“I think it’s really important to connect with our youth. Know, engage with them…they are our teachers, our leaders,” says Charlene Bonnetrouge. She is from Deh Gáh Got’îê First Nation in Fort Providence where she was born and raised. To stay on her healing path she stays busy with sewing and traditional crafts. She also learned teachings from her late grandmother. Professionally, she works at the Degas School as a support assistant, a job that’s perfect for her since she loves connecting with youth. 

Something Bonnetrouge does is go out on the land with junior high or high school students and show them how to sew and share stories with them that elders taught her about sewing, inspiring them to get involved with sewing, too. Some of the girls she’s taught have picked it up and are making earrings and other things and it’s become a source of pride for her that she’s been able to pass this down. 

At the school, Bonnetrouge gets involved with sports, coaching badminton. Her daughter and her brother were involved with badminton from grade six onwards and she’s been getting kids involved, too. Getting kids involved with sports, school and sewing are all ways she’s proud to be a role model for youth and be connected. 

When it comes to her own sewing and crafting, she started off doing a beaded medallion for a friend and when she posted it online, she started to get orders from other people. They didn’t just want medallions, they also wanted lanyards, too. Moccasins are harder to do because of the cost of materials and she always wanted to tan moose hides like her grandmother did. 

She slowed down her sewing after her grandmother passed away and when she picked it back up five years later, she found it was helpful for her healing and grieving and made her proud that she was crafting because of her grandmother’s influence. Her grandmother’s friends helped her with beading, too, and their laughter and stories motivated her to get back into sewing again as well as rekindling her love for her grandmother. 

She and her mother have advice for Indigenous students who have to go away for school, to push and encourage them, asking what their goals are and to motivate them because she had to go away for school and her daughter is away for school as well. “It's kind of hard to leave home because it's so far away. Sharing our story with them, we're hoping it would push them to go further in their education. We tell them that it is very important to further your education. Later on, you'll be proud of yourself. You'll be also proud of those people who push you to go to post secondary school,” she explains. 

Her daughter took a number of years to end up going to Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo and she’s very grateful her mother, who was a teacher for 42 years, was able to inspire her to do so. Her courses are doing well and she’s enjoying school, though she’s sad to be far from home, even though she’s just a phone call away. They talk nearly every day. 

If Bonnetrouge could give a message to her younger self it would be to finish the two courses she needed to graduate from the two-year program in recreation she took in Calgary. She also wishes she had gone even further in her education. At the same time, when she got the job she did, it inspired her to help younger kids who are struggling and she’s glad she took on the role, but she still wishes she went back to school. “But, you know, life is all about choices,” she says, wistfully, knowing she’s giving back to her community but also knowing things could have gone differently if she finished her program. 

To balance her mental health and wellbeing, Bonnetrouge eats healthy, eating traditional food when people share what they have, including moose meat, dry fish and dry meat. She also exercises, going out on the land, going hiking, getting wood, and going running and walking in the bush. Going boating and also making a fire and talking to the fire, sharing her worries with her ancestors also makes her feel better. She was taught growing up that she had to live in both the Western and Dene way of life, in two worlds, a message passed down by her great grandparents through her mother. 

As far as inspiration goes, Bonnetrouge looks to her grandparents, especially her grandmother, because of all the time she sat with her as she worked with moosehair and told stories. Because they didn’t have high school in town, she missed out on precious time with her grandmother and on picking up her language. She was also inspired by stories of her great grandparents told by her relatives like her aunties and uncles. Her mother also inspires her as an educator who speaks her language. Her relatives motivated her to become the person she is today, she believes.

Inspired to connect with, know and engage with youth, Charlene Bonnetrouge loves her work as a support assistant at the Degas School. Coaching badminton and sharing sewing, she goes above and beyond to share her talents and give students things to do that are healthy to occupy their time. Motivated by her relatives to become the person she is, she’s grown into someone who gives back to her community.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.