Kwanlin Dun First Nations Lecture

We had lunch today with Sheila Clark and Gina Nagano. They were the guest lecturers in the Business Associations class today. One of them is from the northern Yukon and one from the southern Yukon, Indigenous nations that are not related to each other, but they are women who have found a common purpose living and working in the Yukon.

Kusawa Lake, north end

Tonight when Rebecca and I were offering up our gratitude lists for the day, their joint lecture was on that list.

Rebecca said, “I can’t believe I didn’t get a selfie with those women.” 

She is right.

A picture is a good way to mark that something wonderful happened. 

They were to lecture for an hour, but at the 1 ½ hour mark, they stopped, though it wasn’t really time to stop if I can judge from the wrapped attention that they still had at this mark from the students in the class.Gina Nagano is mixed Japanese /Indigenous heritage. She said of her career,

I have been 32 years in Justice. I spent 22 years in the RCMP. I joined at 19 years old and retired after 20 years. I was an undercover negotiator, and a trained body guard. I had an incredible career in policing. I spent the first part of my career as a young reactive police officer and didn’t understand my own culture. My job was to see how many people I could arrest and put in jail . Now for the next part of my life I am going to see how many people I can keep out of jail. My passion is to work with people and do restorative justice.

A wonderful lecture, as you can see from just the few sentences above.

Again, the best day ever.

Arta