A brighter future through indigenous prosperity: Gabrielle Scrimshaw at TEDxToronto

an elder once told me that the strength of who we are as indigenous people comes from the fact that we speak from the heart and that for thousands of years we've passed down our traditional knowledge history and culture so in that spirit today I would like to start by sharing a very personal story with you March 21st 2006 was a day a lot of things changed in my life and that was the day my life really started because that was the day my nephew Ethan was born and when I remember so vividly about that day was sitting there in the hospital holding Ethan for the very first time and being so overwhelmed with this kind of love like I had never felt before in my life you know is the kind of love where I knew I would do anything to make his life better in that moment I also realized that although he was born only hours before but because of who he was being an indigenous person that he would have to face some very daunting circumstances not unlike the ones I had had to face growing up if we're going to have a moment of honesty here statistically speaking I'm not supposed to be on this stage growing up I didn't actually realize that being an indigenous person was a difficult experience for me my childhood was filled with memories of days spent on the lake fishing with my dad in the bush learning about wildlife eating smoked moose meat and in the summertime I even got to fall asleep listening to that steak would be to the powwow drum as the youngest of three daughters in a single-parent household I won't deny that we did face many hardships as a family ranging from substance abuse to suicide times in my life like at the age of 12 and because of some family challenges I was essentially left physically and emotionally alone or at the age of 14 the first time in my life a thought of a world left better without me my mind I didn't realize that most Canadians didn't face these kinds of challenges on a consistent basis at the age of 15 a small but impactful course correction happened in my life and it was a moment by chance and completely out of my control a friend of a teacher decided to swing by and teach my class about some development projects that he'd done in other countries and this really piqued my interest so after his presentation I went up to him and we chatted and he became the first person in my life in this really raw heart-to-heart moment that told me that he believed in me and that I was an amazing young woman and this came at a time in my life when I really needed to hear those words and this planted a small seed inside of me a small C that eventually grew into me working through a lot of insecurities and taking a number of leaps of faith eventually becoming the first person in my family to earn a post-secondary education and leave my small community in northern Canada and like most University students during this time as when I also started to travel and one country quickly turned into 20 and some of my fondest memories were of working with indigenous groups on many of the world's different continents and learning about their cultures their rich cultures and through these experiences I realized sadly that in many other countries indigenous people weren't really thought of as an integral part of their nations history instead I found more often than not they were labeled as a development problem and kind of swept under the rug as something to be dealt with so this really sparked a curiosity in me to come back to Canada and learn about my own community and a more focused yet holistic way and what I learned was as I was going through the research that the statistics really mirrored my childhood he did always grown up knowing about residential school systems in fact actually grew up just down the street from one but I did not fully realize the profound legacy that years of abuse an attempted cultural assimilation had left on my people and so when I read things like 40% of indigenous people live in poverty I pictured the face of my neighbor waiting in line to cash welfare check or when I read that we can be up to eight times more likely to commit suicide I pictured the face of my family member that took her own life depending on where we live we can be more likely to drop out of high schools and finish it our unemployment rates are three times as high we've all heard this story before and through this I realized that Canada really wasn't much better than the rest of the world in terms of our treatment of indigenous people and I really couldn't reconcile this idea of how we think of ourselves as Canadians myself included we are a country so proud to wear that flag on our hearts with the issues faced by more than a million people men women and children in our own backyard it's not something we like to talk about in the fall of 2010 through another leap of faith I move from my small community in northern Canada straight across the country to Toronto now being this small-town girl in the big bad city I did what most young single girls do or at least what I thought they were supposed to do and I signed up for Latin dancing classes yeah now after one of my classes one of my classmates and I we went out for a bubble tea and even that was such a big city experience for me and as we were chatting he asked me where I was from and through that it came up that I'm First Nations so this guy who was born and bred in Toronto was brave enough to tell me that I was the first indigenous person that he had ever met and this floored me because in Canada today we have 1.4 million people who are indigenous and keeping in mind that I grew up in a primarily indigenous community and this was the first time in my life that I'd ever heard anyone say that so I went on to tell him about my den a heritage I told him about the broader Aboriginal community I said even when we say that word Aboriginal it encompasses First Nations matey Inuit people's over 50 different linguistic groups as I was sitting there sipping on my bubble tea I remember telling him how our population is growing at roughly four times the rate of the non-indigenous population more than half of us live in cities and in fact the largest urban Aboriginal population in Canada is here in Toronto and that nearly half of our population is under the age of 24 so he's sitting there across from any kind of leans in and with this perplexed look on his face he says Gabrielle how come I haven't learned any of this before and that's when I realized no matter how much work I do in the indigenous community it really wouldn't matter until we all started to talk about it I'm here to tell you today that there has never been a better time for us to have this conversation than right now because as Canada's fastest growing demographic that skews very young we have this population tsunami that's coming and it's about to hit our country in the next decade we have enough indigenous youth coming of working-age that they could fill up all the federal public sector jobs nearly two times over so with 400,000 indigenous youth set to become your customers your workforce your neighbors we need to start having the discussions and making small but impactful decisions that will have real economic benefit the timing quite simply has never been better and since this moment of realization I've really made it my life's mission to be a catalyst for these kinds of conversations and plant these small seeds of change in the circles I've been so fortunate to work in I mean I've sat on advisory boards boards of directors I've worked at the media and I even co-founded an indigenous professional network that was the first of its kind in Canada and through all of this work I've been so fortunate to work with a number of amazing and resilient indigenous leaders across this country I mean indigenous people who are partners at the largest accounting firms Chiefs of economically sustainable communities lawyers for the UN and through all of this work I'm starting to see how the tides are starting to shift in our community and this is why I think it's such an exciting time to be an indigenous person in our country because as our education rates start to rise and our unemployment rate starts to decrease this will have a significant effect on Canada's bottom line the estimated cumulative benefit for increased indigenous well-being and this includes closing that skills and education gap is an estimated five hundred billion dollars over a 25 year period that's billion with a B let's just reflect them that number of zeros for a second that's enough money to put every post-secondary student through post-secondary education in Canada for the next 13 years that's enough money to wipe out nearly half of our government debt so clearly there's a large opportunity cost for us to do nothing for us to keep the status quo but the good news is this disparity we see in Canada that's an addressable cost and here's where I start to have hope because the way I see it as a country we have this amazing opportunity in front of us on the table but it's not going to start advancing until we talk about it around that table whether at home when you're eating dinner with your families or at work in our boardrooms now the issues I'm talking about are complex they are going to require advancement or policy in our programs in our private sector relationships in the education we provide indigenous and just as importantly non-indigenous people there is no silver bullet by the year 2026 the 400,000 indigenous youth I mentioned will all be of working age and why is this critical because this means today right now we are at the sweet spot of time where we can live by the values we hold so dear as Canadians and be a country truly where every child has an equal opportunity to succeed the year 2026 is also special to me for another reason and that's the year Ethan will celebrate his 20th birthday and is about to start his adult life for me that's my endgame I never want him to face the things I face growing up I want him to feel loved to believe he can be anything he wants to be or do anything he wants to do and just as importantly wake up every single day and be proud of who he is as an indigenous person my vision for Ethan's lifetime is something I believe is well within our reach it's up to you and I to have the tough conversations and the courage to ask questions about why this is the Canada we live in and how can we do better I really believe we write our history as a country every single day through the choices we make through the things we say and just as importantly through the things we don't say I want to leave you with a story that an elder once told me on a sunny winter afternoon this elder was walking through the bush in the snow with his son who was about four years old and he was teaching him about traditional medicines and as they were trudging through this deep snow his son slowly started to follow behind him and as they were walking his son said dad it's a lot easier for me to step where you've stepped each day every one of us is carving a path I stand before you a young woman who's not supposed to be on this stage ten years ago a stranger told a young indigenous girl that he believed in her and through a hundred other choices a hundred other footprints which were not my own I am here thank you you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 62,431

Rating: 4.8974357 out of 5

Keywords: tedx talks, gabrielle scrimshaw, ted talk, ted talks, english, toronto, ted, TED, canada, aboriginal rights, ted x, tedxtoronto, tedx talk, First Nations (Ethnicity), TEDx, tedx

Id: 9z9QKRsiql8

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2013