“It's a very, very difficult thing to do, to run towards the threat when everybody else is running away, to put your life on the line, and to protect people. But I have no regrets there,” says Kevin Starblanket. He is from the Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation band in Saskatchewan and his traditional name means White Bear Man.

Starblanket graduated from high school and continued onto university determined to avoid substances, seeing the impact it had on his family. He had to keep away from those influences in his family and dealt with harsh criticism for doing so but he found other people who did support him.

For Starblanket, sports helped him feel good about himself. He attributes that to his warrior ancestors. “In a lot of ways, we're living, breathing legacies, and those are the wishes that our ancestors wanted to pass on to us. In a way, all our generations are walking miracles; basically, we shouldn't be here. Everything that we were forced to endure and we survived because we're strong,” he reflects.

He ended up teaching and coaching, finding he had a gift for breaking things down and explaining them. Starblanket went to the University of Calgary for his Bachelor of Education in secondary social studies with a minor in Political Science. He intended to become a lawyer, scoring high on the LSATS and getting accepted to many universities across Canada and the United States with full scholarships for wrestling to schools like University of Michigan, Oklahoma State, and St Francis Xavier. He ended up turning them down because he didn’t have money or family to support him if anything went wrong and went into teaching instead of law for financial reasons.

He taught at Siksika Nation until he had the opportunity to join the Calgary Police Service. Some of his family was unhappy with his choice, believing he was supporting the government but he saw it differently. “I look at it from the perspective I was able to protect people and help people and be a role model and uphold society,” Starblanket recalls and he did that for twenty five years, learning interpersonal, organizational and conflict resolution skills, as well as discipline.

From policing, Starblanket went on to work in child protection, investigating and helping families, receiving referrals from police, school boards and members of the public, seeing each one as a chance to protect and help people. He recalls how when he was younger child protection involved foster care far from family and how now there is more effort put into placement with family or community members to maintain access to language and culture.  

The self-defense, weapons and martial arts tactics Starblanket learned ended up being highly transferable to the movie industry and he ended up being part of major motion pictures like the Predator franchise. He was in Prey, where the entire cast and the stars were Indigenous from all over and he worked with them to get them into shape, taught them to use their weapons, to fight and get confident to perform and represent the Comanche people specifically. His second movie, filmed in Saudi Arabia, was called Mission Kandahar. He worked on explosions as a special effects technician.

From there, Starblanket became Dean of Academics at the Native Education College in Vancouver. He was so inspired by the work the College was doing that he relocated his family from Calgary and moved to a much smaller home in Vancouver to take it.  “I just felt that it would be rewarding enough for myself to be able to help some more people, that I just changed everything and moved here,” he explains.

“I try to stay a humble man. I think it's very, very important to understand that the only reason that I'm here is because of things that my ancestors and all my relations before me, have done to make sure that I'm here, that I draw breath and, you know, and always think to myself, every breath and every heartbeat is a gift, because you just never know when that that journey is going to end,” he muses.

Coming out of policing mentally well, Starblanket’s aware how many of his colleagues were not so lucky, struggling with PTSD. He attributes his wellness to his traditional values and teachings, time spent with elders and in ceremony and not rooting his identity in his job but rather in his roles as a father, husband and community member. Maintaining connection to community preserved his empathy and capacity to care.

At the same time, he’s raising his son to work for his goals as he raises money for his lacrosse sponsorships given he made the junior Roughnecks team. Starblanket is proud to be breaking the cycles he grew up with and to be providing a stable home environment for his son where he is learning values and traditions. His son is a proud Indigenous boy who is growing his hair and is also participating in his mother’s Jewish culture.

What he’s learned for himself over the years is to be mindful of whose opinions are important and for him, that’s elders, not naysayers. “When they smile and they hug you and they tell you they're proud of you. That's who you should listen to. And that's because that's what's important,” Starblanket imparts. Believing in oneself is also important to him. “It's all about making the right choices, putting the time and the work in, and believing that you can do it,” he affirms. “You can't always control the situation that your life happens to be at this time, what you can control is the decisions that you make for yourself. Life is about decisions. If you make the right decisions and you go along the right path, you can make things better for yourself. You can move beyond what your present circumstances are,” he continues.

To encourage Indigenous youth, he urges them to avoid substances and take care of themselves. “Just believe in yourself and and allow people to help you along on your journey,” he advises, thinking of all the times he was too proud to accept help and all the people who became his chosen family.

He spent his career running towards the threat when everybody else is running away, putting his life on the line to protect people and now Kevin Starblanket is helping people learn and grow academically in a culturally safe environment. From investigating explosive homes to creating explosions onset, he’s had challenging careers outside of teaching and policing. Breaking the cycles he was raised in now as the father of a proud Indigenous boy, he’s sharing traditional values and teachings and being the safe parent he needed growing up.

Thank you to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article!