 Dancing to the drum, dancing to the drum Hi, my name is Cassie Lush. I'm a 13 year old Big Mud Girl. I'm a drummer and a singer. I've been singing since I've been able to talk. I can't remember a time in my life where I haven't been singing. But when I started singing, I started singing in my Big Mud language. I got my first drum when I was around two or three. It was a Little First Nations hand drum and it had a little lion carved into it, so I named it Simba. I would drum and sing with my mom all the time as a young kid and still do. My mom would always take me to the drum circle at the Friendship Center. I would be so excited for it every week because we would drum and sing and smudge and have a talking circle. And I was very involved with it and I was loved to tell the different stories and teachings that I've gotten taught from my elders and my mom. My mom's also been taking me to the powwow in Con River since I was very young. And I also look forward to that every year. It's probably the highlight of my year every year. But as you can see, I have light skin, blue eyes, and I previous to purple I had blonde hair. And most people think that First Nations people have to have dark skin and brown eyes and some sort of shade of dark hair. And clearly I don't fit that stereotype. So when I tell people that I'm First Nations and that I'm proud of being First Nations, they always look me up and down and say, oh well you don't look it or oh how much percentage do you have? You must not have that much or something like that. But I am confident enough in myself to say that it doesn't matter about how I look or how much percentage I have. I love my culture and I want and I'm very involved with my culture and I have been for a very long time. When I get older and have kids, they probably won't have their status. But that doesn't matter to me. I'm still going to teach them their culture because it's still going to be their culture. And I'm going to teach them all the teachings that I've learned when I was a young kid and gift them a drum. And if I learn how to speak in my language, teach them how to speak in their language. And I hope after them it gets passed down from generation to generation and forever.