Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 25/98) - There was a time, not long ago, when Stephen Kakfwi thought Dene should have nothing to do with the territorial government.

But for the last nine years, he's been a cabinet minister in that government.

Born near Fort Good Hope, Kakfwi (left) spent his first five years living in the bush. After his mother took ill, the family moved to town.

At the age of nine he had the "hellish experience" of spending five months at the now notorious Grollier Hall residential school in Inuvik.

"I was plunked down in the middle of about 50 junior boys at that time, ranging in age from six years old to 13," recalled Kakfwi. "I was fighting just about every day, and getting beaten up just about every day, mostly by the nuns.

"I wasn't sexually abused. I was lucky, I was only physically and psychologically abused."

At the age of 12, Kakfwi returned to school, this time at Grandin College in Fort Smith. Among his classmates were fellow future MLAs Jim Antoine and Mike Miltenberger and Western Arctic MP Ethel Blond-Andrew.

At Grandin the emphasis moved from survival to education. Kakfwi completed his schooling and advanced to a teaching program at the University of Alberta. He went on to teach adult education in Fort Good Hope in 1972-73, Hay River the following year.

"Apparently, I had a provisional licence to teach, but for whatever reason the government never gave me the licence. It's still sitting in the files of the Department of Education.

"I worked for two years as a trainee, when I was qualified to teach elementary school. Eventually, the government just starved me out. I liked teaching, but I felt I was extremely underpaid, so I resigned."

The end of his short-lived teaching career marked the beginning of Kakfwi's political life.

Georges Erasmus offered Kakfwi a job preparing Sahtu communities for the coming of the Berger Commission, mandated to investigate the feasibility of a Mackenzie Valley pipeline.

In 1976 he moved to Yellowknife to lead the Dene Nation's battle against the pipeline proposal. He lobbied southern opposition to the project as well.

The pipeline proposal proved a nearly perfect vehicle for creating awareness of the Dene and their then radical insistence on political and economic self determination.

"Someone called us neophyte socialists at that time," recalled Kakfwi with a chuckle. "You talk about community transfers, community wellness, community empowerment -- those things were all considered left wing, and we were discredited by the members of the territorial council of the day."

The Dene Nation made a dramatic change of tactics at its 1977 winter leadership meeting. Instead of battling the territorial government, they elected to run candidates in the next election, in an attempt to change it from within.

Kakfwi was one of many who spoke against the change, saying it was like "dancing with the devil."

"What happens once we elect people?" he argued. "People will buy into the system, become part of the system, and become legitimate spokesmen for us whether we agree with them or not -- in the process of the dance, you do not know at what point you lose your own soul."

Still, after four very productive years as president of the Dene Nation, Kafwi joined the dance.

He "parachuted" in to the Sahtu to claim a seat in the legislative assembly, a seat he has yet to relinquish.

Asked if he felt the idealism of his days with the Dene Nation had suffered in the time he had joined the territorial government, Kakfwi was emphatic.

"I've been accused of being a sell-out. People have said worse things about me at different points. But on culture and on principles I've always been supremely confident of who I am.

"I can speak my language. I can understand at least a couple of dialects of Dene. I know my history, I know the legends, I know the drum songs, I know about bush life. I have very good relationships with old people.

"So I probably have just as good an understanding, maybe better, as what it is to be Dene as anybody else."

Kakfwi also has confidence in his effectiveness as a minister. He said he "absolutely" will be running for a seat in the first assembly of the western territory.

Describing himself as a "global citizen," Kafwi said he knew from a very young age he was not destined to live in Fort Good Hope and hunt and trap.

"All my life I've loved wandering around, straying from my community and only going back to lick my wounds once in a while.

"My role in this world in this life is to travel and to be out there for my people and for myself."