Nuanced. - 123. Dana Tizya-Tramm: Former Chief Reflects on Indigenous Politics

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Join today's Bigger Than Me episode with former Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm and host Aaron Pete as they journey through resilience, childhood trauma recovery, and leading community activism for climate change and justice. This enriching conversation explores Dana's connection with ancestry, the influence of indigenous governance, the complexities of indigenous justice, and the impact of climate change. Dana Tizya-Tramm, a prominent indigenous leader, has been honored for his service as a Former Chief and his current role as a Yukon school board trustee. His remarkable efforts in Yukon's education system, coupled with his staunch advocacy for indigenous rights and climate justice, have secured his position among the TIME 100, recognizing him as one of the world's most influential individuals.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

We're back with another episode of The Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron. I sit on council from my community, Tewa First Nation. We face unique challenges as an indigenous community. We're dealing with the municipal governments, provincial governments, and federal governments. That's why it's such a privilege to be able to speak with like-minded leaders who face similar problems. I'm speaking with an individual today who went from struggling with addiction to running for chief for their community and leading their people. We talk about the impacts they made, fighting climate change, improving circumstances for their community, improving justice, and so much more.

My guest today is former chief Dana Tizia Tram. Dana, it's such a privilege to be sitting down with you today. Would you mind introducing yourself for people who might not be acquainted? My name is Dana Tizier Tram. Shou shu-shri Dana Tizier-Tram Vajee. I was the past chief of the Vantakwitchin First Nation, one of the youngest in history, also time 100 next leaders. But all of those fancy titles aside, I'm a small town kid, half Kuchin, half German, and had a pretty tough upbringing, but came through all of that just really to connect people. And I'd like to think that I've really come to see where a lot of values lie in one another and our connectivity through myself as well.

Could we talk and start with you as a young person? You've been quoted as saying that you were a failed student, and part of that was on you, and part of that was on the school system. Could we start there? Definitely. What would you like to know specifically? What were the challenges you were facing? Why did you feel that you were being failed and that you weren't succeeding? Well, it's pretty grim, kind of a trigger warning for your listeners, but I suffered a lot of abuse at a very young age.

It started when I was four, but I suffered mental, physical, and sexual abuse. So, you know, at 12 years old, I was sleeping with a knife under my mattress because of my mother's boyfriends, and that was the way that I could go to sleep. But not only that, on top of that knife, I would tour my old house when I lived with my dad, and I would specifically go over every inch of that house so that I wouldn't forget it, which was really a symbol of my childhood and my lost innocence. So when I went to high school, grades were not at the top of my list of concerns. It was about keeping face because I had to hold so many secrets and really deal with. adult situations as a child. And then when going into grade eight, you know, high school,

that's where the pressure went up. And my stepfather committed suicide when I was grade seven and being in a small town, the whole town knew about it. So, you know, when you go through the hallways, you know that everybody knows. It's kind of like my secret life got publicized. And that was really difficult. And at the end of the day, I just, I really wanted love, but I had to settle for fear. So I became the scariest person in high school. And by grade eight, I was doing cocaine, drinking, and selling marijuana and stolen cigarettes out of my locker so that I could eat microwave burritos from the local store and ran away from home and was living in a flop house. A drug dealer's house. I was living under their stairs. So that was my reality. And none of the other kids

going to high school had to deal with that. And how the school failed me is there were some teachers that knew and they really tried to get on my level. And like I had an English teacher, Mr. Austin, one of the greatest people I've ever known in my life. And he would engage me in English class. Like, what's the better album by Pink Floyd? it dark side of the moon or the wall. And I would vehemently argue for the wall. But now I agree with him and it is dark side of the moon. But then I had other teachers like Mr. Lay who just, you know, threw their hands up and said, why do I even bother with you? You're just going to end up in prison. So it was my first real introduction into institutions of our society.

Did you have hope during this period of your life? no no i i figured i was going to be dead by 30 and i was okay with that and i i lived life like that for for quite a while what point did you start to be able to pull yourself out of this circumstance that's a very interesting story that was um when i was 16 years old um by that time i climbed the rings in the drug world and i was me and a friend were the ones who brought ketamine to the Yukon, special K. And I was high for two weeks, but again, I was semi-homeless. I was breaking into apartment buildings to snort lines off of their washers and dryers at 4 o'clock in the morning, talk about depression. But yeah, I overdosed one night. And long story

short, I had an out-of-body experience. I felt my body leaving my physical body. And all of a sudden this voice just spoke in my mind. It just said, no, Dana, you cannot die. Your wife and your children are waiting for you, and they need you. And I just had a moment to think, like, what the hell was that? And all of a sudden, I started breathing, and I snapped back into my body at 16 years old. And I remember thinking to myself, I thought about this experience, this esoteric experience for weeks. What is this? Like it was obviously oxygen deprivation or was it spiritual? You know what I mean? Like was it a hallucination or was it spiritual? But one thing that it did is I never looked at myself as a father before. And that's where things started changing. You know, my friends were so violent that same

summer, they beat one kid up so bad that my buddy was in jail for six months just to see if he was going to survive or not and to see if he'd be charged with manslaughter. And I thought about that kid in the hospital with, you know, punctured lungs and broken ribs. And I thought he's going to be someone's father. I thought about my own father getting, you know, messed up like that. And it hurt me to think about. But he is someone's father, these people that we hurt. There's somebody's son. There's somebody's father. And I looked at other people like that. And I looked at myself like that. And that's when I knew I had to change things. But I didn't know how. And it took me years. But I wanted that change. And that's why it happened eventually.

Because before then, I was just marching towards my death in a numb sort of way. they say that things are darkest just before the dawn and it seems like this was that glimmer of hope this idea that you could be something different than you were absolutely but there were many of them i would love you know to tell your audience that you know after that the credits rolled and there was a happy ending but there was many more challenges you know i survived a suicide attempt at 18 um i recently just came out of a near-death experience about four weeks ago. I survived a brain infection and it keeps going. But here's the main key. I've heard it said that a realist is actually an idealist because we need to aspire to something greater to ourselves. And when we do that, we land at being a human being. But when we just say it is what it is, we land at less than a human being. And what that means is we need to aspire as something better. Like for instance, as a young indigenous man, Canada is a very difficult idea. I didn't stand up for the Canadian anthem for years

once I found out about residential school and my family's involvement. But what changed is when I decided and realized that I can't speak to Canada's past and I'm not standing up for Canada's past. I'm standing up for Canada's future. And all those racist people out there have children and the real estate in their minds. I'm going to get to the heart of Canada and I'm going to change it from the inside out. So nationalism, you know, Canada, how can it teach when it doesn't practice what it preaches. And it's not that Canada falls short because it does. It's what Canada aspires to. Do you see what I mean? It's that aspiration that means everything. It's not about failing. It's not about success. It's about aspiring to being more. That's everything.

That's incredible. They say, and it's so easy to say, that God or the creator doesn't give us more than we can manage. That's an easy thing to say it sounds nice on a card. Do you believe that it's true? Here's what I believe. My brother-in-law was out hiking in our territory, our traditional territory. There are 250 people that live on 55,000 square kilometers.

You can see our traditional territory from space. And he was out hiking among our lands by himself. And he found this beautiful cliff. And he sat down on this rock and was looking at the scenery. And he looked down at his feet and saw all these rock shards. And he realized that our ancestors sat at the same place making arrowheads. And it was just like this synchronous moment. And when he told me about that, it became a metaphor for life.

Because how you make arrowheads is you take a stone and you. hit it. You have to find its grain. And what that means is how the chunks come off, because it's got to come off in sheets. And it's synonymous with life because life, as a child, life will take big chunks out of you. And you will never be the same. Your job is to find your grain so that when life does that, you come out sharper. It's not about what you lose. it's about what you're left with and how you use it because all of us are going to die that's a given but how many of us stand and live in that truth instead of fearing it that's a completely different thing and i think something that indigenous our ancestors really really had and in my opinion

That's the definition of colonization is people who fear death and try to escape it. And we can unpack that later. This also reminds me of the phoenix, this idea that you have to burn parts of yourself off in order for that foundation, the values, the true you to be able to shine, it has to let go of so much. Absolutely. And the real skinny of it is, is, you know, think of it this way. I didn't, I never read this in a book. This is what life taught me. I call it the language before words. Everything is speaking to you, just not in English. So none of us can remember where we came from before we were here. And this is the oldest arguments and where spirituality and science, you know, really try. But here's the funny thing about science. And don't get me wrong. I love science.

I'm a big science guy. But science cannot tell you where we came from, why we're here, or where we're going. And those are some of the most fundamental questions. So if that's the case and say you're on your deathbed and you know that you're going to die, that's where this existential angstance come from this fear that I'm not going to exist anymore. because the only thing that you or I have only known in our lives is ourselves, and we have to let that go. The only way that you can do that with a modicum of grace is to have faith, not necessarily in a God, but faith that it's okay to die. It's okay. You've spent more time wherever you came from than being here.

And you know what? If we did it once, maybe we can do it again. I don't know. But I'm just saying that. If that's the ultimate act of your life is to let go of it, then maybe everything in our life is teaching us to just let go. It's okay. And love has already won because out of non-existence, we found a way to be here and share with one another. And whether that's true or not, It helps me to feel the sacred nature of existence, and that's worth more than a tailored suit jacket. On this journey, as you come out of some of the darkest periods, I'm wondering when did you start to develop this perspective that you are a link in a chain, that things had happened prior to you that had impacted you. If you think of Indian residential schools, if you think of the things that happened previous, when do you start to see that you're a node in the network? That's a really great question. And I've got a very specific answer for you. It was when I was 25.

Long story short, at 19 years old, I knew I was going to die. I was deeply, I was in a very deep addiction with crack cocaine. and so I jumped on a plane, went down to Vancouver, sobered up off of drugs, but I still drank like a fish. But anyways, at 25, I had fancy clothes, you know, it was, you know, hipster era. I had skinny jeans and, you know, a vintage leather jacket. I had my own house. I had an incredible job. I had everything that you would want, but I'd never been so alone. You know, the city is, I've never been surrounded by so many people and felt so alone because, you know, in small villages and small cities, like you grow up with people. You know them since kindergarten,

right? And your cousins and like just all this stuff. But down in the city, you're just meeting new people all the time. It's like a revolving door. And it gets really tiring after a couple of years. So here I am in this depression and I don't know what to do and it's hard to describe to articulate really what that depression was. It was like I didn't have value that nobody really knew who I was and I didn't really know who anybody was. We were just these clothes and just these projections of ourselves. It was kind of fake. And my grandfather, they call him Old Peter T.ja in my community of Old Crow Yukon, which is 80 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle and 60 kilometers east of the Alaska border. It's the most northwest settlement in Canada.

So that means it was one of the last that was touched by colonization. So anyway, my grandfather was born to candlelight in a wall tent. and I'm the first generation born outside of Old Crow and some of my aunties and uncles were born in the bush but the elders say that he would be the last of our people that dog team from Dawson City to Old Crow which is like traveling on dog sled across the same region as France and it took him three months

and when he came to Old Crow he had more than he left with because he had to set traps the whole way and then turn around and collect all the food to feed him and his dogs and then go and that's how he so he basically did it three times because he had to go back and forth through all those mountains and i thought about it one day and i really felt like i was small in his shadow because i couldn't do that and i felt the loss of knowledge between him and me but what does that helped me feel was that I was not alone. And through my people's stories and my culture, which go back 30,000 years, some of the stories I hold are back to the Beringia time in Yukon, or what was known as Chugaihan, to Chayutai, which was the first man that came to these regions. And being linked to all of those stories, I realized that I'm not alone. I'm actually this little sprout on an old twig attached to an ancient branch that's attached to a prehistoric tree with its root to the heart of the earth. So through my culture and through my people, I could connect to the land, even though I was in the city.

And it was like, it was like spiritual and mental chiropractic. my spinal cord snapped into place and I was in line with all of my ancestors and that's when I realized that my voice is not my own that my people carry this voice across our lands for thousands of years and it was gifted to me but it's the inheritance of my grandchildren and that's when I was able to not just be me but be part of something bigger if that makes sense so my culture saved my life. It does. And it sounds like you make this comment that you had that things were going well, but that you were empty inside and that this filled that hole. And it seems like so many people have no idea who their great, great grandparents were or no idea what happened to their family members in the past. It's all about them today and that we're missing this piece in so many people's lives. So, and you're exactly right. And I see this as one of the biggest problems in the world today is that, you know, they say that fire and soap are the most important inventions

of man. Fire unlocked new nutrients and minerals that allowed our brain to evolve and grow higher executive functions and build upon the prefrontal cortex. But one thing they're missing is storytelling. Storytelling is one of our greatest, one of our greatest technologies, even science. just a story in the sense that science doesn't purport itself to be true. The point of science is that it cannot be disproven. That's the point of a hypothesis. You come up with a hypothesis and you do everything you can to disprove it. Science doesn't say that it is the be all, the alpha and the omega. Science is very healthy in checking itself, right? And so it's this new form of storytelling. But storytelling is this framework in which we contextualize our experiences.

And for your reader, or sorry, for your listeners, I highly recommend Joseph Campbell, who, you know, went around the world. He was like the Noam Chomsky for linguistics for legends and culture. And one thing he wrote, and he studied cultures around the world. And he said, legends and fables, and I'll say this slowly, because it's really to pick a part, he said that these legends and fables around the world are not ways in which man seeks to quantify and understand his environment, but rather to identify and participate in the rapture of it. And those are fundamentally different things because Western perspectives teach us to analyze that we are separate from creation, but we are to analyze it. And we put it in formaldehyde jars and we label it. And that has its uses. But we also have to remember to break away from all of these labels and participate in creation as it unfolds.

So, yeah. That reminds me of the concept that you cannot derive an ought from an is. That you can't just look at things from a third-party perspective and never think that you're going to understand them, that there is something to actually experiencing it. You could study dance your whole life and the journey of how dance is evolved. But until you start dancing, you really don't understand the benefits and the connection that it brings. Even studying love, you could have this curtile understanding of what love is and look at it. But until you feel it, you have no idea what you're talking about. I really appreciate that because let's take a look at archaeology and the study of societies, right?

We had non-indigenous people sitting there with notepads watching cultures, right? And their whole theory was, don't get involved. observe them how they are in their natural state. But there are arguments. A really great book for your readers as well is The Cosmic Serpent. It was about an Ivy League student going for their doctorate that starts getting involved with ayahuasca and indigenous peoples. But one of the counter arguments is that, and this is true with quantum physics as well, through quantum physics, we found that merely by observing something, we have. affect it. So actually, there is no objectivity. And by observing a people, they act differently

because you're watching them. But if you were to assimilate and participate with them, then they would actually go into a more natural state. So I really appreciate that analogy. I'd like to understand your journey into running for chief. How did this come about for you? Often, I think in when you're thinking of maybe federal politics or provincial politics, you have this idea that the person really has no life experience, that they've kind of just been on this journey all the way through. And when you look at our two leaders in federal politics, you kind of see that they don't have this rich experience of life experience that have taken them down different paths and experienced things and made mistakes and fallen down and gotten back up, that they may have good ideas, but they don't have that lived. experience of hard work ethic and grinding. You have this. How did running for chief come about for you? Oh, I could tell you so many things and so many inside secrets. I've sat down with the prime minister. I've gone into meetings with several ministers and being in the chief's office is like

having layers of naivity ripped off you. The things, I know things that I'll never be able to tell anyone because I really, really value confidentiality. But here's the skinny of it. I did a lot of drugs from a very early age, starting at 12 years old. By 13, I remember taking an eighth of magic mushrooms, psilocybin. And at that same time, I was first getting into quantum physics through Schrodinger. Lots of cocaine and alcohol and marijuana and LSD and all of these things. But I did a lot of reading as well on Japanese philosophy, Miomato Musashi, the way karate done, Taekwondo means the way.

And actually, Kung Fu before was known as Wushu, which is about movement, and it's actually about the mind. moreover than the body because the body follows the mind then through so all of this this this big stuff and um i was really anti-society because make a long story short science was my parent uh the people who were supposed to be looking after me didn't have the tools to do it properly don't get me wrong. My mother loved me unconditionally, and I knew that, but I was also put in, you know, um, irresponsible situations by all the adults in my life, uh, except my father who wasn't in the picture. Um, so I read about history. I read about the history of law, uh, the history of society, civilization, uh, money, which is a really interesting one. So I, I just,

I was vivaciously reading all of this stuff. And none of it's really good. History is littered with genocides and just like insanely bad things. And so I looked at society today and I'm like, it's all built off of blood. You know, everyone's full of it. And here's all these adults trying to tell me how I should act and be when our country is not like that. No country is like it's just it was all gross. And so I, growing up, had this mindset that the world needed to burn and that society was just this cancer. But here's the interesting thing. People don't really understand this. And this is actually quite important for the maturity of these ideas. When I was living in the city, I had these group of friends who came down from the Yukon and they're like Dana. There were these punks, right? you know, ripped jean jackets, listen to Rancid, you know, all this stuff.

And they're like, we want to go to this punk shop, bring us there. And I knew where it was. So I brought them. It was called adrenaline. It used to be on Granville Street back in the day. And so we went there. And it was this like two-story shop of like punk clothes. And I mean, I watched old punk documentaries with my cousin where there was like punks having

sex in the alleyway that were like, you know, putting safety pins through their ears and just like really old punk, like the cramps and that kind of stuff. And I looked around and punks used to make their own clothes. And there were these punk friends of mine shopping around. And I looked at the tags. And it's these corporations making this stuff. And I'm like thinking, you guys are giving your money to these capitalist corporations who tricked you and are selling you. And you this punk notion when actually this is the most anti-punk thing I've ever actually seen. And I realized, I'm like, wow, capitalism is super tricky. It's selling you your own bullshit.

Excuse my language. And I was like, wow. So what I'm trying to say is actually my mind began to flip. And the most punk thing that you can do is get involved. It's so easy to sit on a. sidelines. And, you know, everybody has, you know, something to say about Trudeau, you know, but wouldn't it be so convenient if all of our issues were a prime minister's fault? His job is impossible. What are you doing? Did you vote in your municipal politics? Are you,

you know, recycling? Are you informing yourself? Or are you just consuming? You see what I mean? Why give our power to a leader or an international negotiator at COP on climate change? Why are we giving our power to these people and then blaming them for everything? What are we taking responsibility for? What happened to our neighborhoods? When did we lose our fight and become so docile? Don't throw around conspiracy theories on the internet. Get up.

Make a garden in your front. That's punk. vote hold your politicians accountable like learn about how laws are passed we actually have a lot of power so for me getting involved in leadership for my own first nation because our people are removed from the colonial like for instance let me put it this way our people are self-governing And there are 27 modern treaties in Canada out of 634 nations. Now, these modern treaties can have provisions for land claims or self-government. Some of them have both.

And self-government, we can govern ourselves, land claims, this is our land. But the Yukon Territory has 11 modern treaties that have land claims and self-government. It is the highest modern treaty jurisdiction in the world with, First Nations, and there's only 40,000 people that live here. It's actually a world's hidden secret. So my people's government, we have once a year something called a general assembly where all of our people gather and they're able to pass resolutions and the government and the leadership have to fulfill those resolutions. And if we can't, we have to report back to the people a year later. Imagine if in federal or provincial or territorial or municipal politics, once a

year, all the people could gather, and if they could pass a resolution, the people, the politicians would have to do it. Like, that's a really high act of democracy. So in my community, I see democracy. And it's not this like tacit, um, kind of benign or, um, opaque. You know, we just like randomly vote and for this person who's making these promises. No, we're visual. We're standing up in the community, speaking our truths, and if people agree around that, this resolution is passed by the people. Or sometimes, you know, it's shot down. So democracy is a verb, not a noun. Democracy is something that lives and dies every single day. And it's not something to be taken advantage of. And indigenous people know that because we only recently got this. And so it's

it's it's electric and you can really feel it so I wanted to participate in that and you know I ran and my people were crazy enough to meet me halfway but it also almost killed me before we get to what you just said what were those early stages of running like did you have a vision in mind I ran for council and chief for my community and the one difference that I saw not growing up on reserve was that one of the challenges is actually having a vision and saying these are some of the hallmarks of what I'd like to deliver. And this would be somewhat different in my community. People often unfortunately vote on last name. And they go, oh, this is the last name I recognize. So this is the person I'm going to vote for. And it's not about ideas. So when the next election cycle comes

around, it's the same last name. And you don't know whether or not they've accomplished any of their goals. And so I said, you know what? I'm going to treat this like it is a municipal election. I'm going to host all candidates meetings. I'm going to show up. People can ask me what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell them what I'm going to do. And then in three years, I'm going to say whether or not I delivered or not. And if I didn't deliver, I'm going to tell them why or what mistakes I made or what I didn't realize and actually create that democratic process where people can hold me accountable. What was your mindset running for chief? Absolutely good for you. And that was one of my main things was accountability. I was not only one of the youngest chiefs, but I was the first

chief born outside of Old Crow. Well, really from Whitehorse. We did have a chief that was born in a New Vic, but that's still like pretty much Arctic Circle. But I was the first chief from white horse. And I'm half German. Like I'm visibly white, right? So one thing that changed it is, like you said, the last name, right? There was two other community members that were running that had way more experience than me that had been in the community. And I didn't put my name in until the very last opportunity. And the reason why I did that is I'm like, I'm the kind of person where I like to support a group. You know what I mean? I'm like a border collie. I like keeping everyone together in a good way. I'm not necessarily the leader type. If I have,

to kind of pigeonhole myself, I'd say that I'm probably best suited as a leader's right hand. You know what I mean? Like supporting them. And this was the first time in my life I went and did that. And the reason why is because I was thinking about the friction, about running against these people and putting my name out there and creating competition and all of this stuff. But then one day, you know, someone told me, they said, you know, you have things to offer your people. What are they? And I started comparing myself to the others in my head. And I realized I'm not running against them.

I'm running for government. And that's democracy. That's what are people wanted. And that's why I ran. But my platform was modernization of our government. It was about creating policy, digging into our legislation, creating transparency, and lateralizing power from council. And it was also health and social, which I admittedly did fail on, but I have some pretty good excuses. I mean, the pandemic happened early in my, in my tenure and, you know, some other things.

But, you know, health and social, I think, is one of the biggest issues across every indigenous community. But I know I could have, I would do some things differently, but I honestly did do my best. And I have a lot of the elders support. It was the most insane four years of my life. Let's start with climate change. During your time, it sounds like, if I'm not mistaken, permafrost is melting. You're seeing the effects of climate change firsthand and starting to realize how serious it is. You're having diesel shipped into your community. And it sounds like you're going, how do we do this in a better way? How do we make this more sustainable? How do we make this make this make sense? did climate change come onto your radar? It seems like it was an important issue for you during your time. Yeah, and I figured out a lot through this. And what I would like to say to everybody listening, and especially if any leaders or people who work for leaders, climate change is our

ultimate opportunity. I would tell people, if climate change is not the issue that permeates cast and creed and brings us to work together, then nothing will. And to unpack that, what that means is that we're not only just all human, we're all animals and all, you know, purveyors and members of the planet and its ecosystem. Climate change doesn't care if you're a conservative or a liberal. It doesn't care if you're a muskrat, a moose, or a man. All of our teachings are the same. And it beckons us to work together. And the things that drive us apart, you know, that really, you know, really.

staunch and dirty national politics. I mean, look what happens in Africa, in the United States, in Canada. People play off of your hate. Our differences are actually our strengths. They're not our weaknesses. Nature banks on diversity and rewards cooperation. That's how our species came to be here. So the reason why I say this is when Okay, so I spent most of my time out on the land. You know, I moved to my community January 16th, 2013, and I got into office in November of 2018, but I came into power like December 9th, 2019. So I spent all that time out on the land.

So I wasn't just some, you know, punk who kind of just walked off the street into the office. The elders saw me going out. I went out with community members. By the end of it, I was spending half the year out on the land, half the year in the community. And let me tell you, that is the ultimate teacher out there. So our climate, 80 miles north of the Arctic Circle, is changing three times faster than the rest of the world. And what I love is that I learned throughout my time in politics because I was also a board member for Gwitchin Council International, which was a permanent participant of the Arctic Council,

which is a international consensus-based body of eight Arctic nations, such as, you know, Switzerland, Finland, Finland, United States, Russia, Canada. They all sit down and indigenous people sit around there too. Not many people know about this forum. So, you know, I was doing all these, you know, dipping my fingers in all different kinds of pies. But one thing I realized is there are several different types of truth. There's not just one.

There is a religious truth, a personal truth, a political truth, an economic truth, but there's also an objective truth. And unfortunately, we don't orientate all of our truths around this objective one. You know, climate change is a political thing, an economic thing. People don't really look at it as this like objective thing, right? So through climate change, we passed the world's first indigenous, self-goverting climate change declaration. So here I am this young man. And let me tell you something, for instance, we don't have the luxury of denying climate change up there.

everything that you can see, smell, taste, hear, every sense you're seeing changes. Our people have been living on these lands since there was woolly mammoths. We have, we know our environment and it is changing. But I was seeing change, even in a small amount of years I was there. Everything, animal migrations, you know, while I was living in the community, black ducks came before the geese and we'd never seen that before it's always the geese come first and one thing i heard the elders say all the time is i've never seen this before and one day i went about eight bends up the crow river which is probably around 40 50k for my community i was looking

for a place that set up the wall tent for my family and i went eight bends up the river and there was two inches of snow you could see the roots i couldn't scoo on the land i had to to stay on the ice. So I turned around and I went towards the mountains south of my community and I went way out there. Same thing. They're in the middle of December. 80 miles north of the Arctic Circle, there was not enough snow to even skidoo on the land. It's just, it's hair raising. So my people around the kitchen table, they talk about climate change because they can see it. You know, our people were going through the ice in places where that were always solid, that was always safe for our people. Everything was changing. So when our people came to community meetings,

they're asking our leaders, what are you going to do about this? So climate change is really important for our people. It's not some political or it's, it's a reality of our everyday life. And it's, it's scary. So when we pass. this declaration. The reason why we did it, I was speaking with one of our lawyers who's just this genius, Chris Stattnick, he's also Gwitchin. And we came up with this idea. And for 10 cents of two pieces of computer paper and eight hours of us working together, we came up with this declaration. And what was really interesting, if you look it up on our website, read it. It's a very powerful document. We're not asking anybody for help. We're putting the world on notice.

that at any table or any forum where Van Tukwitchin Dengjiju sit, climate change will be our number one aspect. But here's the other interesting thing I learned about it is that if you want to do something about climate change, you have to be healthy. Our community needs to be healthy to be able to do this. So climate change is actually really about mental health as well. and our community. Climate change is everything. And so it's a really important way to create leverage with governments. And so here's the other thing. We passed our climate declaration, which

created like international waves. I mean, I had people from the parliament in Australia calling me, and it actually put Yukon government, the Yukon territorial government, in our shadow. And they, six months after us, passed a climate declaration. So did the Parliament of Canada. International indigenous organizations used our declaration. The municipality of Whitehorse passed a climate declaration. So all of a sudden, we were able to use these mandates. City of Whitehorse has a climate declaration.

Canada has one. Yukon Territorial Government. So when Van Tukwitchin government wanted to do something, we would pull the string like, You declared a climate change emergency. So let's align on this and let's get some funding flowing and let's do something about this. We built a 2,100 bifacial photovoltaic solar system, solar panel system that displays 24% of the community's energy. A community, a village of 250 people built a solar farm where we could shut electricity,

diesel generators off from early March to late September, which was the equivalent of taking 250 vehicles off the road. It's monumental. So the real question is, if a village of 250 people can do that, then what is the rest of the world doing? That's very powerful. And that's politics. That's fascinating. I also want to talk about justice. At a period, you were involved in requesting a public inquiry over Christopher Russell Schaefer. And this continues to make news, at least in my world. I work as a native court worker, and I work to try and understand these issues in a deeper way, because it highlights this very complex challenge of banishment from First Nation communities to protect the victims with this idea that this is their community.

This person's specific circumstances might be somewhat different, but at least the people I work with are individuals who have lived and grown up in these communities who have committed such atrocious crimes that the community wants them gone, but that's all of their social safety net. That's all of their community members. That's all the people they know. That's all of the roads they know. That's all of the social services they know. So when they're removed from that, they really are out in the middle of nowhere, in the boonies, not connected to any resources. You had to grapple with this. And it's an interesting point where First Nations justice and federal justice or provincial justice start to interact. Can you talk about what happened there? Yeah, this is a really, really big one.

And this is something I personally struggle with as well, because I studied with Buddhist monks for a time. And I used to hang out with this Rimposha, Rimi Poitlin, the 16th incarnation of the white medicine Buddha deity. And Buddhist teachings tell you that you are never to end a human's life, ever. You never do it. But at the same time, I could see situations where I would do that. And don't get me wrong, I never want to do that. So, there's this light and dark force, right, an unstoppable force that meets an immovable object. And let me concentrate on this. And this is for all of your listeners. And this is the very important. So I believe it was about 1967. There was the learned helplessness study that was done out of the University of Philadelphia.

You should, your listeners should Wikipedia. It's really interesting. Actually, they got in a lot of trouble for this for harming dogs. So what they did is they took three groups of dogs and they harnessed them to the wall and they just watched them. So the dogs fought and fought from their harness. They were trying to get out. And after a few hours, the dogs realized, I can't escape. So they kind of just laid down and just accepted that they were tethered to the wall.

Well, interestingly enough, that was only the. first phase of the study. There was a great underneath them that electrical currents could be run through. And in front of the dogs was a lever. Now, the first group of dogs, their lever could turn the electrical current on and off. The second group, the lever could only turn it off. And the third group of dogs, their lever could do nothing. And they flick the switch. And they kept doing it. The first group learned that they could turn the electricity off for all of them and turn it back on. The second group learned that they could only turn it off, and the third group learned that their lever did nothing. Then, after this conditioning, they put the dogs

in a kennel that was separated by a rubber partition that the dogs could get over. And in this kennel, they threw on the electrical current. The first group of dogs who, learned to resign to their harness, but also learned that they could turn their current of electricity on and off, they jumped over the partition to the safe side, almost immediately. The group that succumbed to the harness, but also learned they could turn it off, not on, they took a little bit longer, but they jumped over. The third group that resigned to the harness, learned that their lever did nothing. they sat down and they took it, whimpering, being electrocuted.

All they had to do is jump over to the other side. That's called learned helplessness. So when indigenous people were tethered by the Indian Act, when we were traumatized by residential schools, by forced sterilizations, by having our families ripped apart, by being executed, what were we to learn? when we were tethered to the wall and we had no control over our trauma and then we're just given

self-government and everything's supposed to be okay? No, it doesn't end there. So what I'm trying to say is that there is learned helplessness within our communities. And this can happen to any peoples, not just indigenous peoples, right? So the important thing to understand is that, you know, there's this big misunderstanding in Canada. Like, you know, some people get up in arms when there's land claims and they're like, oh, you know, all Canadians should have equal rights to this land, not just First Nations. Well, it's really interesting. If you flip the coin, Canadians can understand inheriting land, let's see a farm from their grandparents, right, through common law. They inherited. It's this property. It was willed to them. It all makes sense to

them. You don't see First Nations jumping in there and saying, oh, that should be all of our land, right? So it's actually the same thing, just in different pots. So this idea of justice, it's not ours. So now that we're at this understanding, this is really important. Self-government and escaping the Indian Act, this big word is self-determination, right? But we actually can't talk about self-determination unless we address self-reliancy. So think of an electrical current, right, in a circle. Indigenous communities are broken because we don't have control over the pillars of a society. we don't have control over justice. And if you don't, you can't complete the circuit.

It's only when our communities have jurisdiction over our own health and social, over our own every aspect that our communities will begin to heal again. You know, you can look up on Google all these, you know, nice, shiny indigenous proverbs. Like, you know, there was not a poor Indian until the white people came. Like, we had everything, right? And it was until they came that, you know, those things changed and this was pushed upon us. So that's really important to understand because justice is the last sphere in a society to welcome a citizen back into society. And the justice system is there because education and health and social systems failed them, right?

So in this specific instance, first of all, I want to say that I know, his family. I know Christopher Schaefer's family very well, and I respect them. But I'm going to be really honest with your listeners. Let's talk about what Mr. Schaefer did. In the early 90s, as a young man, he cut a woman who was not in our community. She was a recreation worker. She came into our community and she worked with the kids. He cut her phone line and forced his way into her home and tied her up and proceeded to rape her over two or three days. So he was put into prison for about 20 years and then was released and tried to come right back to our community.

And the reaction from our people was visceral. We held a community meeting. Men said that they were going to kill him. Women said they would never come out of their houses. like this was think about like people that are carrying trauma as like a mouse trap that's ready to spring the whole community was going off like it was just one big trauma response and we didn't have the judicial systems to deal with this and this also came to a head at the end of my leadership and I can tell you I I burned a lot of bridges the the commanding office of the RCMP, Scott Shepard. I know that I angered him. I know that I angered the premier of the Yukon because I spoke to him. And I angered the chief justice of the Yukon as well, because I called them all out. But here's the thing. We were having a general assembly, this Democratic forum I was talking

about. And then we learned of this individual who was coming, trying to come back again. and we shut everything down, we went in camera, and our people said, use any power at your discretion to stop this. So what we did is we declared a state of emergency. And what that does through our umbrella final agreements and self-government agreements, we have the ability to infringe on people's inalienable rights. What that means is like you're basically Canadian. your charter rights, right? You have the right to not be discriminated. You have the right to travel

freely. Well, in an emergency, it's almost like martial law. We do have the ability for 90 days to infringe on those rights. So we declared this emergency because there was an immediate threat to the public well-being. You know, like people said they were going to kill this guy. So we declared this emergency and basically made it illegal for him to step foot on our territory. But the problem was, is the courts released him. So to Canada and Yukon's judicial system, he was a free person and he could do what he wanted. And it's illegal for the courts to discriminate on him. But here's a self-governing first nation that declared a state of emergency and made it illegal for him to step foot.

So we got into this big quagmire of, you know, what takes presidents and what law, you know, is supreme here. And I actually flew down to the courts in Whitehorse where this was being determined. And this was really hard on his family. You know, he became national attention. But at the end of the day, I had no choice in the matter. My community spoke. And that's who I listened to. So with all due respect, you know, I may have hurt the premiere and all these people's feelings,

but your feelings do not trump our people's voice. And so I guess what the big lesson in all of this is is that this is what happens when our people's tools are taken away from us. And this is what happens when a colonial justice system forces its idea onto us. because, you know, you can think of it this way, for instance. You know, some people still go out and buy vinyl because it's a better sound. It's analog, right? Digital is like this barcode.

And the nanoseconds that the sound is not there, your mind fills in, which makes it more crisp. So there's digital and there's analog. Indigenous peoples are like analog. We're very much about community, very much about like cohesion and relationships. Whereas the non-Indigenous society, main, you know, mainstream society is like digital, right? It's not about relationships. It's about like, you know, filling in these like labels and these, you know, these things. It's not about people.

It's about the system, right? And the system has to prevail. So we see this, you know, unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. And you see this diaspora of ideas, stamming, from these fundamentally different world perspectives. Now, here's the good side in all of this. And what's, you know, unendingly frustrating for me is I actually see where these two systems belong to each other and connect.

And I really believe that the future is melding the two because colonial systems work very well at what they're built to do. the problem is, is that they don't have human principles to guide them. You know, money is not evil. Evil is evil. Money is just this tool. It's just like the gun, right? If you use the gun to decimate a buffalo population, for instance, it's not good for

anybody, the environment, anything. But when the gun came to my people's hands, we actually strengthened the animals in our area. And that sounds interesting to, you know, your. listeners who may not have indigenous experience or hunting experience. And I'll quickly explain at that, for instance, you know, when we're out hunting, like let's say if you're trapping with, let's say, a rodent like Martin, right? We look for Martin that have scars or tufts missing from them. And what that tells us is that the area is overpopulated and the males are fighting with each other over territory. So that's where we trap and that's where we hunt. And we thin the populations

out a little bit. And they live better and we live better. We don't overhunt or over trap that area. We look for the areas where the plants and animals are telling us that there's, you know, there's, you know, a real plethora or a real abundance of something. And then we only take what we need and we move on from there. So imagine if that philosophy informed justice systems. Imagine if that philosophy informed economics, it's, let me put it this way. There's, and I know I'm going a bit off the path from the justice system, but this is such a fulcrum of the balance of a person and your relationship with the community.

Justice is really important that way. So think of it this way. I had an elder. I should credit him. His name is Mark Wedge. He used to be the chief for the Teggish Carcross Tagish First Nation, extremely intelligent man. And he talks about the three indigenous ours. So in the 90s, we had reduce, reuse, recycle, right? That came around. Let's reduce, let's reuse, let's recycle. And we know what the intention is. It's to respect the environment and all of that stuff. But look what we're doing today. All of our recycling get shipped off to India and China and they burn it. I mean, it's really not working. Mark, this elder, told me, let's look at the three indigenous ours of respect, reciprocity, and relationship. And when he told me about that, I realized that goes deeper than reduced reuse and recycle.

That's reduced reuse recycle is like a very surface level. reciprocity respect and relationship are the foundation and the principle and that's what's missing in today's justice system in our monetary system in all of our institutions and if indigenous principles could inform these it would change because we don't have to rip the whole system down and start from anew it's just informing them differently so all of this to say is yes. Our justice system is a big failure. And yes, we've been held back from establishing our own justice system because of systematic racism in Canada and all of this other stuff. But if you want to look at the future of Canada, look at indigenous communities. Because

we're finding a way how to balance these ancient principles of relationships and reciprocity and all of these things with modern tools. And here's where I'll end that thought. The term economy is Latin, which translates to manage one's household. From an amnesty international study, 80% of the world's biodiversity actually resides where indigenous peoples live. We foment the land areas. And if you look at like, you know, since really the departure of paganism to monotheism and the building of monarchies to the Industrial Revolution, anywhere these colonists go, they destroy their environments and they're not renewable. So if we want to talk about economics, indigenous peoples are actually the true economists because we create vibrancy and biodiversity in our lands. And we're

able to live forever off of that. If you drill where the cabbing ground of the porcupine caribou are, yeah, you'll get 10, maybe 20 years of gas and it'll stimulate your economy. But you're going to interrupt a 2.1 million year old process where these caribou eat plants that come from the sun. I mean, it's infinite source of the cleanest meat in the world. So tell me, who's the real economist? right. Right. This is really interesting because when I think about this balance, I agree with you. There needs to be some sort of integration, particularly we have 24 First Nation communities in my region, and just not all of them are at the capacity to have some of the table to thoughtfully talk about justice, to actually understand some of the rules. Like there's some brilliance to the idea of innocent until proven guilty. There's some brilliance to this idea of beyond reasonable doubt. There's some ideas there that if you don't get that, you probably shouldn't be at the table talking about how best to do justice, not out of disrespect, but there's certain information you need to understand in order to appreciate the complexities of the system. And it does need to be informed by people who sort of get the problems with the system and where it can be improved, but see sort of the light of the beauty of it.

There are a lot of sentiments when people start talking about justice of tear the whole thing down and start over. And there's just a danger in that because we miss some of the good things. It can be improved. It needs to be improved. But we need to have this deep understanding. And this is where I think it just was so fascinating to get your thoughts on this case because it's where the community meets the individual, where it meets the justice system. And it's such a complex issue where everybody involved is right.

And there are areas in which the governments need to be able to learn. But the challenge is when they say, okay, we're ready to learn. they show up to some communities and go, based on this community, they're ready to start having these conversations. What's your thoughts on the conversation? And the community is like, I don't know. I don't have any expertise on this. And so I'll start telling you things. And it might not work. It might be a bad idea because they don't have this expertise. And so I find it so fascinating because communities are at such different points. Some are ready to talk justice. Some are ready to talk health. Some aren't. And it's hard for government institutions to know which ones, when, how, what's the best process of having

these conversations? Because you can start the dialogue, but if the community's not ready, you're not going to get very far. And then you might make judgments about other communities based on that one community. So it's such a complex topic. I really appreciate you being willing to take the time today. We have, it's clear that we have so much more to talk about in the future, but I really appreciate you being willing to share your story, some of the trials and tribulations you've been through, I hope your health continues to improve, and I just, I can't thank you enough for being willing to be so open and honest in this conversation. I really appreciate the opportunity, Aaron, and I have to say I really enjoyed this conversation, and I really thank you for doing what you're doing. And I also really want to pay my respects to all of your listeners as well and all of, you know, their grandparents and ancestors that they belong to.

But if I could, I would just like to end on two things. And one, I really appreciate you bringing it back to this justice thing because I know I had some kind of other things to express on that. But some of the first inklings in historical justice, like you hear like people being stoned, right? What's really interesting about that is, you know, they would bury someone up to their neck in the biblical times. And everyone in the community, even children, would grab a rock and everybody would throw it at their head. And I got to understand the point of it. nobody knows which rock was the finishing one to kill them and everyone in the community participated in that execution so that everybody feels the gravity of killing that person

and everybody walks away with a little bit of education and they participated in that emotionally and everything and now we kind of you know give that off to a certain sect of people and we're kind of removed from it I want to share a story with you There was a young hunter in my community. He was brought out with his grandfather at about 12 years old. And even though he was taught how to hunt properly and how to shoot the caribou just above its leg to get it in the longer heart, he got kind of excited or nervous and he took a bunch of shots. And he shot it about three or four times in the stomach.

And his grandfather didn't say anything. They tracked the caribou for a couple of hours and found where it had. had come to its death eventually, they skinned it, they did everything, and they brought it home. And then when his grandson had no idea, he went out and at our community hall, where everybody gathers every day, he stapled that caribou skin to the hall right by the door. And that night, he brought his grandson, and the community was looking at that caribou skin, and they saw the bullet holes in the stomach area, and everybody was talking about it. They said, what a shame.

And his grandparent didn't say anything. And that kid listened to everyone in our community, talk about how awful that was. And he never did it again. And I just want to say that what's really interesting about, and one of the things that indigenous people can bring to justice is a framework that can be embodied by families and bestowed by families. And the biggest injustice with indigenous people now is that link from our grandparents to our youth being cut because we don't know each other anymore. And so you lose justice, you lose culture, you lose language, you lose everything.

And for non-Indigenous people and indigenous people and coming back to our greatest technology being story, the greatest thing that we can do is get our babies and our youth. to sit with our elders around a fire and just let them tell stories. Because then those youth start to think, you know, this is my family's principles, this is my family's morals. How do I fit into that? Because if you just tell a kid or tell a community member, this is what you should be, this is what's good, this is what's bad. I remember, you know, being in that situation and I just looked at all the adults and

like you're full of shit. All of you guys are full of it. But if you can get someone to aspire to that themselves, then they do all the work to grow into that community member. So storytelling and community are some of the most important technologies as humans. So for this opportunity to share stories and connect not only with yourself or your listeners is one of the greatest aspects of healing for me because again this is not my voice this voice was carried by my people for a long time and to be able to share with all of my brothers and sisters of all walks of life i consider to be one of the greatest gifts of being which is to give so for that opportunity i'm really really honored must eat

Thank you.