The other day I got a phone call from a First Nation in Saskatchewan  that was interested in bringing me out to do youth workshops with a newly formed Youth Council.  The man on the other end of the phone kept repeating the words, “…youth are the leaders of tomorrow, we need to do something for them now to get them ready.” I mostly listened to him speak and when he was done, I politely shared that I felt that YOUTH ARE THE LEADERS OF TODAY, not the leaders of tomorrow, and in fact, I feel like “us adults” need to get out of their way and listen to them more.  I’m not sure he really knew what to say back to me.  We agreed to disagree.  He felt like the youth weren’t ready for  that kind of responsibility inside of their community.  He stated over and over again, “they wouldn’t know what to do with a budget.“  I asked if he’d ever tried to hand the reigns over to them.  He said, “No.“

He may be right.  The youth in his community very well may not be ready for that type of responsibility.  It very well could be disastrous to hand a budget over to a bunch of bored youth, but, with real dedication to the Youth, we make the time to teach.  To allow them to fail.  And we demand that they get up after that failure and we ask that they learn from it.  With true empowerment though, we lead the youth, we show them, we teach them.  The conversation ended nicely enough, a polite, “we’ll give you a call when we know more about the budget,” kind of ending, and we’ll see, maybe I end up out there this summer.

Improvised Theatre and Indian Country

An old teacher of mine once told me in an improv class, “Don’t be afraid to open that door and find out what’s on the other side of it.  Don’t wimp.”  In improvised theatre the term “wimping” is used when an actor stalls the scene being improvised.  Wimping sucks. It prevents the scene from moving forward.  It kills the scene.  Alot of bad improvisers wimp on scenes because they don’t trust their scene partners, they are out of ideas or they simply don’t believe in what they’re doing. I see this with some of our Leaders out there in Indian Country today.  I believe the fear of moving forward is one of greatest challenges our youth communities face today.  It’s a scary world – especially without support.  Especially if our Leaders are wimping.

I’m of the belief our Youth DO know what they want but often it is our LEADERSHIP (Chiefs, Youth Program Managers, Teachers) that refuse the youth the right to do what they want in their communities.  I find there is way more lip service from our leadership than actual youth movement and this is one of the most frustrating things I experience across Indian Country in my work with young people.  I come across far too many stories of monies allotted to youth programming or youth initiatives that gets “moved around” to fill holes in other areas.  To me, this is cowardly and all too common.

If wimping happens when someone doesn’t trust, they’re out of ideas or they don’t believe in what’s going on, is this what happens in our communities?  Are our Leaders wimping or are they doing the best they can with the cards they’re dealt?  Any chiefs out there that want to take an Improvised Theatre class with me?  Bueller?  Bueller?  BUELLER?

Leadership Through The Arts – Your Voice, Your Story

True empowerment and leadership allows youth to dream.  To believe.  To hope.  And let’s understand -  there is a very fine line between holding onto those dreams, that belief in themselves and that hope and losing those things all together.  Without the “courage” to allow our youth to succeed and fail through self discovery how will our young people know what they’re capable of doing?  A frustrated, disillusioned youth population is not what we’re after.  When I begin my workshops with youth one of the most common frustrations I hear from them is that “they just want to be heard.”

My program, “Leadership Through The Arts,” was picked as a “Best Practice Model for Aboriginal Youth Engagement in Their Communities,” by the Canadian Governments Senate Committee Report on Urban Aboriginal Youth in 2002.  Since then, I’ve delivered hundreds of Aboriginal Youth Workshops that focus on empowerment, leadership and self discovery.  The workshops bring laughter to the group,  it works on establishing trust in the group, and it tricks young people into working on lifeskills.  The foundation of Theatre training is steeped in communication, teamwork, trust and most importantly – self discovery.   There is one rule in the youth workshops I do in communities – participate. Be a part of something.  Commit.  The most powerful thing about Theatre is that there is NO WRONG WAY TO DO THE WORK.  All you need in Theatre to succeed is to bring yourself to the work in an open and honest way.  This is all that I ask of the young people I work with.

Leadership Through The Arts – Your Voice, Your Story is a program/workshop that anyone can succeed in.  All you need to do is to be willing to hope, believe and dream.

aboriginal youth aboriginal youth empowerment aboriginal youth leadership aboriginal youth theatre leadership through the arts youth