 My name is Sholemoto Rutileon. I'm from Born and Raised Chailas. I have five children, six grandchildren, one great-grandson. I grew up with elders teaching survival mostly because a lot of the elders that I grew up with never went to school. Five years ago, I've been a logger all my life. I have 48 years ago, and I quit. One of the biggest steps I've ever made in my life. I could have quite a few places in the education, but as a survival, set up your life, want to learn. I understand it anyway. Thank you. I'm Siantilat, Shirley Leonis. My name, my main name, is Marchand. I'm Okanagan by birth and was born on the Okanagan band number one at Six Mile Creek. I was born by Skooka Mine Trail, right on the wagon road in those days. I'm just really happy to be here and happy to be part of this. To me, I think education is very important. No matter what you do, it's what you set your mind to do. What you want to do by getting educated, you have to set your heart into what you want because a lot of the things that teachers or doctors or nurses or whatever. If you don't put out from your heart, you want to put out somebody. That person doesn't really absorb it. What I have been thinking about the last three weeks, I guess, is that I'm very sick. The thing I've envisioned to see missing in schools is a prayer. There's no opening prayer in any education or anything that you do. That prayer gives you faith in something, you faith in yourself, that you want to learn, that you want to do something about your education. Without prayer, because there's no faith. There's a lot of people out there that are very, very educated and they don't have faith. They care how they treat people. They don't, it's just for themselves. They put their hand out. Instead of just feeling something good that they've done for somebody, they want to get paid. It's too bad. That's all I could say about it. It scares myself to teach somebody something. I always bring up that I'm an alcoholic. If the people didn't have faith in me, I would not have sobered up. Spirituality is a way of life and if you make it your life. The vision, first of all, is trying to look at the Indigenous perspective. I guess I would like life to be ideal where there was no separation, that any person that wants to be educated or go into education, that they go because they have a specific goal and they know what the quality of that goal is as well as the end purpose of that goal and that they go into it with the absolute belief that they're going to do the best that they can do with what they have. I have a saying that I know I use a little bit too often and that is one of my pet peeves is seeing people do things half-assed. I see in education too often we get into education for the pay, for the status, for the prestige. We don't get into it because we want to improve the quality of life and choices. For our young people, we don't focus enough on the young people. We tend to look at them as numbers and as things that make up a chart to meet our goals. We don't often see them as human beings. Every child that comes into your classroom brings something with it, whether it's baggage, whether it's assets, they have an experience base and we don't look at that often enough. Whatever is being studied not only have credits and measurements but have quality, the quality and relevancy. Is it relevant to your environment? Just do the best you can and be the best that you can. The knowledge in education is really knowing who you are and where you want to go. Even that is broad. Knowing your roots will give you the confidence to be whatever you can be and take on whatever challenge. Just this week I had the opportunity in the last couple of years to visit Trinity Western University, a university that I always wondered about because I knew they had really high standards there of achievement. I wondered why a couple of our young people chose to go there but didn't graduate there. Thinking that first it would be a religious program and they would still be a very, would be kind of a double minority. Why would they choose to go there? When I actually got there and met six Indigenous students who seemed very happy to be there. We were greeted with gospel music and songs and a prayer and it was reinforcing my image of what Trinity Western was but I didn't expect to see the confidence and the satisfaction in these six students with hundreds of other students there. And when we had a chance to sit and have lunch with them I had an opportunity to talk with one and she came from somewhere in Ontario to come and that's a long way away from your roots to come there and that same student now, she's graduating this year with a master's I think and she challenged the credits I guess to ask that she be allowed to do a movie on some topic and the movie was based on Indigenous experience is based on Indigenous experience but it's also based on the focus is on Indigenous experience but it's from a parable from the Bible and it's going to be premiering soon and and March and I you know to think here is this little person this little lady taking on the challenge of this prestigious university and daring to ask for an exception to be made just overwhelms me and it just gives me such pride and our people that's what I think needs to happen more often is that we take on the challenges to change things when we see it's out of balance or it's not focused or irrelevant I guess it's to the culture your traditional things you have to if you want to put that out I always bring this up when I'm speaking that to our younger people you talk about what you know not what you think you know culture and tradition is what you're feeding when you go to school that's uh it shouldn't be destroyed by anything that you learn in school and that's what elders should be aware of that they should be talking about I'm not educated so all I can talk about is the way I survived I feel I feel as an elder today I've been robbed by the government to teach like I have a great grandson I have to do so many things to teach them how to hunt goes through different things to take them in the woods and cut down a tree and teach them how to build a canoe I can't do that anymore you know or even a younger person to take them out hunting get his first deer I have to make sure he has a license for that gun a permit to hunt or even fishing you know all these has been taken away from me as an elder to teach it when we taught when we taught uh when I was taught there was no such thing as a permit there was no such thing as a license that was my right my rights were and this is uh I guess uh I keep remembering uh I went down to New Zealand really cold but went anyway Simon Baker was his speaker when he got down there he he wasn't feeling too good he asked me to kind of take his place and certain my eyes that we went to and the teaching in and the teaching in the schools I said I witnessed there in the classroom something like what's going on in there there was little babies laying on the floor the other was language or anything mother and the baby was in that room that's where the teaching began right from the baby being in the cradle and that's what I witnessed when I was growing up that uh my sister used to tell me uh I remember that I used to you can't remember that you're only three years old but I remember it because it was the teaching that was given to me on the table like our meal table this is where my father and mother used to talk I guess to make us hear a long time ago there was no such thing as wrong we were never ever wrong we did something that didn't go the right way we just had to do it over my parents say well you just do it over again the next time it might be better and the teaching that I remember today is that I had cousins living about three four hundred yards away from me used to come and play with me and I heard them coming and I wanted to go out right away and used to play outside there and my mother said don't forget you got a chart of you you got to fill that wood box with wood before you can go play with those kids so I ran out in the wood shed and we ran in and just threw the wood in the wood box it didn't matter how it was laid I didn't line it up or anything so the wood box filled up real quick and then I was going to go and my mom called me back you take this wood you bring it out back in the wood shed you bring it back in again and you pile it up properly and then my cousins were gone home so that was a teaching and that's the thing I followed when I was an elder on the quickest off that's how all these things is what I brought out to teach people our younger generation that was in trouble like say with poaching fishing or whatever or stealing they weren't punished by one person they weren't punished they had to make up for what they done not just pay a fine or just to pay a fine doesn't fix it so I think that elder's group that we have today is a good thing he's reminding us like my wife said the thing that I was taught is who you are what you are and where you come from my dad said if you apply that to your life and live it no matter what you do or anything people will respect you I thought that over for years and years and I thought of who am I so I started saying I am my name is Rudy Leon who are you is what I make myself where do I come from I'm registered in chiheles and that's not where I come from the spirit my favorite one is always the storytelling I remember when my three little munchkins were just babies and we were traveling and we we ran out of stories and we were we just happened to be passing by was it moose no sycamoose sycamoose and the interior and so we we asked grandpa to tell a story he's he must have noticed the sign because he said oh yeah I got a really good story he said you know the people around here they live on moose there's lots of moose in this country and you know they they have lots of snow in the winter one winter they were all snowed in for months and months and they couldn't get out to hunt pheasants or whatever other kind of animals they had so they had to live on all the moose meat that they put away and and this guy was walking through the village and all he kept hearing was oh I'm so sycamoose I'm so sycamoose so when it came time to start naming these communities for the government to put it on the maps they asked what what's the name of this place and and they said it's sycamoose I just love hearing that because that that talent or that gift is gone we don't have elders that can spontaneously tell a story that's going to be significant and it's going to have a message yeah there was a lot of stories I heard I guess growing older and older and I heard them I thought they were true it was just something to to remind us I guess of how we are it's so important to not change your story I've heard stories you're told to me then there was a write-up in qualita and when I read that I guess to teach somebody how to live the difference between right and wrong it's very very important to make a giant understand how I hear you used to when I first started sobering up you feel like talking yeah I said you will talk we'd sit down and talk by the time we finish talking we're gonna disagree with each other this went on for quite some time one day I come home from work I was really really tired and upset about something oh you feel like talking I said yeah sit down I said but this time let's talk about what's right and what's wrong not who's right like I said a long time ago nobody was in the wrong if you see a child misbehaving it's not that child's fault it's the parents the parents are not teaching that child how to act or anything this is what's completely gone in our way a long time ago there's no such law any child to run around in the house or anywhere or scream and holler or nothing no no I guess it's because they might hear something that the elders were talking about and it'll stick there for the rest of their life one word it's what I say somebody hears one word and it hits them and they keep applying it to their life and then it becomes a part of it it's uh be honest not to steal or cheat or whatever I'll not hear anymore so I think uh you teach somebody that's having a hard time to make it easier for them like I heard a long time ago life begins at home teaching begins at home that's not here anymore kids uh don't go home and tell their parents what they learned or what they experienced at school anymore to punish a child I see this happening today I see a lot of I'm gonna you do this I'm gonna send you to your room they keep doing they get sent to their room they get in a room they got ipad tv everything that is you know and that's punishment so I don't know experience like I said is it's not not out of line to to ask anybody how did you do that how did that come about what made you think of that that's freedom of life my grandchildren are at childbearing age now one of the things that Salema took reminded me of was how the consequences of parents and grandparents were dealt with in the in the um I guess still the subsistence era because of a child misbehaved when there was a gathering in the longhouse there would be two people and it didn't have to be a family member two people in the small this the longhouse would see this misbehavior of a child happening so they would quietly go outside and and get a pole one of them would go outside and get a pole and stand in the middle of the floor while the other one would go and tie a string on two people's or four people's left arm and not a word would be said and the pole would be dropped right in front of the parents that whose child was misbehaving and so this the that meant that within two years that family had to put on a gathering to apologize for that child's misbehavior in public and a public gathering and that's how simple and um but very strict the teachings were in those days and now we scream and yell the same thing over and over you know at a misbehaving child and then he he or she still doesn't it doesn't matter how long do you hold her how much you scream so we got to think hard and long about what kind of teachings we give our young people to carry on with their children so that that breaks that cycle with with my children we never had to lift our boys the grandmother paternal grandmother was the one that taught them I never heard that lady ever raise her voice and I had five children every time we'd go to into a public place there wasn't a word of scolding or screaming or if a child was going to do something they would automatically look at grandma and grandma would either shake her head or nod it they knew not a word and that if you told somebody that today they'd think you're Nazi you know you're not yeah right or that was way back then but I I still believe those teachings can still work what I say to my grandkids and I tell them my kids would never like that but uh yeah that's pretty well all written down and writing a book change what's happened since like I said 75 years ago one one uh and I said you know what I've been thinking about I said I wonder what what happened if I went to this high school up here in magazine picked out 10 of our native people they're in high school do hire a helicopter and blindfold them put them on a helicopter and fly them way back in the woods I wonder how they survive we just dumped them off what what do they do to survive to get out of there to find their direction or what they eat I always thought how to find your direction in the dark just by feeling the tree is the side you feel on the east side of a tree there's always moss grows on the east side of a tree and you know your direction where east was no you had to go never to try to follow the creek or something going down a lot of these teachings I didn't believe one time I went hunting landed a canoe I went up the mountain to go back go back down to my canoe I walk and walk and pretty soon I looked on well I was here before it was down there I take right off pretty soon I come back to the same place and this can't be either the rotten log there I kicked it and busted it all up leave a mark so I went again to the same place the teaching that my dad told me if this happens to you instead of going that way you turn around and go back turned around I went back to your mind the first year I got I was so excited I all the teachings that I said I learned my dad never took me out in the mountain showed me how to do that he just told me told me you go here you go there you're going to see a big bluff you're going to see a rotten nest egg I think I was nine years old four days in a row I went out try to get my first year and it was snowing the fourth day I went out my mother made me a thing to tie around my waist I know what you my dad told me you go out there you got to start thinking like a deer and he said I'll tell you something that you're going to see in in your life he said if you walk or come to this bluff you walk there and you look down and if you see a deer laying down you look at it he doesn't have to hear you smell you but that deer will jump up it's just your eyesight that there's somebody looking at him it was the fourth day I went out hunting it was about this was in the winter time we could start pretty early I think about 3 30 or something like that I copied my sandwich I was standing there in this open area I was eating my sandwich and God I felt like there was somebody looking at me I turned and looked there's this very big deer standing there I shot and I missed it I was so excited the second time I shot I knocked him down and it didn't get home until 12 o'clock that night I got the deer down to the bottom of the hill close to the canoe by then there was about three feet of snow but I would not leave that deer behind I got down to the bottom of the hill I looked at that oh my gun I turned around run all the way back up that hill again I got there my gun was leaning against the tree my pocket knife was stuck in the tree shoveled a canoe out it was a paddle so much snow that time I got to the slew where we go in they call Adelion slew I landed in there and by this time that deer was getting stiff the hell of a time we get them out of the canoe I started dragging it backwards I couldn't drag it just drag it I turned around and pulled a little bit at a time all of a sudden I heard a shot I knew it was my dad I floated I got a nice shot back you know what I got that's just a little ways I see the light coming yeah that lantern and he was on snowshoes you've got a me yeah it's all he said he had an extra pair of snowshoes he gave it to me that don't you ever leave home without these that's all he said next morning I'll teach you how to skin it cut it up went out in the morning skinned it cut it all up we had used to have all these sacks my mom used to wash them so we can put things in here either if you go in there and get 12 sacks a deer up you put all the pieces in each sack he said you you harness up the horse you go down the reserve and you give it a sweet to all your elders all of it yeah so I went I did it I got back he had lunch ready for me all I had to eat out of that deer was a boiled potato in the heart then he said I want you to go out in the mountain out in the bushes and you get what this size a pine maple real straight so I went out came in brought it no not good enough go get good one way I'd go again I don't know how many times I find you I got found doing good enough I guess my dad made a fire he shoved it find maple underneath the fire put it in the snow underneath I got so hot you can bend it did you do you made me to remind me of not to forget snowshoes at home he made me make my own that's how our teaching went on the hardest part of guess was I had to drink the blood of a deer and that's what I say is missing was our kids what I'm robbed of I asked him how come I had to give all that meat away that's the way it is the next time you go out you'll always be lucky he pushed that on us even when we were married already we used to always say to us there is such thing as good luck and the way he showed us showed us that he used to bring us down here to Chinatown to have a Chinese meal to treat us he said to us that gives you good luck to feed people that's where I've seen him real happy because he was my dad was only five foot one and that owner he has a good friend of his the owner of the Hawaiian was shorter than him he was the path that was a Chinese guy in the head but I see things are starting to happen like all these schools are inviting elders they might have not have the right answers for you like me here's to listen