Driven to Succeed - Kendal Netmaker

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      I grew up around females my whole life and didn’t have male relatives close by to play sports with. I would often have to force my sister Kendra to play outside with me. We were both talented in many sports and soccer was the one we started to play more and more outside in our spare time. Sports would inevitably make our brother and sister bond strong in our later years.

      Growing up in Sweetgrass, I was introduced to traditional ceremonies and most summers my mom would be participating in them. At that age, I was only playing around the camp and did not understand what was taking place each summer. Throughout the year there would be other cultural events that we would attend as a family. As I attended these, I was forced to learn other keys that would help me in my adult years. One of the most profound was to “listen more than you speak,” and I learned this by attending cultural ceremonies and watching elders and how they conducted themselves. They rarely spoke and when they did, it was always profound and had impact. They had a great respect for the cultural ceremonies they were conducting for the community and I learned to respect and listen from them.

      Every summer my dad would pick myself and my 3 younger sisters up and we would go visit at his house on Big River First Nation. I was always excited to go visit because I would get a chance to hang out with my dad and other relatives. My Moshum (my father’s dad) was a cattle farmer and I remember when we would go and visit and he would always be working outside. My Kokum (my father’s mom) would also be outside skinning or smoking moose or other wild meat for the family to eat later. They were hard workers and I was grateful for the visits we had with them. My dad would later inherit the farm and continue the work his father left for him after our Moshum passed away.

      Like with many Indigenous families, alcohol was a problem for us. As I got older, and we visited more often, I would witness many of my family members drinking and partying while kids were around. I know this because I was at those parties during several of the times we visited my dad and my grandparents. They would tell me not to drink when I got older. I could tell they were hurting but I was just a kid. I am not sure what might have happened if I continued to grow up in an environment like that, but I know I wouldn’t be in a good situation today.

      I remember one time while visiting, my cousin Shawn and I were playing a card game. We both had a few bucks in our pockets and decided to gamble and whoever got all the money won. After several games, I was the lucky winner and had won all the money; I was excited. When he went home, I felt immediate guilt and I wanted to give him his money back. So I began to dig a hole near a tree and put his money in there. The following summer when we came back to visit, we both dug up the mound and I gave him his money back. It bothered me taking his money because I already knew what it was like to not have much.

      Back on Sweetgrass one day I had a ‘genius’ idea of how to make some cash to buy some junk food from the local store. I knew that I had a Nintendo N64, toys and a silly kid imagination, so I immediately began to construct an amusement part in my bedroom. When I was all done, I began to charge my sisters a nickel to a dime per 15 minutes of playing time on my Nintendo or to throw a ball into a hoop to win one of my toys. I had 4 to 5 games laid out and I started to see their nickels and dimes build after a few hours. After that, I felt guilty once again for taking their money and I gave it all back.

      I developed empathy by watching how much my mom sacrificed for us. She would often have to pay $20 to $40 to someone just to take her grocery shopping to feed us. She always paid more than other people so she could be taken as a priority on the social assistance she was given each month. I decided at an early age that when I got older I was not going to rely on anyone but myself to get things done.

      Living on the rez was very quiet and we didn’t have a vehicle to take us on adventures. So I was forced to use my imagination and creativity. I would take old toys that didn’t work and play with the motors until I eventually began to build gadgets out of nothing. I remember being able to build an airplane out of a ‘pizza pop’ card board, old motors and spare toy parts with a propeller that would almost move the plane. I also remember building a hockey net and a soccer net outside with spare wood parts we found in the bush. As a kid, my goal was to one day play hockey. My dad loved hockey and so did I. There was one big problem – our reservation didn’t have an indoor or outdoor skating rink. I remember wanting to play hockey so badly that I would fill a 2-liter Pepsi bottle full of water and take it outside to pour on the road and let it freeze. After about 50 trips back and forth, I would have just enough of an ice patch to skate in a little circle and attempt to play hockey. But that didn’t work out too well.

      From a young age living in that house, I felt destined for big things. I had no idea what they were; I just believed that I could do something great. I used to hold a picture of myself living in the future wearing a black and white business suit; I had no idea it would eventually lead me here. I believe everyone has a feeling of what they want out of their life, some of us just lose that belief over time.

      When I was in second grade attending Sweetgrass Elementary School, I would often get off the bus with a face and eyes red from crying. My mother later found out that I would get bullied a lot on the bus and even during school. I was a very small, “skinny” (I don’t like that word), kid growing up and did not know how to defend myself. This led to my mom making a decision to put me in a different school.

      But in the new school, the bullying didn’t stop and would return many times throughout my later high school years. As I got older, I excelled in various sports but still got bullied; people would call me “chicken legs,” “skinny,” “string bean,” and other names. The truth is, those words hurt in the moment and eventually led to me giving up basketball in grade 10 because I was too self-conscious of how “skinny” I was.

      Words have power; you can use them to bring people up or bring them down. There are millions of people who suffer from low self-confidence and self-esteem. The words you choose to use on a friend, family member or stranger can help build them up or it can even trigger a devastating decision to take their own life one day. Choose to bring people up and you will have many friends that will do the same for you.

       HOW ONE PERSON CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

      Grade 3-9

      FOR THE FIRST time in my life I was truly outside of my “comfort zone” at 8 years old when I first got off the bus to attend Cut Knife Elementary School. The town of Cut Knife was primarily a farming community also surrounded by neighboring First Nations Reservations that included Sweetgrass First Nation, Poundmaker First Nation and Little Pine First Nation. I knew right away that I was different primarily because I had an accent and darker skin than most of the other students. I knew I had to find a way to fit in with the farm kids. For the first few days I was a loner and during classes and recesses I would study how the kids would talk to each other and what they would talk about. This was the first time I was also forced to “adapt” to a new situation. On the third day of school I approached several kids on the playground and began to ask them odd questions that they were interested in such as, “Hey how are your crops doing” or “How much rain did you get last night?” I really had no idea what I was even talking about. I was doing everything I could to adapt to them and build a connection. Some of the kids didn’t want to talk to me but there were some who let me play with them. As I continued to make more connections, I would eventually start playing soccer with them at recess.

      Athletic ability was one of my gifts; I was able to use it to quickly fit in to the soccer games they had each recess. Over time, I began to develop a great love for Soccer. The game gave me confidence and the more I practiced, the better I got. I just wished I could play on a real team. I would practice at home outside with my sister with the soccer net we built. After school and on weekends, all of my cousins and relatives would meet up at my Kokum’s house to have a game of soccer. These were the best of times because my Kokum loved watching us play in her yard together. We would spend most weekends and many days during the week at my Kokum’s house, which was within walking distance.

      On the rez, we had

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