30604 Presents: Rising Youth (Transcript)
I promise even if we fall, we gonna rise again
every morning like the rising sun, it lies within
There’s so much work to do I’m thinking where do I begin?
Then, I remember that I started home,
On this road to reconcile just know you’re not alone
I had the tools to build in front of me all along
This sweat lodge for the people that I brought along
I swear we gonna rise again
My name is Casey Desjarlais, I’m a pow wow dancer and I live in Vancouver, British Columbia. I’m from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I like to think of myself as a First Nations advocate.
Rising youth basically is a platform for the youth to express themselves through music, media, content—many different ways to express themselves, get their story told. They have grants that go from the smallest levels to the biggest levels so whatever idea that you have, they have grants for that.
The people sleep until we open up their eyes again,
I’m having visions of Indigenous youth,
their learning ceremony, growing from Indigenous roots
The truth, if we can build immunity,
then we can build community
I learned my language and I speak it to ‘em fluently,
we’ll work together I find beauty in the unity
We filmed at the mother’s society which is a place where First Nations, Indigenous mothers go when they’re at-risk for homelessness, so it’s a housing society for the mothers and what we did was we created a meal for them and we also gave them meaningful gifts. So we cooked some salmon, some corn, and we brought some other people along with us to help volunteer with this event.
So we had Sundance Findlay, he’s an Indigenous cook and he’s an entrepreneur to himself. I think it’s very important for the youth to get involved as much as you can, doing
as much as you can.
You don’t need a lot to give back.
