Skip to content

Speech about being a 'rock' in one's community

As a featured speaker at the Aboriginal Youth Explosion May 12 in Calgary, I spoke about seven sacred teachings: honesty, truth, humility, love, wisdom, courage and respect. My topic was a rock — speaking about a rock has many angles to speak about.

As a featured speaker at the Aboriginal Youth Explosion May 12 in Calgary, I spoke about seven sacred teachings: honesty, truth, humility, love, wisdom, courage and respect.

My topic was a rock — speaking about a rock has many angles to speak about. An example would be the rock is a native mirror. When we look at a rock that speaks your name, you will see your vision through this rock by a simple picture you may see on the rock; it is what your life consists of at that moment.

I also made an example of our world being this rock, highlighting the point that the world again needs to learn from mother earth. We are lost with technology, machines doing it for us, being our brains, and it’s causing us to lose our sense of being human.

I also spoke about how we need to connect with one another in this country, because everybody who lives here has ancestry from a different country or is First Nations. When we connect and stand up as a country, accepting the different cultures and religions, maybe then we will live in harmony. I believe that we all have a place in this world, and the key is sharing that so we have a better understanding on how similar we really are.

The feedback I received after my speech made me glow knowing that a year of dedication really pays off. It’s hard to get people in Morley engaged and connected to do other things besides fighting each other. I was so proud to see the Smallboy family from Morley bring their children and share that they are dancers and always will be.

Community clean-up

We had our first community clean-up with the Stoney Nation Employment Center, where they had drinks and snacks for volunteers.

We would like to thank those who showed up to lend a helping hand. I met some new people I never really got to click with before, and the discussions were awesome — bonding with community members was amazing.

In total, we picked up 25 bags of garbage.

We plan to make this community clean-up a project for the whole community to get engaged and to support our mother earth keeping her clean.

Elections in Morley

Did you know Stoney Tribal Council is a council of three bands’ chiefs and councils?

To the Government of Canada we are known as Stoney Nation. If all three bands were recognized by the government, wouldn’t we be Stoney Nations?

When it comes to the three bands and issues, it’s easy to point the finger to one band or the other, but who is going to take a stand and change the community? Are the bands waiting for the government to take over?

Elections start this year for Bearspaw, next year is Chiniki and then the following year would be Wesley. My question is this: why aren’t they all in the same year? Or, has anyone thought of establishing a chief for Stoney Tribal to oversee the three bands?

If people complain that there are too many people doing one job, why not become one band? Making one band would cut down the costs of administration down to one instead of four.

Would making one band stop the segregation and solve problems?

Morley programming

Programs on the reserve are available to help members get educated for a job. Do they?

Just curious to know, because the people who run programs probably wonder why the same people come back to them? Or they see their students in another program? Then, I hear them complain, saying they should be using what they learned in the program to get work.

Meanwhile, has anyone ever thought about support? Did they get support to spread their wings or are they that eagle in the chicken coop that thinks they can’t fly? People who take the program complain they don’t get the equipment they are entitled too. Why is that?

Those who are angry all agree that they only see family helping family; what happened to community relationships? How do the programs create those relationships? We can have all kinds of relationships — work relationships, friendships, cultural relationships and beading relationships.

I learned that only around 10 per cent of First Nations people can read and write, so what about the other 90 per cent? Can the 10 per cent of First Nations come together and work to support the other 90 per cent?

As they say, you are as strong as your weakest link.

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks