A few life lessons at the Lac Seul youth conference

Lewis Wesley Contributor

Hello to all SEVEN readers. My name is Lewis Wesley, I’m 22 years old and I enjoyed my time at Lac Seul’s youth empowerment conference. Each and every morning started with breakfast, cold cold breakfast. But I didn’t mind, after all there were a ton of volunteers and organizers devoted to keeping the complex clean and worry free. Each and every morning the conference started with the sweet sound of drummers singing traditional music. Then the organizers would announce the workshops that were going on. There were quite a bit, but most were to work on team based skills. The youth played traditional games plus new aged ones, which, like I said, was to teach them how to cooperate with each other. As we all should do.

On day two of the event more people came, and all they seemed to say was “where’s Adam Beach?” I didn’t have the answers for them, but the man of the hour did not disappoint. He showed up, everyone crowded him, pictures were being taken, and no one was expecting him to show up on Wednesday. The thing is he sat down with our drum group, Over the Sky, and wanted to sing and drum with us. We said sure and away we went. The whole time, while we were singing, he would look at us in amazement laughing while we sang. You can tell he really enjoyed it. When he was sitting with us I know longer saw Adam beach “the actor”, I saw a man, a regular normal man. A native man full of energy and confidence. Then just as fast as he came, he was gone for the day.

Later that evening the mini-concert featuring myself and Rupert Bunting play a wild guitar duet, a fancy and break dancing demo, Ron Kanutsky, and headliner Fara Palmer with her R and B styles.

The next day started the same way, breakfast and drumming. The workshops for the day were by Adam Beach. He gave an hour presentation about his life. He provided life lessons that really got to a lot of people. For me the one thing that got to me was he said “to be able to acknowledge that you can do anything you want and that you never have to worry about money. THAT COMES AFTER.” He also answered questions the audience asked him. It was at that time he took a break and I was able to get some pictures with him. I also got to interview him and learned that he is a normal, humorous guy.

Left to right: Lewis Wesley, Tanya Kakekaspan, actor Adam Beach, Antoine Nigewance, and Steve Feeney.

Well throughout the conference I learned a few lessons:

1) Enjoy your time with everyone around you, for your own light brightens up anyone’s life as long as you show respect.

2) When faced with a problem it’s always better to face it with people who can help you out when you need it.

3) It only takes one person to brighten up someone’s day.

So all I got to say is thank you Adam Beach. You made my year and you taught so many people the essence of having a good time.