Andy Cook is a member of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band. He grew up on the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation reserve in Southend, Saskatchewan, where he says much of his childhood was spent outdoors.

“When I was growing up, a lot of the community was living off the land by fishing, hunting and gathering. I took part in all of those activities and we learned at an early age to maintain our traditional practices” said Andy. “Southend is a Cree community and everybody spoke the language.”

Andy has worked with the Ministry of Environment since 1992. He started out as an initial attack firefighter before becoming a conservation officer, a position he held for about a decade. Since 2005, he’s worked as an ecological management specialist with the lands branch within the Ministry of Environment.

During this time, Andy lived in Pelican Narrows, Prince Albert, La Ronge and finally Regina, where he is still based today.

Pelican Narrows is where Andy first became involved in SGEU, attending several local meetings. Then, after moving to La Ronge, he attended a Local 1121 proposals gathering meeting where his colleagues convinced him to try getting in as a Legal Inspection & Regulatory (LIR) component rep on bargaining council.

“I agreed and put my name forward,” said Andy. “Lo and behold, I was successful. Then I was successful the next time it came around.”

Andy went on to serve as LIR rep for the La Ronge local for 10 years. He became more involved in his local during that time, serving as local secretary, treasurer, then chair over an approximately 10-year span. He also served on Provincial Council for around a decade in addition to spending one term on the Long-Term Disability Supervisory Committee. He is currently a Provincial Council alternate.

Andy has been a member of SGEU’s Indigenous Committee for the last four years. When asked about the committee’s work, he said they have made good progress in advocating for Indigenous issues in the union.

“We’ve been working with SGEU on awareness of Indigenous culture and I think we’ve come a long way,” he said. “We take part in Indigenous Peoples Day and we work with communities like Batoche to sponsor classes to tour the site. We try to highlight and share upcoming Indigenous events or days like National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Indigenous Storytelling Month.”

He said the committee is planning to update the Learning Development 70: Unionism on Turtle Island, which will be offered to all SGEU members.

“Within the next couple days, we have a committee meeting and we'll be spending two full days on LD 70. We are working on the material to bring it up to where it can be offered for training in the coming years. It’s one of the bigger items we’ve worked on as a committee.”

“A lot of people within Canada, especially some new Canadians coming from different countries, don’t know what occurred here...”

When asked about what members can do to support the work of the committee, Andy said the membership should continue to advance Truth and Reconciliation in the union.

“A lot of people within Canada, especially some new Canadians coming from different countries, don’t know what occurred here,” Andy explained. “So we need to push Truth and Reconciliation to educate them on what happened. Our culture has been marginalized and Indigenous people are struggling with that and trying to keep their identity, their culture and their language.”