Aboriginal Day: Discovering Our Futures and Honouring Our Past

by Ry Moran

March 10, 2009. Dover Bay, Nanaimo, BC

The visit for me began at about 9:30 in the morning when I departed my home in Victoria and headed to Nanaimo. It was a beautiful sunny day and the drive was a pleasure. I arrived at the school about a half hour early giving me plenty of time to set up my powerpoint presentation.

Students began arriving at 12:30, and after a quick introduction, I began my talk.

Since I was speaking to an audience of business students, music students, and aboriginal youth, I tried to blend all of those subjects into the talk. This wasn’t too hard for me to do because I have a real passion for all of those subjects.

During this talk, I tried to get students to think about all of the many options that are out there for them. I also asked questions, that I hope, got them thinking about some of the bigger questions in how they approach their careers.

These question are easy to say – the Why’s and What If’s – but when applied are, in my opinion, quite powerful and motivating.

One challenge for me in this talk was to keep speaking for 40 full minutes. That is quite a bit of time to prepare for. My powerpoint presentation really only took me through 25 minutes of the talk.

Fortunately for me, I can talk for hours on these topics and did so. We talked about Mentors and how to accelerate personal growth through them. A number of students also ask some really great questions that helped the conversation flow well. All and all, I had a lot of fun and I hope the students got some valuable information out of the talk.