Building understanding and connection amongst all people and helping people succeed is important to Kerry Prosper, Elder-in-Residence at StFX.
Mr. Prosper, a long-standing community member and former chief of Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation, has served at StFX since October 2018, providing wisdom and education around Indigenous ways, and guidance and support for students, staff, and faculty.
“One of the key things we’re trying to do is to help sensitize faculty and students and help them navigate the issues that come up around residential schools and trauma, and how people get triggered,” he says. “It’s about being here and making people feel comfortable and making the adjustments (to succeed.) We don’t know where people come from. They’re vulnerable. We try to help them with that.”
Mr. Prosper says both Native and Non-Native students are curious and want to know about Indigenous ways of knowing, and Indigenous ways of learning, about the culture, about how someone becomes an Elder.
As Elder-in-Residence, he works with StFX students on their projects and subjects that deal with Indigenous issues. He also helps support faculty building in cultural relevant material. Additionally, Mr. Prosper serves on anti-racism committees and other campus initiatives and does some recruiting to see if students are interested in attending StFX. He also helps introduce students to the area and Mi’kmaw culture, including in the past taking students on community walks and eel fishing.
Importantly, he helps students with any trauma they’re going through.
Mr. Prosper says it can be hard for Indigenous students coming to StFX from small communities as they miss doing things they’re accustomed to at home, they miss the food, culture and community.
Having an Elder-in-Residence is important, he says, “especially for those who are deep in their culture and for those struggling in their culture.”
Being able to do a simple traditional custom or ceremony for someone can be so beneficial.
“We talk about physical and mental health, it’s also important to talk about spiritual health. We don’t talk about it a lot. It’s important. It helps ground them and it takes a lot of those negative thoughts and cleanses out those thoughts and it helps them reset themselves, to be able to create an atmosphere of learning.”
Just being able to talk about experiences, good and bad, is important, he says.
University is a time of much learning, he says, from academics to social learning.
Learning about and understanding racism in its different forms is part of this too.
While we’re working hard to eliminate racism, it exists in mild forms, and it’s important to understand it to learn how to navigate through it, he says.
Being a university student is something Mr. Prosper understands.
He attended StFX as a mature student, graduating in 2009 with a degree in anthropology and aquatic resources. When he returned to the classroom, he felt intimated in some ways. At the same time, he came with much experience around material they were learning in class. It felt good, he says, using his knowledge to help younger students understand and to help create that whole picture for them.
Technology is partly what led him back to the classroom.
Mr. Prosper, who had served six years as Paqtnkek chief and over 20 years as a councillor, says when email and computers arrived on the scene, several younger people in the organization suggested they had to get with the times. The organization bought laptops and about four people enrolled at StFX to learn the basics. His sister insisted he make it a credit course and Mr. Prosper earned his first credit course from StFX. Then he started to learn about research while co-directing a research project on social research for sustainable fisheries, as part of a collaboration between Paqtnkek and StFX. When an online aquatic resources course was offered in his community, he took it, gaining his second StFX credit.
He applied to StFX after that.
As Elder-in-Residence, he brings a wealth of experience.
He was chief during landmark court cases involving the late Donald Marshall Jr. and the fisheries, an interesting time of negotiations.
“Those experiences still work with me today,” he says.
“History was being made and we were part of it.”
Mr. Prosper has also fished a lot and has always been interested in traditional ways. His mother used traditional medicines, which interested him growing up.
The revitalization of the culture starting in the 1970s also played role.
Spiritual traditions interested him, and he started going to a few gatherings. He began taking part, slowing learning about the different rituals, songs and healing practices. Eventually, he became like an apprentice, he says, and he is now a pipe carrier and a lodge keeper. He was fortunate, he says, to learn from tradition bearers who have very old, unchanged knowledge.
Mr. Prosper regularly performs sweat lodge ceremonies and travels every summer to sundance ceremonies, where people come to pray.
“It’s a lifetime commitment. It’s a priority over everything else,” he says.
This commitment is important, especially now, because of what’s happening today, the struggle to reconnect to the old road, to revitalize the connection to Mi’kmaw culture. “It’s not severed. It’s disconnected. We are trying to reset ourselves and find that path,” he says.
Everyone has lost a lot, he says. When the two sides came together to sign the treaties, it was with the intent to learn to live together, to enjoy the land together. Some have forgotten or lost that, but we have to rebuild that connection, he says.
“Celebrations like this (Mi’kmaw History Month) are trying to bridge that gap together, to build understanding amongst all of us, to enjoy each other’s culture and learn a way of understanding each other, instead of being strangers.”
