Valerie G. Barnes Connell Jordan
Northern Advocate
Jim Pratt grew up, for his first 17 years, on his home reserve, Muscowpetung Saulteaux First Nation, northeast of Regina and then set out to explore the world.
After working several jobs, he applied and was accepted with the Regina Police Force, where he spent 25 years before retiring and going to Sask Politech to spend another 17 years as an instructor and facilitator in the Justice Studies program.
Pratt retired in June, but the retirement didn’t last long. As of Sept. 1, Pratt is the Knowledge Keeper/Helper, for the Office of the Saskatchewan Ombudsman.
He is under a one-year contract to “help facilitate teachings within the office.”
Pratt grew up in a traditional way. His late father was a Traditional Elder on his reserve.
“I was brought up with the teachings,” he said in an interview with the Northern Advocate.
“But, I don’t keep that cause I pass it on. I share it, but I acknowledge the traditional elders, who have given it to me.”He has worked for probably 20 years with Traditional Elders across the province.
Pratt said he’s careful when he’s passing on the knowledge. He likes to get to know people, listening to them.
“I’m not coming here as a bull in a china shop,” he said.
Pratt said his late father taught him the importance of listening and digesting the learnings he receives, and he keeps that practice to this day.
He believes in sharing respectfully because every nation has their own teachings and protocols. Pratt won’t go into a community and tell them, this is the way you have to do it, because it will “just turn people off.”
He said people have to build their relationships through trust, because he doesn’t find there’s a lot of trust among the people and there is a gap created by the Residential School era, which, he is trying to educate people about. Pratt said he’ll talk to whoever is interested to try to fix the situation, “before it gets worse.”
The wisdom Pratt gets from the Traditional Elders is not to “sugar coat anything … to tell the truth that these things did happen out there in regard to the things to the trauma inflicted by the assimilation from the Residential School Era and how that changed us as a Nation. Now, we’re working really hard to get back.”
He believes this is important in building trust amongst people and for their children and grandchildren to know so that have a foundation to build on for the future.
He said language is an important starting place.
”No matter how much money you have, if you know your language, you’re a rich person. It doesn’t matter cause you have your language. English is your second language,” and this is what he tells people when he talks with them. He encourages people to learn their language.
His parents sent him and his siblings to white school off reserve and he never questioned his parent’s decision.
“I guess there was a reason why … however they spoke our language in the house, but they didn’t teach us. We just had to pick up words,” Pratt said, adding when he went to school it was probably in a time Indigenous people were being taught their language was “not worth speaking.”
Pratt said in his job at the Ombudsman’s Office he has the opportunity to bring in speakers, the traditional elders, to assist him in teaching the staff and building the knowledge and healing relationships.
He said while some people have chosen a path of crime it’s not everybody.
“There is good people, First Nation and Indigenous people. We’re willing to work together and share information and our leadership back that, to make it a better place to live in Saskatchewan or anywhere we go.”
