John Joe Sark
Lennox Island
Transcript:
[-]
"I think any kind of work with the youth is really, really important. When I was a young fellow, I worked in Boston for about ten years, I had about a grade eight then I went back to school and got into university. I got a degree, it was hard, and at the same time, my community at Lennox Island, all our elders had died, and they used to really keep that place nice. And I know I used to go home from high school every weekend, but the grass in the cemetery was really high, and I used to cut that. Then I got an opportunity for a youth program, and there was no landscaping done or nothing there, so I had all the kids through their schoolwork estimate how much seed they would need for a lawn. And they said "We need a new ball field too" and I said "all right, you can build it". So they had to estimate how to... they had to look at their geometry to do the diamond and that whole thing, and they did. Now I said " We have to help other poor people that are not Mi'kmaq". So we went out to the outlying communities and painted churches and all this sort of thing. And they really felt good about it, and you know, we started to plant the seeds, and now the youth are taking over now".