Meet ( Yb ) Yellowbear Nakota

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful ( Yb ) Yellowbear Nakota a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

( YB ) Yellowbear , so glad you were able to set aside some time for us today. We’ve always admired not just your journey and success, but also the seemingly high levels of self-discipline that you seem to have mastered and so maybe we can start by chatting about how you developed it or where it comes from?

Well, self discipline comes from being loyal to myself and the love that I have for our ceremony, it’s one of our most powerful ceremony as indigenous people called the Sundance. We don’t eat or drink water for four days we dance in the sun, sun up to sundown for our prayers.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Well, I come from a lot of trauma and abuse and addiction. If it wasn’t for ceremony, I would never be where I’m at today if it wasn’t for God and my grandfathers and grandmothers always being by my side in and out of foster care since I was one years old my grandma was a residential school survivor. My mom was a day school survivor and my dad same thing so I never had a mom and dad Grew up fighting the effects of residential school Foster home to group home to juvenile hall to provincial jails to the federal institutions that’s why I found my connection with my culture. They held sweats elders would come onto the unit with their drum and singing smudging so I picked up the drum while I was in the inside, and then after that when I got out, I continue the red road that’s ceremony Road. I started my journey. I started to do treatment programs, therapy, warriors against violence, figuring out all my traumas and my abuse looking back at the little kid inside of me and healing him to the best of my knowledge this day I still work on my healing but now I work as a consultant at a doctor peters HIV foundation as cultural support I sing and drum for the people there and I try to lift up as much soul as I can And on my other work that I do is with the youth, I go speak gang convention talk about that Dark lifestyle, the gangster drugs, the booze, the girls, and I do my best to show them that as indigenous people or anybody that type of lifestyle isn’t for us or connect to God each other and Being humble among each other and Elder wants told me every single day we get closer to our death. That’s how some people look at it but every single day we get closer to going back home to the creator so be grateful for this day. I always try to remember myself every day is a blessing, so anybody can listen to my music I share indigenous singing on Apple Spotify I just type in my name and the medicine will pop up. Thank you for the opportunity.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Well, one of my skills is discipline being sober is all about discipline not about chasing the bottle and everything is about want I want this I want that. Through my heel and journey, I wouldn’t call it a skill, but there is no right or wrong way smudging I just do my best to show people how to the most comfortable way that they feel and show them that that’s the right way

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

Well, I would like to Collab with Sony Canada so I could get her more because people need to hear the medicine

Contact Info:

Image Credits

My sons

Kyky rain
Keslee rain

Ade waka ishnish pinamad

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