“I told myself I would be my own role model. “I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got to start making some good choices here,’ ” says Langan. “Just to let you know, John,” he remembers the officer telling him, “your three friends tried to put it all on you.” Soon after, a police officer was knocking at his door.Īt the police station, Langan explained what happened: he didn’t participate in the crime and didn’t accept any stolen goods-but did nothing to stop his friends, either. When he was 14, he watched from an alley as his friends broke into a neighbourhood home and stole armfuls of video games. With no strong role models left for him, he started getting into trouble. Langan’s older brothers had left home by this time, and some were becoming involved in drugs and crime. It started with alcohol, then pills, then “harder stuff,” Langan says. By the time Langan was a teenager, his stepfather was turning to substance abuse to try to cope with his past. Langan’s stepfather never spoke of it to his son when he was alive, but he had endured terrible abuse as a child at a residential school. “He really instilled his work ethic into me-up until I was about 14,” says Langan. Langan’s father died when Langan was a young child, and Langan and his brothers were raised by their mother and stepfather: a logger, welder and social worker who passed along his values and traditional cultural knowledge to Langan. Almost no one at school knew that his home life was unravelling. SubmittedĮager to prove he was like everyone else, Langan made friends with a group of his non-Indigenous peers. Left to right: John Langan as a baby Langan joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets as an adolescent Langan with his mother, Lori-Lee Kitchemonia, after completing an upgrade to his high school education in Prince Albert Langan with his wife Bianca Ermine at the 2017 Saskatoon Vimy Dinner. “I was like, damn, this is going to be rough,” he recalls. A group of twelfth graders gave a mock war cry and sang “Ten Little Indians” as they walked past. He remembers walking into his first day of school in Canora alongside his older brothers, some of the only Indigenous students in the school. “It made me into a better police officer.”īorn in Regina, Sask., in 1988, Langan moved between more than a dozen different schools before his family settled in Canora, Sask., during his adolescence. But it’s the reason why I’m here today,” he says. But today, as a constable in the Saskatoon Police Service, the 30-year-old member of Keeseekoose First Nation no longer hides the uncomfortable parts of his past. It’s not a happy memory for Langan, who grew up exposed to racism, crime, violence and drug use. ![]() “Why did you do this, my son?” she asked. He found a pair of scissors, snipped off his braids and brought them to his mother. “In my mind, I was just wanting to be a normal kid,” Langan says. Langan’s mother stormed into the school to complain when she learned what happened, but to the six-year-old it only seemed to be another time he had caused trouble by being different. When he sat in front of the camera, he was scolded by the photographer for his appearance and told to tuck his hair behind his head. The morning of his Grade 1 school photos, Langan’s mother spent extra time fixing his long hair into a pair of perfect braids. JOHN LANGAN REMEMBERS the day he cut his braids.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |