By Mariel Belanger (Bridge for Health Network member)

A tribute to the strength of Aboriginal women on National Aboriginal Day, Canada, June 21st, 2013.

It has been a roller coaster ride this past year. I had been rudely manipulated and ultimately uprooted from my position as a youth worker. Office politics came at a heavy cost to my mental health and ultimately my marriage.
During the course of the year after initially taking stress leave, I felt I was losing my sense of community.

This organization I had worked for was created in the 70′s by and for the Okanagan women who were expelled from the reserve on the bases of marriage, my mother being one of those women who married a non-native man, my dad. It was an ironic turn of events that would see this once deeply rooted in Okanagan organization attempt to shut out most of the founding Okanagan woman who did not work within the main building.

Back in the early days, this organization was the hub for cultural activity. I grew up in summer camps run by my Okanagan cousins; camping at Echo Lake going on group trips to the Native Youth Olympics and performing in Senklip Native Theatre. It was at Senklip that I really found myself a home.

Senklip Native Theatre was developed to teach the younger generation valuable lessons in performance theatre based on the chaptixwl – legend stories of the Animal People. It also gave me a firm foundation in the career I continue to pursue today – Acting.

I was fortunate enough to learn how to tan hides, to gather and dry berries, to smoke fish and meat while offering guided tours to a multitude of tourists and schools within the Living Museum. I also learned to interpret Okanagan legends through performance.

I created a poem inspired by Pillar Rock, a significant ‘Coyote marker’ for our sqilxw people. I had been engaging in multi-media for quite some time. Creating multi-media cultural exhibitions based on my research findings. This particular one granted me access to imagineNATIVE film fest in 2012 through an Ullus project called “PictoProphecy” engaging gps digital markers with digital storytelling to the land. I had been invited in 2008 to screen one of my first films titled “I still hear my granny speak” a short film based on the digital oral stories of my grandmother Mary Abel.

I felt acceptance there. Amongst indigenous people from all over the world. Engaging in new media discussions with like minded people – indigenous people. They did not judge my findings in the injustices inflicted upon my community by the founding fathers of the town my husband was born and raised in. Instead, they encouraged me to seek out more, to learn more about who I am and create. In over a year I hadn’t felt so good about myself and realized the place I belonged was not at home sitting on the couch vegging to bad comedy. I belonged in the community of indigenous artists.