“It's when we can open up our heart and our mind to come together to share this knowledge, that's when we'll start to learn,” says Fred Roland. He works with various universities and private schools on Vancouver Island and in other regions to share Indigenous knowledge and the real history of Canada. He bridges traditional and contemporary knowledge through music and sound. He used to teach outdoor survival with youth programs.

With the advent of cell phones, Roland finds it’s a struggle to bring traditional knowledge alongside modern distractions. Something he teaches students is to ask questions about the origins of the information they are taught. He also teaches them to reset themselves in nature to find their natural rhythm again.

When Roland goes to ceremony, it’s for a week without technology. While he’s found technology has brought social circles together to fewer degrees of separation, people tend to just phone him or show up when they need him. As much as smart watches can track biological trends, he stays in tune with his own heart.

One of the modalities Roland works with is sound baths, where different instruments are used to impact the body and to find what vibration trauma sits at in the body, in their cell memory. Through these workshops, people are able to take care of themselves in a different way. One of the cell memories he activated was weaving, a practice of his grandmother’s.

While Roland doesn’t understand sheet music, he learned to make music by sitting in the forest and listening to the trees. He reflects on how during colonial times Indigenous people were considered to be uncivilized and were labelled all sorts of unflattering things but were able to make instruments to make music, to weave intricate baskets and practice ethnobotany. As advanced as technology is, he’s been asked to teach ethnobotany online but without the ability to smell and taste plants online via zoom, he says he just can’t translate the experience virtually.

One of the teachings Roland shares is explaining the meaning of “all my relations”, how we have a relative relationship to everything around us, how the earth breathes like we do, how trees grow in a family like we do with a root relationship.

Looking back on his life, Roland spent years working blue collar jobs. He tried to go back to school but found it hard to sit in class, he would fall asleep and they finally suggested he try distance learning. He travelled to Peru. He came back and presented to a high school and was very nervous because of the size of the audience. He shared the story of his trip and about how he had been struggling in school and won the audience over. Roland has had the chance to travel to the South Pacific, the West Indies, the Amazon, Asia and Europe.

One time when Roland presented in Frankfurt a student asked if he was a “real Indian” because they had learned First Nations people had become extinct in the 1950s due to the government’s colonial policy. He was struck by the enthusiasm of the German people to learn about Indigenous practices, how there are people who even learn First Nations languages and collect regalia. He participated in an exchange program with German students and brought them up to the Northwest Territories and traveled back to Germany with them.

“The more that people experience or have knowledge, they can change things.”

When it comes to inspiration, Roland is inspired by the students and members of the general public who are interested in his teachings. “It's sharing that knowledge and that experience that will open the door for other people to share their knowledge and experience,” he explains. He loves bringing people together and coming from a place of humility and non-judgement.

In closing, Roland talks about how many people come forward and share how they didn’t know what really happened in Canadian history. “Reconciliation’s opening that door to say, ‘Yes, this did happen. Yes, this is true’,” he asserts. With so many people wanting to learn, he asks how much they want to be involved and he observes, “There's a lot of things that we have to look at to change the environment we live in.”

From a blue collar worker to sharing teachings in universities, private schools and high schools, Fred Roland is doing his part to advance reconciliation in sharing the truth with those who are interested in listening. Travelling around the world sharing his culture, Roland has had the opportunity to see places he always dreamed of and invite students into where he’s from. He struggled with school until he found distance learning but some of the most valuable lessons he’s learned from the trees, from his cell memories and from his elders.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.