“Once I started to embrace being myself, that's when I actually started feeling more whole and more myself. That took me leaving and doing anything other than what I was currently doing when I was feeling stuck,” reflects Marika Sila. She is originally from Tuktoyaktuk and is Inuvialuit. Born in Yellowknife and raised in Canmore, Alberta, she’s currently based in Vancouver. A full time content creator on Instagram and Tiktok, she collaborates with brands to make money while trying to move into the film industry and create more long form content.

Her motivation to build a platform came after a life-changing trip to the Galapagos Islands, a destination on her bucket list, when she was 16. Sila met Greenpeace there and saw their radical environmental activism. She was inspired to advocate for the land, animals and climate change. Seeing Leonardo DiCaprio speak out about climate change, she wanted to build a platform to speak out about important issues. When she was 16, she started seeing Instagram and TikTok emerging and she decided to use her acting experience to build an advocacy platform.

After high school, Sila took a gap year to decide what she wanted because she was wrapped up in a friend group that distracted her from what she wanted. She signed up for Open Studies at Mount Royal to try things out. She took an eco tourism and outdoor leadership program and enjoyed it, though she didn’t finish the program. She also took acting and found that’s what she wanted to do. She moved to Vancouver and enrolled in an acting for film and television program in 2014 and then recently took production and director training at Vancouver Film School.

When it comes to her advice for Indigenous students considering leaving their home communities, Sila says, “I think that this world has so much to offer, and I don't know where I would be right now if I hadn't had the courage to just step out of my community.” She loves the excitement of travel but struggles with doubt and checks in with her intuition as to whether she’s making the right choice.  “Now traveling has become one of my biggest passions, and I just love to see the world. I love to see other cultures. I love what other cultures teach me, and I love that traveling makes me appreciate home that much more. It makes my bed feel so much more comfortable. It makes life at home feel so much more of a treat. That's the one thing that I love the most about traveling is coming home and being excited to come home,” she gushes.

“I would say just to anybody that wants to go traveling, go and do it, because it's been the best thing that I've been doing for myself, and it's the one thing that I love so much. I think that when you're able to experience the world, it's such a beautiful and unique experience to be able to see other people's cultures. It's so worth taking that jump, even though it might be scary,” Sila concludes.

When it comes to obstacles, if there’s something stressing her out or something she can’t stop thinking about or is uncomfortable, Sila tends to consider it a no. Sometimes she meditates on options when she’s trying to decide, to see which choice brings her more peace, feels right or causes stress. Otherwise, writing things down can help her choose.

If Sila could give a message to her youngster self it would be, “Always listen to your intuition. Work hard while you have energy. Just be yourself. Don't be afraid to be yourself. Be okay with being your own coach. Don't get caught up wishing that you had someone to teach you to do something. Be okay with learning it yourself.”

When Sila was starting hoop dancing, she wished she had someone to teach her things but she realized she had to coach herself. She relied on the self-discipline she learned as a cross country ski racer for fifteen years of her life, when she spent hours training in the cold. That self-discipline carried her through when motivation ran out.

“I realized early on that I had to be my own coach, and I had to hold myself accountable, and I had to rely on my self discipline over my motivation.”

To take care of her mental health, Sila works on finding work-life balance. While she is happiest when she is working on something, she can overwork herself. “Balance can often be challenging for me, because working hard makes me feel good. I love being able to work towards something that I'm passionate about,” she explains. Dance is another way she copes through hard times. It’s her creative outlet and she describes it as her best friend. She also loves martial arts, art, drawing and painting.

Sila encourages people to find and pursue their passions to take care of themselves. While she was good at cross-country skiing, it wasn’t something she was passionate about. She found she was under a lot of pressure from coaches and her community. She placed in the top three often because she was very athletic and she saw a future in it but she found it too intense and didn’t like going out in the cold to race. These days she likes to ski with family and the dogs as a way to spend time together without the pressure of racing.

When it comes to inspiration, Sila is inspired by other women in her industry like Michelle C Smith who does martial arts, status and special skills. She’s also inspired by the dancer Vanessa Seco. Overall, authentic, powerhouse women who have established styles and are not afraid to be themselves inspire her. Indigenous women who are connected to community and going after their dreams, especially in the film industry, also motivate her. Community and family stories drive her, too.

A life-changing trip to the Galapagos Islands inspired Marika Sila to build a platform to advocate for what matters and now she’s expanding that into a film career. Travel is a passion that nurtured her appreciation for home, her curiosity about the world and sparked her Tiktok and Instagram brand collaboration work. Driven to work hard and led by her intuition, she’s forging a path towards the things that light her up and sharing what she cares about with the world.

Thank you to Alison Tedford Seaweed for writing this article!