KAMAO KAPPO

Kamao grew up on the Pasqua First Nation (Saulteaux/Cree) in Saskatchewan. HIs happiest days were when he finally returned home from the Qu’Appelle Indian Residential school, and lived with his grandmother. The newfound freedom of riding horses all day and having a traditional medicine woman as a caregiver, helped mold Kamao into the highly respected man he is today.

“... I have written these things because I have lived these same conditions as the other men on the reserves. I too stayed away from mainstream society because I thought it was too cold and greedy for money. I tried to maintain a subsistent lifestyle by hunting and fishing. We tried to sell the fish we caught but had to always keep an eye out for the game wardens from the province.

At one point our guns were taken away for hunting off-reserve lands. Jobs were almost non-existent on the reserve and the ones that were available went to the older more experienced men. Needless to say that, without a job, I also had to depend on the welfare system to meet my family’s basic needs of food, shelter and clothing.

It was only after attending a business school that I realized that what we were learning in school was the same things that we would have been taught had we grown up in our cultures of long ago, that is we were being taught how to make a business or organization successful so as to acquire the money needed to make it go and to feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves. What would have been taught to me by my mother, father and Elders was now being taught to me by instructors or professors and the only difference was the tools and somewhat different skills. The basic inward qualities and attributes were the same.”