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The first few years of Conrad's life took place in the northern Manitoba Cree community of Garden Hill, along with his three brothers and sister. His father was a hunter and trapper, out in the bush weeks at a time. When Conrad was about eight, his father turned ill, necessitating a move for the family to Winnipeg. Up North Conrad had always gone to church with his mom. "But they didn't really teach us about salvation there," he says. At age 18 a motorbike accident helped...
It was the last day in March when I went to my trap line on Assinika Lake in northern Manitoba. I needed to check my traps. My son was to follow. When I first got there, I set some beaver snares, and then I checked my fish net. Toward evening I went for firewood from the bush. As I was returning to the cabin, I met some men from my village. They came to tell me of my son's tragic death. He had locked himself in a closet and hanged himself. After I heard that message I said to...
Born to Mi'kmaq parents Mary Ellen Pictou and Francis Thomas Levi in a small Indian village in Nova Scotia, Canada, Anna Mae Pictou was the third of four children. Her father disappeared before she was born, leaving Mary Ellen and her children to live in poverty. Even so, Anna Mae attended school on the Mi'kmaq Reserve and did well in her studies. Mary Ellen married again (1949), this time to Mi'kmaq traditionalist Noel Sapier, a migrant farmer, as were many other Mi'kmaq....
"When I wake every morning, I am surprised I'm still alive. I don't do anything. I don't produce anything. I don't add anything to society. Each day I ask God why He let me live one more day." These were the words my father told me just two months before he died. When I was a child, every evening brought fearful anticipation of my father's drunken arrival home. Paydays were the worst. My family stacked tin cans inside of the front door to the house. We thought this crude...
My life was a complete wreck. My career and my personal life were a mess. I was well on my way to dissolving any former impression of who I was before desire became habit açhabit evolved into alcohol addiction. At the time, some of the deep moorings within my heart and mind had given way. I had been divorced from my family for some time, and my career had just ended. However, the emotional tearing and ripping of my heart had failed to leave me for dead. I was hoping to scab ov...
My life story begins in a small log house in the middle of Berens River, a remote First Nation community on the southeast shore of Lake Winnipeg on June 3, 1962. My story actually started with my mother Lilly MacDonald Everett who became a follower of Jesus when she was 18. She was a great prayer warrior who gave powerful prophetic words. She married my father, Tashie Everett, and had nine children but miscarried three. Five of those children were born before me. My mother...
My father taught me strong moral values and personal responsibility. He taught me honesty and trust. He taught me to be compassionate and respect all life. He also taught me the value of education. He loved sports and taught me how to play and enjoy sports. He also taught me to have fun and to laugh. But above all else, my dad taught me the meaning of love. The kicker was that I was 17 years old when my father was killed in a mining accident in Campbell River in January 1979....
I am a 54-year-old First Nations man living in the suburbs of an affluent, multi-cultural community just north of Toronto, Ontario. My father was a Potawatomi and my mother a Chippewa, so I call myself a Potato-Chip. I tell this to most people I meet and I had one Mohawk elder laughing for hours after I greeted her this way. Our people love to laugh. I sit and reflect on the past and I remember the good, bad, and sometimes ugly moments, and hope for all the best in the...
I once dreamt that I was standing on cold concrete surrounded by men with nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. I was scared. In my dream I could fly away and hover in midair. I could see the stars I was so high! The sky was pitch black and the ocean was purple. With the wind blowing on my face, I could hear the ocean roar as I soared over the ocean at night. I woke up to find myself still in prison in British Columbia. But there was a sense of freedom in that dream. I felt that...
Finding Jesus. I am Lakota Sioux from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Both my parents were Lakota Sioux. When I was quite young, my father had to move away to find work and he ended up in Oregon. Later my mother and I travelled there and settled in Coos Bay where we had relatives. Soon after my grandparents came and my grandmother opened a beauty shop in Independence. Every once in a while we would all get together. When I was in second grade, my mother took my...
My name is Skyler Roulette and I am a German-Canadian Treaty Cree. How so, you ask? My mom was German and came to Manitoba where she found a job working at a restaurant in Gladstone, Manitoba. That's where she met my father, a Treaty First Nation person from the Sandy Bay First Nation. He started working at the restaurant. They returned to Germany where they got married and that's where I was born. When I was two, my parents returned to Manitoba where we stayed until my mom's...
Mental illness was in the news a lot in 2016. Reports say one in four people deal with mental illness. Writer Mikaela Conley reporting for Good Morning America stated back in 2012 that only about 60 percent of those with mental illness get treated. This is not good. Many people, including many in the church, see mental illness as a weakness and even go so far as condemning those who have mental illness. Other times mental illness is just not talked about. Ed Stetzer,...
Did you ever feel like someone stomped on your chest, trampling on your heart? Ever feel all alone and no one really cares? As a single mom with young children and pre-teens, Ruth Kathleen Smith (Laughing Water) felt that way. One night she couldn’t sleep. Turning on the TV, she heard a man talking about someone who loved her and could help her. She felt as if the TV host was speaking directly to her. That night she met that someone. He is Jesus, Creator, Savior, and the Great Chief. He changed her life and gave her far m...
Small beginnings Born on the Onondaga Reservation near Syracuse, New York, my Native name is Laughing Water. We lived on the reservation until I was four. My parents were both Syracuse University graduates. After a powwow that ended unhappily for my father, he joined the U.S. Army. We were from the Turtle Clan and he wanted to be from the Bear or Wolf. In the Army we seemed to move every five years, living in Army base housing. We returned to the Onondaga Reservation to see...
To the many of you who are feeling lonely and forgotten as you sit in your cells and rooms, I say "hello." This is a small way I can reach out to those who are in what seems to be unreachable caverns. Take comfort though. I'm not a doctor or lawyer, teacher or pastor. I carry no certificates or bachelor's degrees. I don't need one to love you as my God, my Creator loves me. I say this selfishly because it is so very personal. God, the Creator can reach anywhere-even through...
My father would have been sixty years old. I wish we got to celebrate his birthday one more time. Although, this is that chance, isn't it, to celebrate him? Celebrate my Dad's life...It's bittersweet. I want to honor my father...and let the light of his life flare before all of you. I hope to do him justice. My father's tale begins when he was born into what would become a large family with six siblings. Dad had many stories to share from that time that always left my brother...
There is a common thread which runs through the frayed cord of men, not only in our time and the last many generations, but in time immemorial: our fathers. Whether good or bad or all-together absent, fathers impact the lives of their sons. My story is, perhaps, a bit unique as I grew up both fatherless and fathered. Where my story is not unique is that, even though I had a good example of living life as a man, growing up, I did not have a complete example. I'm not sure any...
Tonto finds the near dead Ranger and with Good Samaritan care nursed him back to health. This is one of the gifts God has bestowed on Chief Silverheels-to reach, to touch, to bless... My dad, Jay Silverheels, was what you would consider Hollywood royalty. I admired my father for his success and achievements in film and leadership as the first Native American in cinema. But I didn't live with him growing up. My parents separated when I was young but I did see my dad several...
i'm Cree and I was born on the Kawacatoose First Nation near Quentin, Saskatchewan. My dad was born in 1923 and my mother in 1930. My parents went to Residential School for eight years. I also went to a residential school for three years, just 15 miles east of where I lived. My parents didn't learn much at the school as they had to work most of the time. Their job was to keep the school clean. The school was run by the Roman Catholic Church and it was very strict. As so many I...
My hometown village wasn't much to brag about-no roads, no cars, no airport, no fast food restaurants or movie theatre. All we had was an outdoor toilet, a cozy home with family and friends and nothing but time to spend with each other. But it was my best-ever hometown village. The houses sat on the top of the round bank in a neat row along the bay. The homes along the path ran along the top of the bank like clothes pins on a line linking us one to another. A log church sat...
Once upon a time, there was a young Neechee who thought he knew it all. He would boast about his good grades in school and how he made the honor roll many times for his great achievements. Then Creator saw his ways and took pity on him. Because of his bigheadedness, Creator brought devastation to his life to teach him about Humilty. But this young Neechee continued his conceited ways and thought he was better than everyone. Little respect he paid to the elders and he cast sham...
"The doctor who came from the valley into our log cabin in the hills looked at me, threw up his hands, and whispered to my father, 'You send him away. He doesn't belong in the valley community. He'll never learn like other children. He'll never speak like other children. You send him away.'" Those were some of the first words spoken over a newborn Chippewa infant in 1939. Don Bartlette was born into the world in rural North Dakota with fetal alcohol syndrome, resulting in a...
Born in Sandy Bay, Saskatchewan, almost on the border between Manitoba and Saskatchewan, it's so far north that if you go much further north, you'll hit the Northwest Territories. It's called "The Land of a Thousand Lakes" and it's somewhere in that area that my mom abandoned me when I was only three or four. My father was at work and she came back after abandoning our family and kidnapped me then left me somewhere along the way with a family who were fishermen. It took my fat...
Most of my life, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with Christianity, Christians or the Christian practice because of the historical oppression committed against Native/Indigenous people by the institutional Church. My former boss used to joke, seriously calling it "500 years of bad haircuts." Boarding schools, forced relocation to the worst possible desolate land, sexual abuse from some Catholic soothsayers, physical and mental abuse from missionaries, cultural genocide-you...
I am from a small town in South Dakota called Eagle Butte. I am a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Our tribe is back to back with the Standing Rock Indian. Reservation. So we are north east of Pine Ridge. I grew up on the Cheyenne River Reservation. The first town I remember living in is the little town of White Horse. My grandma was raising me until I was probably four years old. Then I went to Tribal Boarding School at the age of six. And after a year I went to a...
