Thank you for inviting me here this evening to participate in your conference and your Awards for Excellence Dinner. I came with a gift for you, to thank you for coming to British Columbia and to welcome you to our Coast Salish Territory: Here is a cedar headband and hand paddles for when you might attend a traditional ceremony.

I understand that the awards process this evening is designed to celebrate and encourage excellence. First, let me congratulate those who will be recognized tonight. It is fitting and important to acknowledge good service. In doing so we not only show our appreciation for a job well done, but at the same time we send a message out that we collectively value excellence in the work place. This in turn hopefully encourages others to continually improve their skills and to develop new and better ways to deliver this most important public service. Thank you for your innovation, your energy and commitment to your chosen profession.

In preparation for this evening I read that the purpose of this conference is to educate, challenge and inspire us all to prepare a better path for our children and youth. I learned that this is to be accomplished by discussing the challenges and opportunities facing our children and youth, by examining our collective responsibilities to our children and youth, and by ensuring that their voices have a meaningful role in this discussion.

I like the notion that underlies this conference: to prepare a better path for our children and youth. I firmly believe each of us is on a particular journey of learning through service to others. I believe as we travel through our lives we inadvertently leave a path for others to follow. Are you leaving a good path or not? Parents smoke and then try to discourage this behaviour in their children. Children don’t just learn about their path by listening, they learn by observation and by coming to their own conclusions about the world around them.

Our individual responsibility is to be aware that we serve as role models and therefore must ensure our own behaviour is one we would want for the next generation. We not only have an individual responsibility, but as professionals dealing with children and youth, we have a collective obligation to act together, without discord, to improve our knowledge and ability.

As for the challenges and opportunities facing today’s children and youth, I would make the following list of challenges: poverty, employability, being a single parent who lacks the skills to properly parent a child; feelings of anger and resentment over past abuse visited on by others, i.e. strangers, family members, and even people in authority; feelings of mistrust and confusion; use of alcohol and drug abuse as a way to cope with anxiety; a false belief if their parents did it, it must be fine for them to do the same; feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing and even self-destruction due to a feeling of hopelessness or despondency; a serious identity crisis because they care about the past but wonder why it is still relevant in this modern world – this list goes on and on.

As for opportunities, include: education; counselling; family support systems; cultural identity renewal through language classes or through modern pow-wows; day care and respite care; good social workers who understand where they are really coming from; and finding the creator in everything we do and touch.

My mistake was that I used to think my children were too loud, talked too much and lived too fast, but now I understand that they have grown up without some of the damage that I lived through and witnessed in my life. That it was me that has been more seriously impacted and so I expected them to react and express themselves as I have, with my head down, apologizing for my existence and not living my life to its fullest. The next generation is going to bust out of the reserves and grasp their opportunities, demand a place in this society and recreate themselves as First Nations.

What I mistook as arrogance and recklessness was in fact self-confidence and poise. They have their heads above water and they are swimming much faster than I ever did. I am challenged by today’s youth to catch up with them, so that I can guide them. My responsibility has been increasingly to just be there when they need a hand and listen to their stories. I have found that I still have much to learn, and some of those lessons are in fact coming from the next generation. Thank you.

LOCATION:1401 Rockland Avenue
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EMAIL:ghinfo@gov.bc.ca

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