By Bryan Eneas

Well-known archer teaching students to shoot for the sky

Jun 25, 2016 | 12:55 PM

Montreal Lake Cree Nation is trying to become a pioneer for youth reform through sports and a popular community member is taking the lead to make it happen. 

Stanley Bird is a champion of the community’s archery program. He is a five-time Canadian national champion himself, and a gold medal winner of the North American Indigenous Games (NAIG), the Northern archery coach of the Saskatchewan Summer Games and the coach of Team Saskatchewan for NAIG. To Bird, none of that matters unless his children succeed.

“The love of archery, I’ve always had that… I’m kinda the guy who is behind the scenes working, that’s the kind of guy I am. Everyone else can take the credit and I’m okay with that. So long as our kids win medals, in my heart I’m like ‘yeah, yeah!’ I’m not the kind of guy that wants to take credit,” he said.

For Bird, the most exciting part about being part of NAIG is working with students through the try-out and development period.

“Archery is 90 per cent mental. It’s only 10 per cent mechanics, so you have to build up their mental capacity and how they deal with pressure,” Bird said.

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Bird is a residential school survivor, having left the school system at the age of 12. After experiencing bullying throughout his life, at the time, he recognized that he himself was becoming a bully. When he dropped out, his grandfather, who raised him, told him that he still needed to be a productive member of the family.

Left in the bush with nothing but a bow for a month, Bird had to live off the land for survival. One month later, he returned with dried duck, rabbits, and moose meat for his family.

“I became a provider for my family, I brought meat home for my family and I provided for them. I still do that today, this past weekend I killed three moose on my trapline and provided meat for my community,” Bird said.

It is through these cultural teachings that Bird found his love for archery.

Bird uses 40 years of archery knowledge and natural ability to coach students. His day-to-day work, working with broken families and “at-risk” youth as a child support worker at Montreal Lake Cree Nation, has given him a solid foundation to make an impact with children who are in vulnerable positions.

His first priority is making archery fun, where he said most instructors simply shoot at a target and expect their students to learn how to do it. He will run a variety of exciting drills to keep the students on their toes, and to keep it light-hearted.

“When you make it fun for them, after, when you go to the shooting range, their shooting is excellent. Because they’re having fun because they enjoy shooting now; they’re not doing it because they have to do it, they’re doing it because they want to do it,” Bird explained.

It isn’t just fun and games in drills though, it’s about making a positive impact with the youth according to Bird. Because archery requires such a high mental capacity in handling stress and pressure, Bird said he must first work with the youth to build self-confidence and self-esteem.

The only time Bird doesn’t get along with his students is when they show up drunk or on drugs. If he so much as smells alcohol on them they are not allowed to participate. He said that this has helped some of them who are trying to battle their addictions.

“Alcohol and drugs, they’ll really mess you up, they can make you frustrated and angry. I don’t want them anywhere near our kids with that kind of attitude… It’s like holding an egg, you gotta make sure you’re not gonna to drop it, that’s how I feel about these kids.”

Bryan.Eneas@jpbg.com

On Twitter, @BryanEneas