Travelling the north country

Page 5

From June 21 to 24, I had the good fortune to be able to accompany a group of Saskatoon city police officers and a group of Aboriginal youth on a canoe trip on the Churchill River near of La Ronge. The trip as I understand it is the vision of Constable Craig Nyifra. Craig is the Native Liaison Officer with the Saskatoon police force. The trip is intended to break down the stereotypes between Aboriginal youth in trouble with the law and the police officers. With me, was my eight-year-old son Blake.

Craig has been organizing this trip for at least two years now. Maybe it's three. It may seem like just a little project. But after being on the trip, it has a lot of potential for changing lives of not only the young Aboriginal men and women who go, but also the police officers who attended.

When I first went there I was really nervous. I did not know the people. And frankly, I have had several of my own experiences with police officers. Most of these experiences do not make it to my list of favorite things to remember. I was invited on this trip as a role model. I guess it would be safe to say that I had some stereotypes of my own.

Blake on the other hand, is a very sociable little guy. He drew no distinctions between the police, the kids and the other adults attending.

He soon had them all charmed. By the end of the trip, Blake had clearly won the "best fisherman" distinction. I am sure that everyone left with a good story or two to tell about Blake. His presence and the lack of judgments he made about both the youth and the police shows me that stereotypes are learned and not natural. It also reminds that a lot of healing comes through the children. They are closer to the spirit world than adults. They remember more.

Many of the youth on the trip did not know much about living in the bush. They did not know how to fish. I was really surprised about how much paddling those kids could do. I think there is a lesson in this as well.

A lot of the difficulties our youth face is because they do not have positive choices available to them. It's not because they are "bad" kids.

The weather on our trip was quite challenging. It rained and rained. And the wind blew and blew. Franklin, the young person I spent time with on the trip, and I never got to go fishing together because of the weather. And I feel a little like I let this young man down. And I think there is a lesson in this. A lot of the problems our youth face regarding lack of opportunity are not really their responsibility. We as adults need to step up to our responsibilities and see that they have choices. It does not matter that they are not our kids.

It does not matter if we are not even related to them. Those are distinctions that I do not think are part of our culture. Those children our are future as Indian people. We need to consider if we have our priorities in the right place.