The Metis community is very, very, large. It’s very close knit. I feel very fortunate to be a part of that community because most people, a lot of people, talk about residential schools and all of those abuse things, which my family never ever suffered. As far as I know, no one in my family went to residential school. So we didn’t have that kind of impact on our family and our family was very, very close. Sort of like a real traditional family where you lived in those communities. Yeah you had your little kind of arguments, problems, but no real fighting. And any body would help you, like you became the child sort of, of the whole community. You know, they would talk about that and that’s what it really was like growing up in that community: it was you where looked after by the whole community; you were related by most of the people in there. And the few non-Aboriginal people that lived there got along really well with the other people.
Tthe other thing that I wasn’t faced with is the racism, the discrimination that a lot of our people felt because like we were very much out numbered by non-Aboriginal people, so you never felt that. It wasn’t until I left there. My dad was a coal minor and he lived up in the mountains were we worked in a coal mine that’s where I actually first felt discrimination like racism. So you know, I think, I guess, I probably led you know really very cultural safe place to grow up in which was sort of I guess I think I can call myself very fortunate that I did have that, that I did have those strong family ties with the traditions.