Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Open Ears, Open Heart

Language, linguistics, and a lot of listening—how working with the Kluane First Nation community created one PSW’s personal commitment to care

Guide Magazine

By Alison Brown

SARAH WYLIE IS A personal support worker (PSW) working at Roberta Place in Barrie, Ontario. She spends her days caring for our elderly—providing for their every need with the love and attentiveness that is the hallmark of every compassionate PSW.

But Sarah brings a unique background to her job that informs her every interaction—with the elderly and her coworkers alike. In another life, she worked in a remote First Nations community in the Yukon (population 150) in language revitalization programming and then in eldercare.

I spoke with Sarah about her experiences in the First Nations community and how she incorporates the lessons she learned into her job as a PSW.

What led you to working in the Yukon?
My mom and stepdad moved up to the Yukon when I was 17. When my stepdad retired from the military, he wanted to move back to where he’s from and lead a more relaxed and quiet lifestyle. I used to visit them every summer, and I ended up working there, too.

In university, I studied linguistics and specialized in language revitalization programming. I also have a concurrent certification to teach English as a second language.

After graduating university, I ended up working with the Kluane First Nation in Burwash Landing in the Yukon. They were creating a language society to help better implement language programming in the area.

What did your job entail?
I worked as a secretariat, but because of my education in linguistics, I was asked for input on the programming and educational materials for preserving the Southern Tutchone language. A lot of First Nations’ languages are verbally passed down; there’s no written documentation. If a language isn’t passed down, it’s considered a dead language, and they had very few elders who spoke the language in the region.

I worked closely with the elders to get written documentation of the language. They needed my input about what educational materials work best for certain age groups, and I helped create language placemats and lesson plans for daycares.

What challenges did you face?
I was just 21—who wants to listen to a 21-year-old kid? The elders were like, “You don’t have a lot of experience, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. This is our language.”

It took a lot of patience and humility. I had to have open ears and an open heart to listen to their concerns and explain the project and how we could work together, but also not work past what they were willing to accept.

How did this work lead to healthcare?
I did the language revitalization work for about a year. When the funding ran out, I needed a job, and there was a need for home support workers. I thought it would be a great fit for me because I already had a relationship with the elders, and I knew the kind of help they needed. I thought I could help them in a different kind of way.

The care is so different from the type of work I do now as a PSW in a long term care home in southern Ontario. They’re not insured for personal care, so you’re not washing the elders or anything like that. Instead,

I was helping them around the house, making sure they had groceries, chopping their firewood, and taking them to medical appointments.

After two years of being a home support worker, I wanted to do more for my community. I ended up moving back to Ontario and going to school for personal support work so I could understand more of what people need versus what they want.

How is your PSW work similar to your work with the First Nations elders?
Both roles require a lot of patience. If you’re not patient with a person who has dementia, they can lash out at you. You have to learn to stop. To pay attention to body language. To listen. Sometimes, it’s more important to listen than it is to instantly react. Sometimes, all people need is an ear to listen.

The same is true of being a CLAC steward, which is a new role for me. The biggest part is listening to your coworkers and also knowing when and how to fight for them and get them what they need.

How is it different?
What’s different is how that First Nation treated their elders and how some people here tend to. They treat their elders with a lot of respect, because they know the elders have the knowledge of an entire lifetime.

Here, I’ve observed that the more someone ages, the more they’re treated like a child. Especially people with dementia. They may have moments where they act childlike, but they’re not children. And despite their diagnosis, they deserve our respect. They still deserve to be known as a person—not their diagnosis.

Up in the Kluane First Nation, they don’t have facilities like we have down here. I think the closest long term care facility is in Whitehorse, which is about three hours away from the community. These seniors all live independently, which is why they need home support.

Their families would come in and give them personal care; they didn’t really want an outsider coming in and being that intimate with their loved one. It’s just a very different culture.

Did you experience some culture shock when you went from home support care to PSW work?
Being trained as a PSW was quite the eye-opener. In long term care, there’s never enough staff. No matter what you do, there’s never enough time.

When I was doing home support care, I could sit with the elders and share a cup of tea with them, listen to their stories. They just loved having the company and a listening ear while you helped them around the house.

But being a PSW is just go, go, go. The government mandates a certain amount of time to be spent with each resident, but the sad reality is that you don’t have time to sit with and listen to them.

In most facilities, you have two or three hours to get 32 residents up and ready for breakfast, and that’s between three or four staff. You have maybe 15 minutes to get each resident up, get them dressed, brush their teeth, and get them in their chairs and out to the front before you’re on to the next person. It’s very impersonal.

A lot of us still really try to take our time, talk with them, listen to them, and treat them with the respect they deserve. But when you’re that time constrained, it’s really difficult.

What do you miss the most about your time in the Yukon?
I definitely do miss the pace of life up there. It’s much slower and more community-centred.

Everyone really takes care of each other there. That’s something we could all learn to do. Listen to each other better, and take good care of everyone in our community.

YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE

“As an adult, I learned how to bead while sitting at my mother’s side,” says Sarah Wylie. “She is my inspiration in my art. She taught me most of what I know about beading patches, necklaces, earrings, and of course, my wall scrolls that I create on the loom. Beading is a way not only to connect with my mother but with my aunt and with the elders in the community. Once a week, there were craft nights where many of the women would get together and just craft. I would choose to bead alongside my mom, but with a modern twist. Instead of using more traditional patterns, I would create my own. We don’t have a history of beading in my family, so we don’t have patterns that are passed down from one matriarch to the next like some of the elders in the community. Thus, we have to create our own. This particular pair I made while thinking of a sunflower, my mom’s favourite flower. I actually call the pattern ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ ”

10 YUKON FUN FACTS

1.   At 483,450 square kilometres, the Yukon is as big as Spain and three times as big as England.
2.   The Yukon is home to 14 First Nations speaking 8 distinct languages.
3.   Indigenous peoples have lived in the Yukon for 12,000 years.
4.   Of Canada’s 20 tallest mountains, 17 are in the Yukon, including Mount Logan, the tallest in the country and second tallest in North America at 5,959 metres (19,550 feet).
5.   There are more moose in the Yukon (70,000) than people (40,000).
6.   The Yukon is home to the world’s smallest desert, the Carcross Desert, which is only 2.6 square kilometres.
7.   The Yukon River—the “great river”—is Canada’s second longest at 3,190 kilometres and is where the territory got its name.
8.   The Yukon Goldrush in 1896 saw some 100,000 prospectors from all walks of life migrate to the territory to strike it rich.
9.   The White Pass & Yukon railroad route, built during the gold rush, is one of 36 world civil engineering wonders.
10.   The lowest temperature ever recorded in North America was recorded in 1947 at Snag, Yukon, when the temperature dropped to -63° C (-83° F). Brrr!

Sources: travel2next.com, travelyukon.com

Sarah Wylie's bead work

Open Ears, Open Heart

YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE

10 YUKON FUN FACTS

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