“I think I'm on my golden path,” says Suzan Marie. She is Dene and was born and raised in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. After attending three residential schools, she’s done a lot of healing through ceremony and clinical processes over 35 years.

On her education journey, Suzan got a Bachelor of Science in Counseling Psychology and an associates degree in human services at the University of Great Falls in Montana. She was hoping to be able to help her own people given how few resources were available when she needed support healing from trauma.

After graduation, Suzan went to live in Fort Good Hope where she started to reconnect with her culture and learn from elders. She fundraised so women could participate in mental health conferences and tradeshows for their art. Cultural revitalization has been an area of focus as she worked to reawaken traditional practices of the Babiche bag and spruce root baskets and share them with remote Northern communities. Babiche bags are the equivalent of Dene suitcases. She co-authored two books to teach people how to make them. One of the other things she learned was to mention who taught her skills she is demonstrating to honour and respect them.

Outside of her revitalization efforts, Suzan made a living as a heavy equipment operator in her first career. She was the first woman in the north to get her class one and operate a range of heavy equipment, scoring 100% on operating and 98% on the written exam. Suzan encountered a lot of sexism when she got into heavy equipment and there were no policies in place. She overcame it with self-respect and doing her job well.

Suzan learned to sew from the elders and then went into business and management, travelling to many Indigenous communities. When she decided she only wanted to work half-time, she went back into heavy equipment operating, working ten days in, ten days out. On her time off, she would do her workshops and cultural art.

At 65, Suzan decided to retire and focus on sharing her cultural knowledge around porcupine quills, tufting, and weaving Babiche bags. She ended up connecting with Connected North and started teaching youth online. While she’s teaching on Zoom, she finds she’s connected to some of the student’s relatives.

Her next big project is revitalizing the practice of the Dene coming out dress, an undertaking that would take two years for a young Dene woman and her family to assemble an outfit for a Drum Dance that would celebrate her womanhood. Bringing hides and velvet together, it shows the impact of contact. Once completed, Suzan wants to share it with neighbouring communities.

Her advice for Indigenous students leaving their home communities is, “If you have a dream go for it.” When Suzan left Fort Smith, she wanted to explore but couldn’t afford to, so she joined the army. When she went to get her degree, she had to leave the country to do so as a single parent of two kids. She also left her home community to during the years she lived in Fort Good Hope.

Thinking about the advice she would give her younger self, Suzan reflects on her experiences of growing up without parental guidance and being on her own since 15. She would say now, “Just go for it. If you love it, try it out. You're young enough. There's so many experiences that you could do.”  The only thing she hasn’t done is jump out of a plane and she thinks she’s too old for that now.

Working in communities, Suzan isn’t just teaching, she’s learning, even from the youth. She also talks about how she’s breaking intergenerational trauma. “I've used my culture to heal. I say ‘I beaded myself back together, one bead, one quill, one weave, one tuft at a time.’ It's such a medicine for ourselves to use our own natural materials,” she confides.

To maintain her mental health, Suzan used to see a counsellor and now attends ceremony for healing. She calls her counsellor if she needs to and has a support system in place to help her take care of herself. She also has traditional foods, music and sewing to keep herself feeling well. Suzan is on a Wellness Committee with the Telus World of Science where she engages with an Indigenous psychologist. With the increased awareness of mental health, she’s encouraged. “It's so great to see our communities healing our people, healing our families, healing, and it's really important to take care of your mental health,” she shares.

As far as inspiration goes, Suzan is inspired to create from the empty space that came from her healing. As part of the faculty at the band centre, she’s been meeting Indigenous artists for years, stirring her in different directions in her own creative practice. Inspiration is never in short supply, she’s always trying new things. She creates, does workshops to share her knowledge, mentors young people and proclaims “I'm having the best life right now. I don't see anything slowing me down anytime soon."

On a golden path after blazing trails as a heavy equipment operator, Suzan Marie is now creating and sharing cultural art. She got her counselling degree to help her people, now she’s found another way to do so through revitalizing cultural practices and teaching them as much as she can. After overcoming barriers like sexism, intergenerational trauma and having to leave the country to follow her dreams, Suzan Marie is right where she wants to be and paying forward all she learned on her journey.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.