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Youth council to help next generation

Author

Paul Barnsley, Windspeaker Staff Writer, Charlottetown

Volume

22

Issue

6

Year

2004

Page 9

A program developed by members of the Assembly of First Nations' youth council is designed to help young Aboriginal people deal head on with the damages of the past.

It's called CEPS-Cultural, Economic, Political and Social-and it's intended to create a healthier next generation.

Wesley Hardisty, 23, explained the program to Windspeaker during an interview at the AFN's annual general meeting in Charlottetown in July. He had just been elected co-chair of the council three days before. Ginger Gosnell from British Columbia is the other co-chair. The youth council has a male and female member for each of the AFN's 10 regions. There are currently five vacancies on what should be a 20-member council. They meet twice a year, in December and July.

"We as a youth council have undertaken certain initiatives to make sure that youth will be raised on the truth and won't have to deal with the lies they've been taught through colonization and the residential schools and all those kinds of issues," Hardisty said.

CEPS is an "issue training model" funded by Health Canada, he said.

"I think it's going to be revolutionary. We've already put out our draft curriculum and all on the youth council have seen it and they've all agreed that it's amazing and our kids are really going to be able to bond to it."

As a way of trying out the program, 20 young people will travel to four cities in various locations across the country and attend workshops. Each of the four issue areas will be dealt with separately. The workshops will look at issues from a national prospective and then the program will be tailored to meet the specific needs of each region and will be rolled out on a regional basis, he said.

It's expected a report on the effectiveness of the process will be completed by the end of February.

"The manual is phenomenal. After it was all said and done we sat down and we looked at it. It was just like-wow! Then to have our peers comment on the draft and see the direction and why we're going this way, to see what we wanted to accomplish, they just all agreed. I'm so glad this is there for our other youth that are going to follow in our footsteps," Hardisty said. "They're not going to look at our leaders and say, 'Oh, he drinks. He does this. He does that.' They're going to look at it and say, 'I understand. I can't hold him responsible for the way that he's being. It's not his fault that he's like that. There's all these other contributing factors and this is how we are going to deal with all those contributing factors to make sure that our kids tomorrow won't have to worry about it."

The idea is to arm the next generation with the information they'll need to combat the stereotypes and ignorance directed all too often at Aboriginal people. In some cases, the youth themselves will need to revisit false or erroneous attitudes they may have absorbed about their own people and themselves. It will allow young people to get rid of what experts call "internal colonization."

Hardisty may be young, but he's already experienced one thing only very few people in this country can say they've experienced; he knows what goes on behind the closed doors that shield an Assembly of First Nations executive meeting from public view.

As the newly elected co-chair of the recently revived AFN youth council, the Fort Simpson, N.W.T. resident attended the executive meeting on July 19. Hardisty found it quite interesting.

"I was really there more to listen and kind of figure what their sides are on certain issues. You can always figure out who's pushing what issue and who's pushing another issue. I was listening in to figure out how the work is going on at the executive table of the highest national level for Indigenous peoples in Canada. It was pretty interesting to see and listen to exactly what they want to talk about and how they present things."

He was asked if the meeting was what he expected it would be.

"It was. I ddn't have really high expectations. I knew that they all make lots of money. They get to travel all across the country and a lot of people don't. But it was pretty neat to actually sit down with them and get the meeting started and listen to the national chief's direction that he wanted this assembly to go and which issue he thought was going to be big when they were brought forward and what was going to take a lot of time and what wasn't going to take a lot of time. They went over making the meeting run as smoothly as possible a lot. So it really made me feel that they are working hard behind the scenes to make sure that this goes on as well as possible," he replied.

"They're concerned that some people have agendas that aren't going to be working for everyone else at this conference, that they're pushing their own personal agenda on this assembly. And that's not right. Everyone has to have a chance to say what they want to say but in a respectful way. That's what they're trying to ensure, that no one gets disrespected," Wesley Hardisty said.

Getting behind the closed doors is fine, he said, but if he sees something he thinks is wrong, he won't remain silent.

"My loyalty is to the youth. The youth develop what I have to say. I'm not pushing my agenda on anybody. It's what the youth council has to say that I'll have to say.

And if I tell them, this is what I saw and they say, 'Well, you can't just sit there and take it. You're going to have to tell them that you're going to start exposing these things.' That's a decision that the youth council has to make," he said.

After working on a bachelor of science degree and completing the first year of an engineering degree, he became interested in geographic information systems (GIS) and now works in that field for his home community.

"I [also] work with troubled youth in high risk so I really feel a strong connection to the issues. I see it on an everyday basis in my home community, what's wrong with our yoth today and things that have worked and things that haven't worked when dealing with these issues. I also do a lot of work on a volunteer basis, so I really try to live it as much as I can so I know what I'm talking about," he said. "Also, I know I'm from a small northern community and our issues are a lot different than, say, someone from Saskatoon or Regina, and I recognize that but I'm willing to work with them to try to find a middle ground on what would work best between us. As much as they hate it, we're not going to be able to provide specific youth initiatives just for rural kids and urban kids, you know, something that's going to fix everything."

The other members of the AFN youth council are Tiffany Dionne Kloncl'aa Smith and Mark Rudyk, Yukon; Stephanie Paul and Andy Rickard, Ontario; Kathleen J. McKay and Albert Cater, Manitoba; Winona Polson, Jean-Claude Therrien, Quebec and Labrador; Patricia Duncan, Northwest Territories; Terry Young, New Brunswick and P.E.I.; Jaime Battiste, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; Terin Kennedy, Saskatchewan; and Tony Delaney, Alberta.