In a world that is increasingly filled with chaos, participation in the arts can be a valuable resource to maintain positive relationships, combat mental health issues, and give a sense of belonging. Our friend Rebecca Burnham from Summit Stages shares an interview she conducted with Jerry (J.J.) First Charger Jr. about his work with at-risk youth. We redacted some paragraphs for space, but you can read the full article here.
Jerry (J.J) First Charger Jr. is a Blackfoot man from Kainai who is a hero to many young people, including some of my own children. I first met Jerry when I was helping in a community-building collaboration between Blackfoot and settler high schoolers in our area. Jerry was great with the kids, and enthusiastically helped them develop confidence in themselves and each other. I was also wowed by the breadth of his talents and his willingness to share them with us. He competently taught break-dancing, stage-combat, Indigenous singing, improv, acting and more.
More recently, Jerry’s dance crew, the Westwind Thunders, made Global News (a Canadian network) on a dance tour where they mixed breakdancing and Indigenous styles of dance, (including hoop, fancy, grass, chicken and jingle dress and fancy shawl). I was able to attend one of their performances and was almost brought to tears. I was taken aback by the skill and stamina of the dancers, the joy I saw on the faces of the kids, and the beauty of the dances, especially those performed by Indigenous students in full regalia. My son, who had carried water for the Thunders working as an EA, said it was just as impressive to see how Jerry worked with the kids, that he “leads through pure rapport. The kids would do anything for him, and because of him they know they can do anything.”
I was surprised and moved by the spiritual roots of Jerry’s approach to teaching and the degree to which personal experience has helped him relate and help so many young people and communities who have endured generations of persecution and personal trauma. Here is his story.
Jerry was twenty-two years old when he woke up in a drunk tank in Cardston, Alberta. This was not a first-time experience. He didn’t remember what brought him there–but that wasn’t new either. Only a few months earlier, he’d gotten drunk to the point of black out at a family wedding and wound up severely beating up his little brother, only to wake up the next day with no memory of the conflict. It terrified and deeply shamed him that his brother could have died at his hands. Not knowing how to cope, he’d retreated even further into drugs and alcohol.
Jerry asked the guard what had happened and learned that he’d been at the home of some friends who had wound up calling the police and did not want him coming back. He didn’t know what he’d done, but it was once again threatening his relationships. Why did he keep messing up like this?
He had tried to get help and only gotten more alienated. He felt abandoned and angry at his family, friends and society. All of this had brought him here, sitting on the cold, hard floor of a drunk tank, scared and hopeless. In his distress, he prayed, and he heard an answer, an invitation to change his life. That wasn’t happening. He’d seen friends and family go to treatment, only to relapse as soon as they came out, a month, or even a year later.
He thought about how his life seemed like a waste to this point. He wanted to be remembered as a good person, who helped others out, not as a menace to society, leaving wreckage in his wake. But he knew he couldn’t do it. He was too weak and he would fail.
The Creator said, “You can change. Trust me.”
“But how?” he asked.
Again, he heard, “It can be done. Just trust me.”
He had no arguments left. He agreed he would change, but only if the Creator agreed to never leave him. “Because if you do, I will fail.”
“J.J., I will never leave you. I will always be there for you.”
A few hours later, Jerry walked out of the drunk tank, never to return, “because of the love of the Creator and because I called my spirit back,” he says. He returned to church and the Creator, true to His promise, has been with him ever since.
Seven years of sobriety later, Jerry got a call from a friend who said the Young Offenders Centre in Lethbridge was looking for a youth mentor to run a drumming and dance program for young inmates. He taught the youth inmates to sing, drum and dance. He found this to be a gateway to connection. He noticed that the youth came to trust him first as their music and movement mentor with whom they had fun, and that opened the door to honest discussions about personal responsibility and the power to change. Drumming, he has since learned, is correlated with resilience among war-torn people in Africa. He didn’t know that then, but he started seeing that same burgeoning resilience in the youth with whom he was working.
Music, dance and drama gave him a natural way to teach the inmates that making mistakes is not a good reason to be beaten down. “Everybody makes mistakes. That’s how you learn and grow.” This allowed him to teach about choice and consequence as a learning rather than a punitive experience. Instead of using language like “good and evil” that tended to activate inmates’ shame and their fear of rejection, he taught about choosing between positive energy and negative energy. Jerry told the inmates that, “before you can help your children, you better fix yourself, take on some personal responsibility for your actions, be mindful and accountable.”
Inmates loved it. They told him that his program was a sharp contrast to the rest of their prison experience. Among the things they said were, “We love coming to your programs because you make us think,” “You made me feel like I was not in jail. You took the walls away from me,” and “You helped me enjoy myself and learn that life can be fun again.” It was a novel approach to correction, but Jerry believed the system should be focused on rehabilitation, not punitive measures.
Jerry began to work with kids who were struggling to cope with chaotic home lives, and with parents who feared having their battles with addiction, anger, and so forth revealed to a counselor in a system that they didn’t trust. Once again, music and dance were the gateway he needed to get into a position of trust from which he could help.
One of the key tools he uses now is BBoying and BGirling (breakdancing). He has learned that it helps kids self-regulate. Breakdancing and hip hop were popularized as an antidote to violence in the Bronx, New York, when gang violence was so pervasive that you could get killed for crossing the street wearing the wrong colors. Former gang leader African Bambaataa persuaded other leaders to embrace the creative expression offered by hip hop as a way of pulling back from the brink of annihilation. Gang members started settling turf wars with dance battles instead of weapons. It allowed them to flex their muscles and show off how tough they were, but in a way that left them alive to better themselves and compete again another day. “The old school BBoys said that they were [so] busy practicing for the next battle that they did not have time to do criminal activities.”
He speaks about one struggling student whose family would not let their boy anywhere near counseling. But they were happy to let Jerry teach him breakdancing and that helped the boy develop the supports he needed and the self-regulation skills to cope better at school.
Jerry cites new understanding of the therapeutic power of play. “The experts in the field of therapy are pointing out that dance, art and play are effective tools for dealing with trauma. That is where the healing happens.”
