“I want to make sure our community is ready to design and take advantage of these tools, basically as they come online,” Shak Gobert dreams aloud. He is a member of Frog Lake First Nation and his Cree name is Buffalo That Rings The Bell. He lives in Toronto and he was born and raised in Lloydminster. He moved to Toronto for high school and university because his mom took a job in radio and television. He’s been working in the technology and software space, working in augmented reality, 3d modelling and storytelling.

The way he explains what he does is that his work bridges culture and language into unique ways of telling stories and captivating people. He builds interactive elements that appear on clothes, art and other places that come to life on people’s devices. He validated his idea at an offshoot event at the Vancouver film fest which was an intergenerational gathering of Indigenous people who were excited by the idea of virtual storytelling. Something else he’s looking to work on is land based digital teaching, anchoring digital objects to places. Before this, he used to work in SAAS (software as a service).

Growing up urban and coming back to visit, Gobert has experienced the beauty of kinship and connection with so many people. He is motivated to use his skillset to help his community and Indigenous people, on and off-reserve. “I want to have a really cool Indigenous tech company that hopefully we can build and design together and really provide opportunity to urban Indigenous people,” he muses aloud. He also wants to provide remote work opportunities so people don’t have to leave their communities to work with him. As a fair skinned Indigenous person, people didn’t immediately assume he was Indigenous and he’s spent the last few years making an effort to reconnect and use what he’s learned to benefit his people.

When it comes to his education and professional experience, he did a degree in Indigenous Studies and Environmental Studies at the University of Toronto right after he graduated. “There's still huge, huge value in a lot of these degrees, especially depending on what you're doing…But I find, especially in tech and some other industries, things just move so fast that if you can just learn it and figure it out, get some experience, you're probably going to be okay,” he confides.

After graduation, he took time off, travelled and taught English abroad and came back to work for the Friendship Centre Network in Ontario. He went on to do data work for a University of Toronto nonprofit. From there, he went back to school to study computer science and one semester in, he was hired by a startup called Cloud Permit. He then worked in the government tech space for five years and moved to Vancouver until the company sold and moved back to Toronto.

He’s been doing contract work while he builds his augmented reality project. He now has a couple prototypes and his project is coming to life. Passionate about the 3d space and liking it enough to learn, he’s still figuring out what he’s great at but he’s pursuing what he loves in the meantime. “I think the cultural aspect, knowing that the mission is to empower and work with our people, that's also the biggest driving force,” he beams. He recognizes his privilege in having grown up in an urban community, gone to university, and to be able to work as an entrepreneur rather than be seeking stability.

While he knows Indigenous people will see the value in his project, he hopes to build something so captivating that non-Indigenous people will be inspired, too. Thinking about his goals for his organization he says, “I want to build something really cool and purposeful. And I feel like, if I do that, then the money will naturally follow anyways, and we can use that as a tool to do more good work. Because in my mind, being able to build a successful organization or company is about just having the tools to do more good work. That monetary piece, it's a tool in your toolbox. Of course, it's needed, but that's not the end game, right?” The profit focus of the world of startups was not something that resonated with him in the past.

If he could give his younger self advice he would advise himself not to be afraid to try more things. “Follow what interests you, dabble a lot, don’t live your life based off of somebody else’s advice. I think the world is huge. The opportunities are immense. And in fact, I think some of the most interesting people and companies and experiences and projects you sometimes hear and read about come from people that are willing to kind of break that mold and say, ‘hey, you know what? I think there's a different way to operate here.’ So just go and do it,” he adds.

Recently, he received advice from a family member about what he needed to work on and he was struck by the way he needed to see the good in himself and also the areas that still need improvement. “We’re not perfect people. We do the best we can with what we can, and we just try to be a little better every day,” he observes.

In closing, his advice for Indigenous youth is, “It's all good to just feel however you feel, and to just keep pushing on…. through the insanity and the hardships and the chaos, because it'll be worthwhile, and it's worth it, and you're all lovely, beautiful people, and you can do it. You can make it through it, because there is a brighter future for us there. And it's easy to say, harder to do, but we need more youth that step up and be leaders… It's possible we will get there. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it together.” He noted the challenges that Indigenous youth face and how much work is yet to be done but came back to a message of hope.

Telling stories through augmented reality and making interactive elements come to life, Shak Gobert has moved on from the software as a service space and is creating something new. Hoping to create new opportunities for Indigenous people on and off-reserve through an Indigenous tech company, he’s building his dreams on the side while doing contract work. Inspired by land-based digital teaching and place based learning, he has big dreams of what could be and motivation to make it happen.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.