Dear sons,

I'm sorry I'm not here today as planned to meet you but with all we've discussed last night, I feel like I need some more time to process all I found out. I was very happy to see that even with all I put you both through, you have grown into two…

We tend to take for granted the presence of the people we love around us. A good example: when we are kids, we don’t hesitate to tell our parents how much we love them. The older we get, the less we tend to tell them how much we care about them, especially in our teenage years. If someone gets bullied or harassed by his or her peers as a kid, that person may tend to close on themselves more. When I got my friend’s call about her father heading to the ER and being hospitalised, remembering…

Christmas time is once again on our doorstep and once again, as crazy driven as ever. People rushing to the stores to get gifts for everyone they care about. Never really having had a lot of money in the family, it helped me stay more in touch with the traditional side of Christmas. Being surrounded by family and friends, in my case as well, with mom being from another tribe, it gave me insight into two different tribe's traditions on this time of year. Every year, mom and I decorate the…

One of my favorite summer activities around the reservation would be without a doubt going cliff jumping with my brothers. I know our moms always cringe at the sound of us mentioning going there but there’s nothing we can do about it. Before all the changes in my life, we used to jump only from the smaller cliff, and never by ourselves but since then, that cliff isn’t much of a challenge anymore. I remember when Jared, Paul and Sam took me to the high cliff four years ago after I joined…

All for one, and one for all… a quote from a famous book and movies that stick with me everywhere I go since my transformation. The musketeers back in royalty days were the king’s own personal guard and protected him and the royal family with their lives. In a way, we do the same thing here on the reservation. Ever since our transformation, our lives have been mostly for one thing: protecting our friends, family and other residents of our lands. It can keep our days quite busy at times,…

These past weeks have been quite stressful. It’s the first time I ever have to juggle between friends needing support, work at the store, being here for a brother in need and patrols in the woods. Having a friend losing someone they care about deeply isn’t easy. I always promised Caroline and Mark I’d be there if they needed me for anything and that’s what I did. When they called me to tell me their grand father passed away, I knew that Caroline would need both me and Mark around. She was…

Dear Grand parents,

I know we haven’t gotten many occasions to get to know each other while you were alive but I felt like telling you all how everything’s going for me now. I know you and mom didn’t always see eye to eye but the traditions of the Makah are as important to me in my mind as the Quileute traditions are.

It wasn’t easy growing up without knowing much about my family. I’m glad however that today I know the truth, and have been blessed by having not only learned who…

We always tend to take for granted the things the little things in life that we constantly have around. There’s a lot to be thankful for in life but none of us really ever take the time to appreciate it fully until it’s too late. Our friends, our family, even the simple things like being alive and healthy among our loved ones.

Growing up without a father around has never truly been easy and I used to resent life a bit because of this, asking myself why it happened to me. What happened…

Some traditions from the past I read about talk about how on Halloween night the veil between the world of the dead and our world is at it’s thinnest of the year.Those traditions say that on all hollow’s eve (the traditional name for Halloween in that religion), one should…