Antoine Mountain
Guest columnist
Monday, December 17, 2007

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Friends, it is with great pride as a Mountain Dene and as your regular Northerner that I have learned of my countryman Paul Andrew winning a National Aboriginal Achievement Award!

I have personally known this one man for a great many years, as have many people all over the North, and I am sure that we all feel that this is a truly deserving person for this grand prize.

This will go a long way to further the cause of our people putting their best moccasin forward to represent the Dene.

From reading my latest articles many of you may have gotten the mistaken impression that our residential school years only served to produce a generation of embittered survivors.

Certainly those feelings are a part of these particular traumas, but by no means all of it. While many of us did suffer our own forms of personal abuse we did come out of it alive as First Nations peoples and today serve to stand up for our own relatives in many arenas.

Just taking a quick look at Paul Andrew, many people know him for his official job as television broadcaster for the CBC. We have gotten used to his insightful and knowledgeable views of Northern life - aboriginal and otherwise.

But, Paul is also an excellent entertainer and many who have been lucky enough to watch this man do his version of The Phat Dene Packsack Rapper know that he can do a mean jam with the best of 'em! His Dene love songs, too, are the stuff of legend, allowing for a grand swath of female fans in his wake, all swooning, eyelashes a-fluttering in a shameless manner.

In addition, we know this man for his humanitarian works, as he can always be counted on to reach out to the average person on the street. I have personally known Paul to go into the schools to encourage literacy and to even try his acting skills onstage.

So, as you can see, friends, we the survivors of these residential schools are not without our own heroes. When I asked Paul which elder he most looked up to, he did not hesitate to mention the late Chief Paul Wright of his hometown, Tulita.

And doubtless, friends, the future generation will prosper from this man's lead, as when I read of Anne-Marie Jackson looking to further her dreams in film-making. So for now, good on ya, Paul, 'bro, and keep up the Dene soul singin'!

- Antoine Mountain is a Dene artist and writer originally from Radilih Koe'/Fort Good Hope. He can be reached at www.amountainarts.com