Dr. Shirley Cheechoo, acclaimed film maker and Chancellor at Brock University urged teachers to show students how take control of their future by planning what they want to do with their lives.
Dr. Cheechoo spoke at the 25th annual Great Moon Gathering held at Northern College in Timmins, Ontario and delivered a straight from the heart message of empowerment of students to become responsible for their lives.
"Teachers play an important role in helping a student develop a strategic plan for their lives and then provide them with the skills they will need to achieve their goals. I have watched for over thirty years our people invested in our own education and I wanted to be part of that journey through another method teaching through the arts."
“Many of us have been raised in poverty and have experienced hardship and lived in dysfunctional communities,” Cheecho told the gathering of Mushkegowuk Cree educators. “But we are not the only culture that is caught in this pattern of failure.”
Cheechoo said she has witnessed much mental, emotional and toxic behaviour in her community growing up and has seen so many people sabotaging their lives to become victims over and over again.
“With this came fear, jealousy, anger fear blaming others for the destruction of their own lives,” Cheechoo said.
She pointed out that there are ways to break this cycle.
It starts by ending the victim mentality.
“We have to get past this stage of being victims and move towards solutions that will enable us to lead more constructive lives,” Cheechoo said.
“We cannot wait for the next generation,” she added. “We have the opportunity to make change but we cannot make change being trapped in a cocoon.”
“It is through your course of action that you create your best self,” she said “No Matter what your past you can control who you will be by your actions.”
Cheecho calls for the development of a strategic plan as an important part of a student’s life.
“You have to know what you want to be and where you want to go,” she explained. “And then just do it - be responsible for your own life, face the fears and take charge of our own journey.”
Cheechoo, who never finished high school, chose the arts as the way she would invent herself.
With the help of the late artist Tom Peltier she pulled herself out of a self-destructive path through the arts.
At first she said she wasn’t good at it, but she wrote and painted every day. She wrote plays.
Until someone noticed.
She made a plan and imagined what her life would be as an artist.
Initially Cheechoo wanted to become a doctor because she had seen her mother deliver babies as a mid-wife. But Indian Affairs would only pay for her education as a secretary.
"This planned, self-directed approach comes with some challenges and hard work,” Cheechoo acknowledged.
“But also with big surprises and joy - you are in the right track if the work doesn’t feel like a job,” she said.
The turnaround of one person’s life also benefits the entire community Cheecho pointed out as it sets an example for others.
It is not easy and often elements within a community try to stop someone from being successful and put down those who succeed, she said.
“This needs to stop,” she counselled.
“By overcoming failure you also help the community,” she noted.
Cheecho, who grew up in Moose Factory, today lives on Manitoulin Island where she runs the De-ba-jeh-mu-jig theatre group and the Weengushk Film Institute.
“We make films but more important we use film to teach students how to read and how to write to find work,” Cheecho said.
About 80 percent of her students are able to find work or go on to attend university or college.
Recently Cheechoo has applied to have the courses she teaches recognized as a university level credit at Ontario universities.
Cheechoo, who attended residential school as a youth, said she doesn’t consider herself a residential school survivor, but rather a residential school warrior.
“Follow the ring of the drum, follow your dreams.” Cheechoo said.
In addition to being the first aboriginal woman to direct a dramatic feature film, Cheechoo won the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for the Arts and 21 other awards for her films. She was conferred an Honorary doctorate of letters by Laurentian University.
In 2015 she was named Chancellor of Brock University.
For more information about Dr. Shirley Cheechoo and her work please visit her website
