Daniel Sakchekapo says Nishnawbe Aski Nation youth are losing their history.
Sakchekapo spoke to a group of more than 20 Aboriginal youth at the annual Oshkaatisak Niigaan Oji gathering at the Nor’Wester Hotel on Wednesday.
The three-day conference, which started on Tuesday, had youth from various First Nation communities across Northwestern Ontario.
Sakchekapo talked about the intergenerational abuse that has happened to the Nishnawbe Aski Nation people. He began with a video he did for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and how the residential school impacted his life.
He said he wanted to make sure the youth understood just how much that damaged the Aboriginal people and how important that the youth can ask themselves what it truly means to be a Nishnawbe Aski Nation.
“A lot of people view us as Indians, as Native and as Aborigine – we’re Nishnawbe,” Sakchekapo said. “My younger brothers and sisters here don’t understand their own language. They don’t know those songs that we sung. They don’t know some of the legends and stories. It’s being lost and we have to bring it back.”
Sakchekapo doesn’t want to teach hatred or put the blame on anyone but instead focus more on bringing all nations together, he said.
Sakchekapo said he was talking to someone of Irish decent and at one point he put on a hat that had “Native Pride” on it. The man he was talking to said he would be called a racist if he wore a hat that read “white pride”, which Sakchekapo said he would have to agree.
“I said ‘it would be different if you had Irish pride’,” he said. “Show me the colour Native in any crayon box. There’s still that mentality of Native is brown and Native is red.”
Deputy Grand Chief Les Louttit said the gathering is the biggest youth conference that the NAN communities have all year. He said it gives children between the ages of 14 and 18 a chance to connect and become leaders in their own communities.
“(The conference) is part of our intergovernmental network of programing events that we sponsor every year,” Louttit said.
“The main goal is to bring these youth together. Because of all these poverty conditions in these communities and the suicides that have happened, we’re trying to encourage them to turn that around.”
