Heart Knowledge

WORDS by RANDAL “BOOGIE” POKIAK, TRANSCRIBED FROM ICS COMMUNITY PROFILE

One time—grade 2. A bunch of us in a one classroom, right? Teacher said to us—well, she wants to hear what we wanna be when we grow up. How many want to be doctor? ‘Cause you make lot of money, huh? Lawyers? And everybody put their hand up [but] mine stayed down. And everytime they say something else for an occupation—my hand would never go up. The teacher finally says: ‘Well, Boogie, what do you wanna be when you grow up?’

‘I want to be a hunter.’ [laughs]

I didn’t wanna let these other things take me away from my childhood dream. I was determined really young to live a life of my people, you know? I wanted to—and I did. And I raised my children the same way. At that time, lot of them, making a living—the economy had to happen. But there should be a balance. Not everybody gonna work for the government or oil company. There’ll always be people that loves the land and they’re satisfied with it. That’s their life, you know?

And like they say: if you gonna get an occupation, get one that you enjoy. You produce good product, you’ll be happy, you’ll be content. Because you’re doing what you like doing—not somebody trying to force you to do something you don’t wanna do. Our generation—we had our choices. I made mine, and I’m glad. I have no regrets.

I told my children: ‘I know I’m getting on in years, but I’m gonna get out there, and…live out [my] life out there.’ And they get kinda worried, but I says, ‘How many of our people are actually content? And without somebody forcing you to be in town, you know?’

And I know there’s lot of young people that they want to be out there, and they just need a mentor. And usually, a person like me, I do some stuff slower, but we can be mentors for these young people. We can sharpen—hone their life, you know. Cut off the rough edges on them. And we’re still able to make that connection, [but] the only place you can do that is out away from town.

We all gonna go sometime. You don’t have a death wish. But you just wonder about the culture-side—how much of our knowledge is gonna survive? Especially the emotional-side of a human being. What goes through your mind? How you react to different situations? It’s important to have those feelings and those touches—touch your heart, you know? Too many people—their heart never get touched by anything. So, it’s really important to let things that’s around you touch your heart. I think it’s really important because what’s in the heart, all that traditional knowledge—it’s not up here [the mind], it’s in here [the heart]. Your mind is all over the place. There’s too much things going through your mind, but you never forget what you got in here [the heart].

So when you hear an Elder saying: ‘I’m gonna speak from my heart.’ That means he’s gonna talk traditional knowledge. It’s just gonna come out—just like a book, reading a book from their heart, and expressing it in words. And so, that ‘heart knowledge’ is really important—and when it’s full of ITK (traditional knowledge), all the better, because it’s the most valuable knowledge you can have. It lasted through the millennia for us. It should continue.