![]() By Hank Seigel First Nations have always been the underdogs in the corporate world. We are excellent workers; However, our traditional way was hunters and gatherers. Now is the perfect time to advance our knowledge by having successful First Nations mentoring First Nations. If your father was a millwright, pipe-fitter, electrician, engineer so on, more then likely your going to follow in his foot prints. But if your father was a trapper hunter it would probably be fitting to say your going to a trapper hunter. I can take a graduate (ex. of UBC) born and raised in the city, with no knowledge of life skills in the wilderness, into the most northern communities, such as Tsay Keh Dene and bring him into the wild with a young First Nation for a couple weeks with an axe, knife and rifle. Two things I know for sure is that the graduate will come out skilled in survival in the wild. I take the same young First Nation and put him in the environment of industry, he will more than likely fail due to the simple fact it’s a whole different world that he has never experienced before. Why is it he can teach life skills in the forest and yet he doesn’t receive the same level of mentorship when he attempts to pursue a career choice in industry? Well, the short answer is ignorance of culture. Throwing him into the industrial revolution and expecting him to learn how to survive is setting him up to fail. It’s one thing to survive in the industry but he needs to know about finance, credit, Industry standard, safety policies and procedures. The industrial revolution has been around for 150 years and we should not expect him to learn that when his resume will probably read “I know how to trap and hunt.” Makes the playing field very unfair… I was fortunate enough to grow up in a community with a top-notch education. I worked weekends and summer holidays in the paper mill. Being forth generation paper maker was a bonus. I worked my way up from tree planter to management to ownership role as president of Sagkeeng share holders. I was taught these skills from my father, grandfather and uncles. We were very fortunate, but I never lost my culture of being hunter and gather. I also never had a First Nation quit on me. Why? simply put, I knew exactly where he came from and exactly where I needed to start training him from. I call it ground zero. First thing taught was work ethics and reliability. Being on time was essential for survival on a relief schedule. Sounds stupid right? Well actually it’s not. Getting them into a routine was critical. They needed to know that. Your talking to a person whose concept of time was based on the four seasons and four directions. First Nations mentoring First Nations is crucial to reconciliation. What was taken away was the ability to parent and guide our children. How can someone parent when they were never parented themselves? I am currently working on a document of First Nations Training Program Outline which is intended to offer preemployment training to address social issues of addiction and intergenerational trauma. I strongly believe we can achieve a level of working relationships based on understanding and respect for cultural differences
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
July 2024
Categories |