Embracing identity opens the door to high school success

I’m a First Nations student who graduated from St. Joseph Catholic High School in Grande Prairie in June of 2022. 

Finishing high school was a huge accomplishment for me. I’ll admit, when I was younger, I never imagined myself getting to this point in my life because school for me was just another obstacle I couldn’t overcome. 

I spent a lot of my youth moving schools between my home communities of Bigstone Cree Nation and Sturgeon Lake First Nation and Grande Prairie. Although the moving was a contributing factor or obstacle to my relationship with school, another was that I felt invisible or not valued. Often I faced racist viewpoints and stereotypical racist slurs that made me feel not safe or welcome in the halls of the non-Indigenous schools I attended. 

In the community of Bigstone, I attended Oski Pasikoniwew Kamik (OPK), a very cultural-based school and environment, with people I grew up with, so it’s an understatement that moving to the city was a big change. At OPK, we focused on the traditions of our community as Bigstone Cree nation members, and in doing this, it created a community within itself. The faith or spiritual infusion was done through such things as smudging, language, and other cultural activities such as round dances and celebrations. 

After moving to Grande Prairie, I didn’t know how to adjust to a new faith that I was required to learn or the vast bodies of students that I knew nothing about or shared no connection with. I felt alone and I couldn’t express myself because no one knew where I came from. I held back my identity because I didn’t want to be targeted with the stereotype labels and treated less than others, something that I saw with some of the other Indigenous students in the schools.

I moved back and forth a couple more times, growing even more confused with myself. I continued on this path for a few more years until, at some point, I was introduced to an Indigenous liaison who helped people like me. I met with the nice lady frequently, but I couldn’t change the negative aspects of it all weighing me down — negative aspects such as hearing Indigenous people be called lazy, uneducated, welfare cases, addicted, noncontributors to society — you know the uneducated, misinformed stereotypes that are associated with Indigenous Peoples. Hearing this weighed on me and, as mentioned earlier, I did not want to identify as Indigenous. It was a shameful thing for me, but only in non-Indigenous settings, because in Indigenous settings I was proud and wanted to share that I am Indigenous. 

Finally, arriving at St. Joe’s, I held no expectations. I thought I had already passed the point of finding success for myself ­because of the way things had been in all my previous schools. But then I connected with Omarla Cooke, an Indigenous high school success coach at St. Joe’s high school in Grande Prairie. 

She changed the way I saw myself, encouraging me to believe in myself and to share my voice and perspectives as an Indigenous person and strong Indigenous woman. This was something that I was not encouraged to do previously, or at least this is what I thought. She modeled what a strong Indigenous person who is connected to her traditions and culture, as well as her faith, can do to create change. 

This sparked a motivation to invest in me and believe I could do great things myself. I sat with her one day and shyly shared that I was not going to make it to the end of the semester because I was not confident in my work and felt overwhelmed. She cheered me on and helped me work through the work she knew I could do while still giving me challenges that I needed. She helped me open doors that I never knew existed, doors like ­completing and achieving my diploma, and possible post-­secondary routes. 

Soon enough, I started applying myself to work and thrived on the empowerment I felt when I completed something. I wasn’t going to be another dropout, because I found the strength and courage to push through the statistics and work hard to achieve something not many in my family could. It sure took a while, but I finally found myself in an environment completely different from what I’m used to, and it became a home away from home.