Guardians train to ‘be that voice our Elders didn’t have’

Listening to an Elder last week got Jeffrey Salopree Jr’s mind going.

Salopree was one of 15 people attending Embrace Your Story, a leadership retreat for Indigenous Guardians who work on land-based and community-driven projects across the North.

The aim of the retreat: developing leadership skills “by focusing on the role of story.”

“What he mentioned was that back in the 80s and the 70s, our people had no voice,” said Salopree, recalling the Elder’s words.

“We’re living in a different time nowadays, where our voices are being heard. So I guess in my thinking, it falls to young folks like myself that we have to be that voice – a voice that our Elders couldn’t have, I guess.”

By last Thursday, near the end of the week-long program hosted at Yellowknife’s ski club, multiple participants were coming to the realization that stories mean more than they’d previously understood.

“At first, I didn’t really fully understand why storytelling was so important,” said Kyanna Lennie-Dolphus, from Tulita, who works for the Sahtu Renewable Resources Board.

“Coming to this workshop really opened a door to different perspectives around storytelling … It really shows you the importance of the work that you do and how to braid that together to see the overall picture.

“Being a guardian is not just about having boots on the ground. It’s also taking the knowledge you get and bringing it to communities.”

Of the 15 attendees, seven were described by organizers as members of the support team. The other eight came from across the NWT, Yukon and British Columbia.

Organizer the Northern Indigenous Stewardship Circle said it was trying to meet demand from Guardians for more professional development opportunities.

“It’s so important, when everybody is from such remote communities, to be able to work together and share their experiences,” said Tania Larsson, the circle’s communications and Indigenous knowledge coordinator.

“It’s all about growth, and it’s great to be able to have training that’s focused just for them.”

Together, not against each other

Courtney Chapman, who came from Yukon’s Ross River to attend the retreat, described how Elders in the community had pushed for an Indigenous Guardians program to be established locally.

The role involves water sampling, visiting mine sites, and taking part in the likes of hide camps and cultural camps under Elders’ guidance.

Chapman saw the retreat as an opportunity to learn “how to speak up for our community when our voices don’t seem so big – but they are huge in our community.”

“No one knows our story like we do,” Chapman told Cabin Radio. “You grow up in a small community, you know Dave from down the road and you know his story and everything. But the world doesn’t know his story; they don’t know about the residential school and what they went through, and how they had to fight for certain rights that should have been given from the beginning.”

For some attendees, the revelations were broader than simply the raw power of storytelling. Salopree, for example, had been struck during the week by the importance of listening, too.

“Oftentimes people don’t listen to people when they talk. A lot of the things I learned are because I listened, because I wanted to listen, and I guess that’s an important thing,” he said.

Lennie-Dolphus said talk of how Indigenous experiences are communicated had led her to conclude that Western and Indigenous ways of understanding the world need each other.

“We could do all the data collecting we want in the whole world, but we can’t get it anywhere without the stories and without traditional knowledge,” she said.

“We know a lot of things are changing on the land long before data collecting in Western science comes in. But I think in the way that the world is going today, including climate change and global warming and a lot of stuff to do with wildlife, it’s more important to focus on that together rather than go against each other.”

Larsson hopes to hold more retreats like this in future. If those happen, Chapman said, more people should come – and more people should become Guardians, too.

“I encourage everyone to join programs like this because it does help. It brings people out to the land, and it helps encourage them to reconnect in a way that they thought was closed off. It makes them aware of a door that is still open,” Chapman said.

“It’s never closed, no matter how much you think it is. People are always willing to share. Your community will always invite you to go do things like cultural camps, hide camps, fish camp, winter camp, and it’s just great for these people to come back and reconnect because it shows that they matter. They care, and we care about them in return.”