The future is yours...if you want it bad enough
- EFN Staff | February 11, 2015
Prairieland Park in Saskatoon was packed for the annual Saskatoon Tribal Council The Future is Yours career fair presented by PotashCorp. Job seekers came from schools in Saskatoon and surrounding First Nations to explore career options with many employers who want to hire Aboriginal people.
Thomas Sanderson came to the event from the James Smith Cree Nation and the grade twelve student says that the future can certainly be bright for young people in Saskatchewan. “Coming here, I have learned that there is more to life than just being on the reserve. There are lots of good choices out there to step up for and to make something of yourself,” said Sanderson who wants to be a welder or carpenter. “My grandfather was a hard working man. My uncles are hard working men so I might as well live up to their generation you know and continue it.”
Leanne Bellegarde, Director of Aboriginal Strategy for PotashCorp was impressed with not only the quantity of young people attending, but also with the quality. “As a presenting sponsor it is really heartening to see 950 young people looking for educational and job opportunities in this province with over 60 employers here looking to hire that Aboriginal labour force. We have competition as a company for these employees of the future, but that’s the best kind of competition to have for the Aboriginal community in this province, and for the province as a whole,” said Bellegarde. “These young people know what they want to do. They are exploring opportunities and looking for quality experience within their education and their employment. They are no dummies about where they want to be so we have to pull up our socks to attract them to our workforce.”
Saskatoon Tribal Council Vice Chief Mark Arcand sees the investment in big events like the career fair as providing a valuable experience for young people. “When you see 63 booths filled with employers informing these students about career opportunities ranging from the Army to Wal-Mart, it will give the kids the chance to improve their quality of life and become better citizens,” said Vice Chief Arcand. “And these young people are engaged. They are asking the employers the right questions and there are lots of success stories out there of individuals wanting to change their own lives because things back home aren’t great and they have it inside themselves to actually make a difference.”
Despite the many career options for young people, there are some roadblocks to a successful future and that is the negative lifestyle that traps many people. But according to Thomas Sanderson, it doesn’t have to be that way. “Well, lots of our youth today are lost into the drugs and alcohol and consumed into this new generation and way of life. To me there is more to life than just that,” said Sanderson. “The key to success is education. My grandfather taught me that. If a lot of our youth my age would step up and realize that you do need education to survive in this world, if we all got into education and quit the substance abuse and forgot the past, we could move on to the future because you can’t live in the past, you gotta keep moving forward.”
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