Reflections: We have so much to learn from our role models
- Maria Campbell | October 16, 2014
I have had many role models in my life some of them very old, some very young. Each one contributed to the child I was and the adult I became. I have never forgotten any of them. Sometimes they have receded to the very back of my remembering but it has only taken an event, words spoken, and a gesture to bring them immediately into my space to remind me.
I have been thinking a lot about them for the past few weeks as I have been researching and preparing for a Key Note Address I am giving at a Child Welfare Conference in Ontario this month. As you all know we have more children in the care of Social Services then we ever had in residential schools. And so it is imperative I believe that if we are to change those figures we must stop looking for answers and solutions outside of ourselves, our families, and communities and look inward, to find the strengths, teachings, remembering’s and role models to bring us out of this dark and terrible place.
I believe we have the people to do that and the leadership. I also believe we have the courage and determination. But I do not believe we can make change with the worn out tools the Colonizer passed on to us in his hurry to assimilate us so he could take our land and resources. Those tools have not never worked for him. One need only to look at his own countries and those he colonized to see starvation, war, disease and the killing of women and children. Nothing is worth that,
But we can make change by coming together and finding a new way to move forward. A way to use the common sense that Creator gave us and the knowledge that each one of us carries, from the smallest child to the oldest person. This means a new way of thinking, of living and doing things and Role Models can help us do this. Role models, elders and community leaders who are kind, gentle and tough as nails people. Who understand the sickness of colonial history but remember and practice the old knowledge and wisdom. Common sense stuff like building our own homes example.
Going into the bush, taking trees like our grandpa’s did and building good solid sensible houses. We don’t need running water, flush toilets or gas furnaces. Those are things we can get later, when we can afford them. But we need more housing like right now. Why are we waiting for a contractor who could care less about us, to come for millions of dollars and build us a house that will fall down around us in a few years.
Look at some of the houses our people built long ago, some of them are still standing and with some work, we could probably live in them again. I know because with some work I have lived in one of those old houses for nearly forty years. I have been able to do that because someone role modeled for me, that it could be done and also reminded me that I was raised in one of those houses and came out a healthy person.
I have had electricity for 20 years, but I still have no running water, I haul it from Rosthern. I have wood heating and a lovely outhouse with a warm seat for your bum on cold days and a bookshelf should you want to read while your sitting there doing your business. It didn’t hurt my children, they worked hard and contributed to the well being of our family by hauling wood, melting snow to bathe and shoveling it to get us out of the driveway on stormy days. And today my grand and great grandchildren look forward to visiting as do my friends, so they can do the same thing. ( Lol for a weekend that is)
I didn’t do it for nostalgia or believe me, to show off. I did it because I had very little money and I didn’t want my children to grow up on welfare. I was like many single moms, in a desperate place; I don’t need to explain what it feels like to be on the verge of homelessness. One day I read a story in a native newspaper about a woman who was looking after her ill and crippled father and had no home because her band, not considering her a priority, refused to give her housing. Her father had been a builder of log homes on the rez before Indian affairs houses so she decided she would, with his help just build it herself. She started with an axe, an old Swede saw, a hammer and a bucket of rusty nails she pulled from old boards she salvaged at a nearby dump and together, with her determination and strength, his knowledge and wisdom they built a home for themselves. It was a wonderful and inspiring story. I have forgotten her name, but I remember she was from the Red Pheasant First Nations.
I decided if she could do it so could I. My late father still living at the time, had also been a log builder but he was no longer able to work he was however able to direct us. My oldest daughter and I completely gutted and rebuilt a hundred year old house with salvage from the Rosthern dump, there was lots of good stuff in that dump, doors, windows, lumber. Then one morning, sleeping late because we were all nearly worn out trying to beat the winter, we woke up too people laughing and talking in Cree at the front of the house. Some old men had come over with their tools to help us finish building a porch and a deck, enabling us to beat the first snowstorm by a day.
I would never have been able to do this or believed I could live without all the enmities we have come to rely on with out that woman and her old father to role model for me. And our work on that old house reminded those four old men the value of helping others and they stepped up. We learned, the old men and myself by comparing notes during tea breaks that we also were relatives. Laugh if you want but most of us don’t really know who our extended family is anymore, something that was not only important in olden times but was foundational to the good health of our communities.
I no longer live that house in the winter months but I still live there from April to Oct. and each spring when I open the house and smudge it, I remember that woman and her dad at Red Pheasant and the inspiration they gave me and the beautiful gift of power they gave my children.
Yes, I believe Role Models are important people and we are truly blessed because we have so many of them.