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It was really intense. For a competition like that, you can’t eat junk food or stay up late if you want to do a good run. You should eat a lot of protein and get enough rest.
    It was intense but it was also fun. I liked hanging out with the other athletes, these other kids who liked to run and do things. It was cool being with that many runners from all over. Before the 400 meet, there was a storm, and it got rained out for a while. We all hung out. It was a really good time.
    My parents make sure we know all about our history and our culture — all of our cultures. We’re a pretty busy family, and we don’t waste a lot of time on things that aren’t important. Although I do like playing this really old video game of Dad’s. It’s called Technoball and it’s from a really long time ago, like 1991.
    As I get older I want to continue to be an athlete and continue to get good grades. Of course I’m going to go to college. I want to end up with some sort of big-time job. Engineering, business, some kind of big career like that. And I’ll keep playing sports.

Children were encouraged to develop strict discipline and a high regard for sharing. When a girl picked her first berries and dug her first roots, they were given away to an elder so she would share her future success. When a child carried water for the home, an elder would give compliments, pretending to taste meat in water carried by a boy or berries in that of a girl. The child was encouraged not to be lazy and to grow straight like a sapling.
    â€” Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket), Salish

Pearl, 15

    Kashechewan First Nation is a Cree reserve near James Bay in northern Ontario. During the summer, the only way in or out is by plane or barge or freighter canoe. There are winter roads when the temperatures are low enough for packed-down ice and snow. In recent years, climate change has led to warmer winters. The ice roads don’t stay frozen as long as they used to, and badly needed goods like kerosene are not able to get into the community.
    Seventeen hundred people live in Kashechewan — descendants of people who roamed the land hunting and fishing. The community has had to deal with high rates of youth suicide. In January 2007, twenty-one young people tried to kill themselves, one as young as nine years old. In late 2012, the chief declared a state of emergency. With winter closing in, the community was running out of fuel, and twenty-one homes were not fit to live in during the cold weather.
    Pearl lives in Kashechewan.
    Kashechewan is a small reserve. The roads are rough and narrow. We have a few houses that have been renovated and are in okay shape but most are not. The Band has been working at getting the homes better for the last three years.
    Some kids think there’s nothing to do on the reserve and that’s why they get into drugs. I started smoking grass when I was eleven. I saw my older sister do it. Then I tried it and got addicted to it. I smoked it for a lot of years.
    It wasn’t hard to stop once I made the decision to. I told myself it wasn’t good for me and I don’t want to die at an early age.
    Marijuana is around. People go out to the south and bring it in. I think people do drugs because they have losses in their family or losses in their spirit and they need to forget their pain for a while.
    Or they can’t find anything else to do. That’s not my problem. I think there’s lots to do. I go for walks along the dyke that holds back James Bay. I go out in the bush, go for picnics.
    The reserve used to flood all the time. When my father was little it was really bad. I also remember floods happening. The whole community would gather on the big hill on the baseball field to get out of the way of the rising water. Graveyards would get flooded. They still do. The water treatment center would break down.
    Our drinking water is safe now. A few years ago we had E. coli in the