and he had a great time. Bear’s favourite spot to play so far was Pilot Mound.

“I'll forever be thankful for that opportunity to see more than what's on the reserve and I always preach that to everyone else. There's always more out there and there's opportunities out there. Ochapowace will always be my home. I love this place. But I also love the going to school aspect and putting yourself out there in the world because I feel that it's good for First Nations peoples too,” he beamed.

If he could give any advice to his younger self he says, “honestly, it would be: slow down. Sometimes the world gets so fast, you get lost in your hockey, lost in your schooling and where I really learned just to slow down is with our ceremonies. I've taken part in lots of sweat lodges and just recently a rain dance, which is very educational and a wicked learning experience for myself too. That's something that just brought me back, slowed me down and gave me that kind of perspective and guidance that I needed and it's very special to me."

Bear found the stress of pandemic life challenging. He exercised a lot and trained with his sisters who are also student athletes. He kept busy to keep his mind from wandering during times of uncertainty. Staying active and engaging in healthy hobbies made a difference for him. “I feel like when you're working out, you're able to get that release, and get those healthy benefits of being active. Being active is very important for keeping all the systems in the body working healthy and everything,” he explains. Smudging with cedar was helpful and his community was dropping off medicine bags at each home to help people feel connected.

Connection is important to Bear, as someone who draws inspiration and motivation from his parents. 

His dad is a residential school survivor who worked hard to give him every available opportunity. The support of his community inspires him, as does his family, including his brother who played in the Western Hockey League, and recently graduated from university. “That's someone, I've looked up to very, very much because he's been through it all and he's able to give me that advice that maybe I can’t see from the outside. So amazing. He always does and he always is there for me,” he smiles.

Thinking back on all he’s overcome and how hard he’s worked, he talks about what that feels like. “If you have to be in sports in school, if you have to be 10 times smarter, 10 times better than that person to get that spot that you're fighting for then that's the way it has to be and sometimes that is the way it is. As a First Nation individual, it's always good when you are able to fight that good fight and get past those things in life,” he reflects.

Rising above discrimination and driven by the love of family and community, Bear is working hard to pursue his dreams and shoot his shot. When the goal is bringing quality medical care to his community, everybody wins when he does. After all, it’s not easy seeing his community in crisis, and Joshua Bear likes to help people.

“Giving back to the community has been a part of who I am for a long time,” recalls Jenelle Manitowabi. The way she gives back has changed over time. A Lac Seul First Nation member, Manitowabi works with the University of Manitoba in the Indigenous community engagement office as an Assistant Events Manager.

At work, she helps the school find motivational speakers throughout the year within the faculty. On top of her job, she’s studying criminology full time at Nipissing University in northern Ontario. It’s not where she thought she would end up, but she loves what she does every day.

After high school, she wanted to study the sciences, fascinated by chemistry and biology and aspiring to practice biochemical engineering like that route. In grade 12, she didn't end up meeting the requisites and decided to go play hockey for Sault College. She enjoyed the Police Foundations program and graduated during the pandemic.

Manitowabi got a job as an officer in her First Nation and she also worked in the local homeless shelter. The experiences she had inspired her to continue to pursue a career in criminal justice, but from a place of restorative justice instead of law enforcement. That decision led her back to class where she’s working hard to create a new path for herself.

Growing up playing sports, she had the opportunity to get to know and represent her community.  In college, she coached goaltenders on a contract basis and also worked with the minor hockey league, loving working with the kids. “I was just so grateful for how much my community supported me growing up that I've always had that desire to pay it back and pay it forward for the next generations,” she smiles.

She started playing hockey young but didn’t enjoy it so she switched to gymnastics. Spending time with her brother who was always on the ice, she decided to give hockey another try. Being a player wasn’t something she loved but one day a goalie didn’t show up and she gave it a go. She really liked it and spent time with a goalie coach as her desire to be a goalie flourished.

As a hockey player, she didn’t face many obstacles and considered it to be more of a gateway, creating opportunities to travel to tournaments, meet people and get more perspective on how big and small the world is. She kept crossing paths with ambitious teammates and proving her work ethic to her coaches. Those coaches would recommend her for jobs and opportunities.

Moving away was an obstacle she faced, relocating for her education and her hockey career. The experience helped her in college because she knew what it was like to start over and build new relationships. What started off as a challenge became a benefit to her down the road (and down the ice).

Outside of school and work, Manitowabi has a podcast called Birchbox Girls. It happened organically at a time where she was having a lot of conversations with people in her life about their journeys. She got the idea to create an Indigenous podcast to share stories and with her next paycheck she bought a microphone. She started doing interviews when she could and focused on quality, getting the opportunity to have great conversations with people who inspire her.

When it comes to advice for Indigenous youth considering university, she suggests “make the most of every single opportunity that you're given.” Manitowabi encourages youth not to sell themselves short and to believe in themselves so they can learn from each experience. “Those experiences will help shape who you are,” she shares. Finding herself was a journey she went through in college as she learned to integrate her past experiences to her present path, creating more stability and strength for herself and cultivating self trust and confidence. “Don't be afraid to let people help you,” she adds.

If she could send a message to her younger self, it would be, “Don't push things aside and think that things will be better down the road. Just enjoy what they are right now.” Living in the moment was a scary prospect at times. She was so focused on getting through something to move onto the next thing that she realized she was missing out. Manitowabi remembers thinking about being proud of who she was at the time instead of focusing on how she would become someone she could be proud of. Her podcast helped her get over her imposter syndrome and put herself out there.

To keep her mental health in check, Manitowabi takes time for herself and creates the mental space she needs, especially if she’s making a decision. She weighs her options, evaluates benefits and negatives and makes decisions that are right for her. At one point, she had a summer job she found difficult and she realized it also wasn’t very important to her. She gave it up and went onto a job that was more meaningful for her, recognizing it wasn’t worth her mental health to struggle doing something that didn’t matter to her.

Giving back to the community has been a part of who Jenelle Manitowabi is for a long time. She didn’t end up where she expected but she loves what she gets to do. Creating  her podcast and connecting with speakers, she facilitates storytelling from an Indigenous perspective. She’s rooted in a strong sense of knowing who she is and what she wants to do in the world. Through trial and error, she’s found a sport she loves, a career that fulfills her and the strength to believe in herself and share that with others.