Carrier Sekani Family Services unveiled Stories of Hope and Strength, a powerful film series amplifying the voices of Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ2+ communities last month at the Prince George Playhouse.
The project changes the narrative of the ongoing crisis of violence toward Indigenous peoples, sharing personal stories of resilience, healing, empowerment and hope.
Cindy Blackstock, Gitxsan, advocate and First Nations Caring Society Executive Director, shares how she embraced her voice and used it to stand up and speak out. Cindy embodies “you are worthy” in this vignette by highlighting the basic human rights and love that all First Nations children deserve now and for the future.
“I have been working with Carrier Sekani Family Services since about 1986 when it first got off the ground with Warner Adam and just a couple of staffers back then in Prince George,” Blackstock said. “And then over the years that relationship has grown and of course through the amazing complement to Warner’s leadership of Mary Teegee and it was really her view that we needed to show more young people the positive examples of how you can live hope and really hold on to that hope and that dignity while confronting life’s challenges while also living fully and enjoying life’s gifts.”
Blackstock said in the recent past she has seen a lot more recognition of the full humanity of First Nations' peoples.
“At the epicenter of colonialism is a savage and civilized dichotomy where everything that we are is savage and everything that is not us is civilized,” Blackstock said. “Part of confronting discrimination is humanizing us and that humanization was made possible really by many people who came before me, including those survivors of residential schools that told their truth through their tears so their grandkids didn’t have to go through it.”
And Blackstock does not say they are telling their stories instead she said they were telling their truth, their testimonies.
“Each one of them was a gift to all of us and also a belief in all of us that by knowing the truth we actually could do better,” Blackstock said. “Now we all need to make a personal decision and a societal decision of whether we were worthy of that truth telling.”
When Blackstock grew up throughout Northern BC she said everyone told her what she couldn’t be.
“What I want this film to do is to show every young person that they have a gift and aluminate what they can be, they will be, that they have the opportunity to be,” Blackstock said.
“This is my life and my goal is to be at work in a collective of people that helps ensure that First Nations children don’t have to recover from their childhoods and non-Indigenous kids don’t have to say they’re sorry. I’ve tried to do it in a way that the late Elmer Courchene taught us is that when it comes to children justice is not enough. You must achieve loving justice. At a minimum that means you remain committed to the goal, but you also every day – even if you don’t feel like it – you have to act in ways that bring honour to them in your advocacy. There’s a difference between complaining and yelling – and there’s a lot of that in society. But if you really, truly want to do loving justice it requires discipline, it requires a management of yourself, so that every day you wake up and you see beyond the boundaries of who you are and into the lives of a generation you will never know.”
Plato had it right thousands of years ago, Blackstock noted, when he said the first qualification to being leader is not wanting to be a leader.
“And that certainly applied to me,” Blackstock said. “When I grew up I was scared stiff of public speaking, I didn’t think I had anything to say that anybody else ought to listen to, I was just happy to be blending into the population like a little flock of sheep. But despite myself and at every turn – I was born with a loud voice and an opinionated mind and also a real intolerance for injustice for anyone. It took me a long time to embrace the fact that I had to be what I feared the most.”
Blackstock said she always goes back to a poem by Patrick Overton called Faith.
“And I paraphrase it but it kind of talks about that place where you are waiting around for someone more than you are to come by and solve the problem,” Blackstock explained.
“You know the problem exists but you’re sure it’s not going to be you that needs to be called on – there’s someone better.”
Faith by Patrick Overton
When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid for you to stand upon,
or, you will be taught how to fly
“And that’s what I found,” Blackstock said. “I didn’t know anything about how to define this problem with Canada’s basically apartheid public services, how to develop solutions to address it and how to break through the stereotype that First Nations people were getting more not less to the Canadian public and bring them on as allies. I knew none of that but eventually I had the ability to step across that place where light leads into darkness and there were a lot of people there who taught me to fly.”
The series will serve as a call to action and a platform for storytelling in the face of disproportionately high rate of violence against Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ2+ members.
Within the films the focus will be lived experiences, cultural strength, and unbreakable spirit of survivors, families, and future leaders.
“Our stories are not just statistics,” Mary Teegee-Gray, Carrier Sekani Family Services executive director of Child & Family Service, said.
“This film series was created to remind the world that behind every number is a young woman with a story, a community with strength, and a culture with deep-rooted resilience. These films are about the power, beauty, and brilliance of our people.”
Cindy Blackstock’s vignette can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mugnolA-hI.
