 My name is Darren McGregor, I'm Ojibwe of the Sakamuk-Inish-Nabek First Nation. I was born in 1973. I would say that my life started as a result of policy. My location to where I was raised was due to government decisions on who is considered to be a native and who isn't considered to be a native. Right from the get go my life has been affected by government's decisions. So just like my grandpa he fought in a war and he enfranchised so he lost his status. Because he had no status when his children were born they lost their status and as well as my grandmother who married him lost her status. So they were sent off reserve. The Indian agent told them they were no longer allowed to live on their reserve so they had to move off the Sakamuk and move over to out in Spanish Ontario in the little town. My mom married my dad and she too lost her status because of that so they had to live out in Spanish when I was growing up and from there living off reserve. The disconnect from kinship of family like if you had to go visit somebody you had to travel quite a far distance and vice versa and families were coming to visit us so it's just like kind of like a little off cast sort of setting because we weren't allowed to live on reserve. So it was about 1980 six or seven years old when my mom divorced my dad and not divorced but separated from my dad and moved to Toronto. Growing up in Toronto was a young guy in a city of a few million people finding who I was was a challenge in itself. My mom is a survivor of the residential school and she had her little trials and tribulations and trauma of being in the schools and being abused and she made some of her choices in life because of her trauma and I witnessed a lot of that trauma that she self induced with herself so it seemed a lot of a hurt with my mom growing up. I'm the youngest of six of us and a lot of the older ones were already from what I can remember starting to use going out in the party scene and living out kind of lifestyle. So as I grew older my kind of lifestyle was kind of set for me because that's what I seen in my life is a lot of people who used alcohol and used drugs and my mom partook in some some organizations like OnWow or Métis Nation in Ontario and was she was a fluent language speaker but never taught us and she would come home from different meetings where she was asked to do openings in the language and she had her feather in her tobacco and so we kind of knew just a small lit little amount I guess they say it's a bongie at the goal just a little bit and the curiosity of who we were was there I've seen a lot of our people visibly visibly in the downtown core of Toronto who were on the streets and drinking my blisterine and then a lot of my older brothers and my older cousins and siblings and my mom and all of them they all did a lot of drinking as well so that's that's where my sense of identity was seeing who we were throughout many times of you know sorrow and sad times in life that's when like turn to creator turn to ceremonies and turn to turn to that spiritual aspect to kind of pull myself out of that negative funk it was kind of hard times so as I started learning more about who we were I went to a drum to powwows and started learning a little bit more as the doors open starting to see this wet log starting to see the fasting and those doors open more doors where he started seeing like pipes and whistles and starting knowing more about our medicines and starting learning more about our identity of spirituality and how we're a spiritual being knowing that that there's more to our existence than just this physical realm that we lived in and we have a better understanding of our spiritual connection to create and our physical connection to earth and how to finally tune those two together in existence with the ceremony medicines created that balance in life that I was achieving for striving for to stay away from when I was using alcohol and finding myself like in those in those depressive states so it's a that's how I started learning more traditional ways and started learning more about what our elders had to say understanding how their connection to life is a way that's more than just living it's a great way so with that I started looking at the term knowledge and I was listening to some Ojibwe language lessons through various programs that people have you know started out there like this is how you say hello in Ojibwe onion hello onion and as I was listening to these these lessons I was kind of enjoying them and then I started thinking to myself well our people never learn the language the way it's being instructed it's like it's like we be we are being taught English first and then we're learning our language through English and it's like you know a long time ago we didn't have these CDs or these lessons to learn the language they would just speak to you and you would just learn by being with the people who were speaking the language and teaching you and if you didn't understand they would they would find ways to help you understand and I found that a there's a little interesting as I was going along I started thinking about other things about our indigenous education and how our people learned and a lot of a lot of our people learned by doing and by experiencing and you know when we go out in the bush and it's hard to explain somebody how to hunt moose by telling them how to do it or writing it down for them and giving instructions it's like when you go in the bush and you will harvest moose you're out there you're talking to the land you're talking to talking to the ancestors you're talking to that spear that moves and you're understanding the the lay of the land and you're understanding how there's many different places where moose may be they may be in the swamp they may be in the hardwood there's bulls there's cows there's calves with time to season you're out there so there's like so much to learn it like every time I harvest in a moose it's always been different every time so it's just like that that whole learning it through experience is pretty important and being out there to you know be with somebody who's experienced who knows them sharing with you that's what I find a lot of our education really really happens you see a lot of our young guys who eventually go working in the bush with their older loggers and they're out there with the skitters they're out there with the chainsaws and they're teaching the young ones how to cut the trees and they're teaching them how to do this and it's like it's a little bit difficult to do that through a book through reading there's um to me one of the one of the things that we really really need to focus on is our language and I find it a little bit scary I think it was 20 years ago that we've had maybe like 30% of our population were fluent speakers and here we are 20 years later we're down to like maybe 20 15% and in 20 years from now how many more fluent speakers will we have from there will be down to 5% so it's just like I find that our government is the one that's responsible for that that destination of our language and they should be the ones who are responsible for making sure that our language is strong they should be providing more resources you hear about all these these language apps and these language programs and I don't feel that government who's done this to us is doing much more to fix what they have done me the language itself is very very instrumental in knowing they would say that our language is more about feeling than it is about talking it's a feeling language and when we're helping our youth it's like if they wouldn't know the language they would have more feeling involved with it that that sense of identity and that sense of purpose and with the identity comes belonging and when our youth are going through life and they have this this disconnect from the community because they don't have the language they don't have the culture that disconnect creates that that that sense of isolation that sense of loneliness and it's when they start getting involved with the culture that they start having a sense of belonging they sense they have that sense of being wanted they have a sense of purpose for for being needed so that that's all in with learning right in our education in our education system doesn't necessarily touch base on what's needed to learn for our youth because it encompasses ceremony it encompasses language it encompasses out on land and it encompasses that connection to the older ones they say that in that time of life where our youth are to be directly with our elders and they're the ones who are who are getting our elders wood water taking care of their fires clearing the snow for them and bringing they need some stuff in medicines in the bush to harvest there are learning those things and and that has been kind of separated by this by this new education system where are their teachers now are middle-aged people teaching them one specific lesson in English and math or geography and that connect to those elders who would be there teaching about medicines teaching them about how to snare a rabbit that's not there anymore and that's that's when we talk about that that sense of identity and that sense of connection and being that feeling of belonging that's where that is and our education system needs to kind of reflect our traditional values so we need more of the more the support from our elders grandparents and we're finding to that a lot of that one-on-one support is more it's more comforting than bringing out 10 or 20 with one other because again you're not getting that that that that direct connection you're not getting that individual individual existence you know where they're like I'm here with 15 people we're learning from one elder and I'm not I'm not being seen I am I can just sit back here and not do anything and I can just sit here to whoever I'm not existing and I'm okay with that whereas if you were kind of on a one on one they wouldn't have that feeling of I don't exist they have that feeling of that I belong they have that feeling like I'm needed so that that a whole process needs to be very individualistic small groups and carrying on our traditions through that value of connection to that youth and elder I find that when I when I talk with the younger one and sharing the stories of our understanding in life how that connection to creator connection to the ancestors and that connection to the future generations when we do things either we're making a hand drum or we're sitting at a drum or we're talking about hunting we're out in the bush hunting we're out ice fishing or on the lake fishing or we're gathering medicines and just that time together in the travel is a nice time to share with them and as we're out there we're experiencing life we're experiencing that beauty that creator as bestowed upon us sure that talk about how creation and how creator created the world and creator created the universe and creator created the the other realms that are out there whether it's the water world or the spirit world and how that when creator finally made Mother Earth he made Mother Earth absolutely beautiful it was so beautiful that my creator cried tears of joy and say that's where the first rains our um we also we also tell our little ones that that creator made this area of where we are from along the North Shore Blake here on to from like North Bay to Sault Ste. Marie and the mountains and the the lakes that are here and how that's like we say it's the most beautiful place in the world and creator made this most beautiful is placed in the world for his most beautiful children and as those those most beautiful children of creator he gave us a beautiful way of life so I would say that our way of life is very special it's so beautiful that we have our ceremonies it's so beautiful that we're experiencing the dawn of the spring with the new growth and those flowers blooming then we get into summer and we experience that great heat and in the fall time we have the beautiful colors and Mother Earth putting on her beautiful dress in the winter time we have the Mother Earth puts on her blanket and has her rest and hardly many places in the world get to experience that and we say that's it's a it's a blessing that that we are in an area that we're able to experience all places of the world in one place and all this beautiful water that we have around and all these animals that that are here that live with us and teach us how to live and I always tell the little ones to that you know a bear does bear things moose does moose things a fish does fish things a mosquito does mosquito things and they all live the way creator instructed them to and it's just us human beings that have changed throughout time and we don't live the way Creator instructed us to live they just like we have our set of rules that Creator told us to live by and as we start progressing into the future we're not living the way Creator instructed us to this is like we take care of the land we take care of each other we share we we live through our heart we don't live through our mind that all those all those laws of Creator that instructed us to live by are there in that sacred fire and to sit with that fire to offer our tobacco to have have that support from Creator so it's just like we have this this way of life that we need to live and we're kind of making life more more for us as human beings than we are for our animals that are here this is this home belongs to our animals just as it just as much as it belongs to us and we don't have more of a right to this land than those animals do and we need to keep that in mind we go forward in the future it's just like those trees they have a right to be here as well they have a right to life just as we do so we need to respect our trees we need to respect all of our clients we need to respect our animals you know there's a lot of medicine that's out in that bush and the more we take away from those medicines the more we're going to be unhealthy because you know someday there may be some species that have been completely wiped out and those are the species that may be the ones that need to save us so we have to always always keep in mind how special the other species are on this planet with us we have to take care of