Change your tune and you'll change your direction

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Howard Rainer was one of the many speakers at the Seventh Annual "Believe in the Healing" conference held in Victoria April 2 to 4, but despite his involvement in the event, Rainer believes the time for healing is over.

Rainer, a motivational speaker who teaches at Brigham Young University, was the keynote speaker at the conference, presenting the address, "It's Time to Empower With Your Own Positive Power." Rainer also presented two sessions - "Empowering First Nations People: The Rebirth of First Nations Pride", and "The Reward and Power of Positive Self Discovery: Finding the 'Good' through Fun and Interaction."

Rainer has been working for almost three decades with Native parents and children and young people through out North America. His theme and his mission has been that it's time for every Native person to have their share of proud moments."

"My main emphasis for that whole conference was let's move on," Rainer said in a telephone interview following the event. "I mean, how much longer must we heal? How much longer must we dwell in self pity and past mistakes and frustrations of the past.? Let's move on. And that's what I told those people, is that, if we're really going to empower people, or have the power to empower, we've got to let go. And letting go means start working on it. I mean aggressively. Most people don't want to let go of their past. They hang on to it."

"My objectives were for the people to see their good. It's very easy to see one's negative and past mistakes and errors, but it's very hard to see one's good and one's worth in this world. So when one discovers how good they really are, they can do a lot of good things. When they dwell on what's wrong with them, they stay where they are.

"The second thing was to provide opportunities for those participants to see how they, not me, but they, can create a positive environment. And through the exercises that we did, we enabled those people to show that they do make a difference, and they do affect others - by their attitude, by their actions, by their words. And so we went through various exercises to show them that they have the power, really, to influence people for good. And it was very moving to see how quickly they adapted to that whole environment, and that is that we can create a positive environment if we want to, by how we speak to one another, and how we interact, and how we make people feel. "

"And the third, probably the most important thing is looking at their spiritual base. Native people have always had a spiritual base, but it flickers most of the time because we don't use it. And that is learning to have a closer connection to the Creator, and asking him for help in all aspects of our life, not just one moment at a time, but where are we headed as a person? What should we be doing in life?"

As part of his participation in the conference, Rainer selected a group of 10 people to take part in a very special project - learning how to become messengers of empowerment.

"I selected, from two of those workshops, Native people that - this is my philosophy - I am looking for those few who are looking for a higher purpose in their lives. Now they didn't know that, but I selected them because I watched them as we did our interactive exercises, and I selected them. Then I put them to a test and that was, on my free time, in the evening, I would meet with these 10, and I would take them through an aggressive positive self discovery session and help them to see the potential of becoming a presenter, or a messenger," Rainer explained.

"So for three or four hours, we went through this until almost 11 that night, and that is where that group came out of, this dream team, that we went to this Native school the next day."

"Now that's pretty amazing, really, to take a group of people who have had virtually no experience in public speaking or presenting, and put them right in the front and let them go. Now, for example, her how powerful that little exercise was."

"There was a gentleman from Saskatchewan somewhere. He had a song and dance.... He was abused as a child in school. And he kept singing that same song. I said "we're not going there anymore." And so he wanted to sing that song in that presentation. About 10 in the evening I said, "I told you, we"re not going there anymore. Change your tune." And that gentleman the next day gave a powerful presentation to the young people, no longer dealing with abuse but the power of education. And that shows you what can happen when people start to go in a different direction, and start looking at a different tune to play."

"All across Canada are all these people who, like I say, want a higher purpose in life. And what is that? That is thinking beyond the past, moving on from past mistakes, daring to dream big, going for their goals, serving to make a difference, making positive changes a reality, willing to take a stand for what is right, willing to be a role model to the young, valuing the home and family unity."

Rainer's experiment was a success, both for the 10 selected presenters, and for the students watching their presentations.

"We have all this millions of dollars being spent by your government and the United States government to improve the quality of education for Native children. Nothing is happening, and do you know why? Because we don't have messengers. We don't have presenters. We don't have Native people who are actually going in there and uplifting them and creating dreams and daring these kids to excel."

"In all these schools across Canada and the United States, our Native young people are almost in the shadows. They are almost dis-regarded, and I think it's high time that we bring in Native presenters, messengers, powerful messengers, and teachers and mentors that can really uplift the spirits of these young people and give them a reason to keep going in school," Rainer said." It takes people going into thshools. It takes people opening that door."