“I'm always trying to question if this has been happening for so many years, and it's not working, why are we still doing it? …. if it's not working, let's change it,” asserts Jonathon Nolan. His traditional name is Northern Thunder and he comes from the Martin clan, from the Mississauga First Nation and the Garden River First Nation as well. He works for Nogdawindamin Family and Community Services, the child welfare agency which serves the seven First Nations in the Algoma region of Ontario. He is a clinician in the area of prevention and he works with Batchewana First Nation.

Previous to this role, Nolan had been the Indigenous recruiter and success officer at Sault College where he was going into communities and recruiting Indigenous learners. What he found in that role was that there was a lot of healing needed, with mental health challenges, intergenerational trauma, addictions and many barriers to success that learners faced. With a strong passion for post secondary, Indigenous education and community, he took on this role when it came up.

Social work and counselling wasn’t what he wanted to do when he grew up but equipped with that skill set, Nolan felt confident to address challenges to reach outcomes that would be worth it. Referring to his clients as his cousins, he talks about how he does his best to make everyone comfortable, with his sessions taking place on the land instead of in the office.

“I never thought I would leave education. But I also think that this piece that I'm in now, also encompasses education, too, right? Educating ourselves on how to best take care of ourselves, so we then can help our next generation coming behind us,” Nolan reflects. He’s not planning to stay in this role forever, but he’s eager to get the experience and to help as many people as he can before he moves into a management role and starts to look at addressing things from a systemic change perspective. He’s also glad to be part of clients seeing themselves reflected in the people helping them and who have similar lived experiences. He’s hoping to be part of breaking cycles and being part of people’s journeys in moving forward.

The work that Nolan does blends both Western and Indigenous practices. He has a diploma in social service work with an Indigenous specialization, with training in trauma informed crisis intervention, Mental Health First Aid, Indigenous Mental Health First Aid, and Cultural Awareness. He’s working towards a Bachelor of Indigenous Social Work at Laurentian University. As far as graduate studies go, Nolan has not yet decided if he wants to go further in Indigenous social work, public administration, or business, but he knows that more education will help him get a seat at the tables where he wants to make a difference.

Thinking about his advice for youth going to get an education, that they don’t need to do so in a big city, but they could if they so choose. Nolan encourages them to listen to their intuition and not to be afraid to follow their dreams professionally. He recommends finding community within the school they attend and getting connected, seeking out people who believe in them.

 “I feel like I had a lot of confidence going into post secondary, but it wasn't truly until somebody believed in me and somebody really mentored me, that really set me off and really got me to where I am today,” Nolan reminisces. These days, he pays that forward by mentoring young people himself. He urges young people not to be afraid to reach out to find mentors for guidance and advice.

Something Nolan sees all too often is lateral violence in communities. Frequently, young people go away to get educated and bring that experience back to community only to resign due to the challenges they face. It's something he hopes will change through role modelling and mentorship.

When it comes to obstacles he faced, Nolan struggled with challenges having been born Indigenous in today’s society, feeling “less than” in elementary school. He struggled with addictions and mental health challenges after high school. While they delayed his university and are part of his story, they don’t define who he is as a person now.

“I think we should be ultimately proud of who we are that we're still here and we're still resilient. We're still shining.”

If Nolan could share a message with his younger self, it would be “trust the process, our journey is already laid out for us”. He would tell himself not to question the heartaches that are meant as teaching tools and to feel in the moment knowing lessons more meaningful lessons are coming from the experience.

To keep his mental health in check, Nolan listens to music, goes for drives, sits outside and practices his culture. He loves to listen to the sound of the drumbeats and feel it sync with his heartbeat. He talks to his wife about how he is feeling and they hold each other accountable to take care of themselves so they can be good parents to their twin boys and good partners to each other.

When it comes to inspiration, Nolan looks to his mentors and the people he spends time with which is why he tries to spend time with people who make him work harder and strive for more. He also wants to pay forward the encouragement he received early on in his career. “My inspiration is just keep doing the work that I get to do and doing the next right thing. There's a lot of negativity and hate going on in this world today. If I could provide a little bit of love and a little bit of smile and happiness, I'm doing my job,” he smiles.

He started off recruiting learners for university, but seeing they were not set up for success, he got to work on addressing the issues in community that were holding them back. Working as a clinician in prevention in child welfare, Jonathon Nolan has an opportunity to meet people where they are at and make a difference. With aspirations of creating more change moving forward, he still has more work to do and more love to give.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.