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Myron Burger

Case Manager
MS Student Living
Shuswap/Shuswap Nation, Canada

I am from the Shuswap Nation, Williams Lake Indian Band, Williams Lake in British Columbia, Canada. I hold a B.A. in Native American Human Service from Salish Kootenai College in Montana, and Nechi certifications in Alcohol and Drug Education, Community Addictions Training, Family Violence and Advanced Counselor Program. I am a veteran of U.S. Navy Submarine Fleet. I was an Alcohol and Drug Counselor for the Williams Lake Indian Band and have worked with Native youth groups, Native youth camps as a counselor, organized youth-focused activities including Pow Wows, summer cultural camps, career fairs and leadership training.
Here at SFIS I am a Case Manager and work with the 7-8th grade boys in the Middle School dorm providing counseling and teaching life skills. Life skills entails focusing on curriculum surrounding bullying, making good choices, handling emotions, health relationships, conflicts communications and substance abuse education. I also do extracurricular activities with them including golfing and aikido. As an educator and a mentor, a lot of what I had learned growing up is what I’m able to bring to students. I’ve been sober for over 20 years and am able to bring to them my experience. I have alcoholism in my family and have been there, and I’m able to share with students that they are not alone in dealing with these issues. As a mentor reflecting my traditional background, I am very well balanced, emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. I’m healthy. And one of the things I teach our boys is how to be a leader, to steer them into making good choices, but I can also help them learn from their mistakes.
I enjoy working with the young people here, watching them grow. Because we see them from the 7th grade and watch them grow into young adults and then watch them graduate. There are these 3 particular boys who I saw who are going on to college. They were honor students, Gates Scholars and knowing that I was playing Scrabble with them in 7th grade, those thoughts, hopefully I had a little impact on their success.
Of the SFIS core values, I think tradition and culture are the most important, valuing where you come from, and teaching students it’s okay to be who they are. And that it’s okay to be in two worlds and learning how to balance that because it’s very difficult. I teach students, especially the boys that they are still warriors and they have to bring those values in, and when they do something wrong it represents their family. And they need to correct that. Long ago, as a young man they would have to hunt and bring food back. Today it’s going out and getting good grades and doing well in school. It’s about having those warrior values and bringing them into today.
My passion is working with youth and giving them the direction that they need to be successful. That’s what I like doing—working with young people. I would like to see a new generation realizing that the social issues on the reservations are correctable—that the drugs, alcohol, gangs and violence can be corrected. I had come from a community called Alkali Lake, which had violent alcohol addiction, but they achieved a 95% sobriety rate. This is due to our leadership—our spiritual leaders are sober and clean. We know that when we hire or put anyone into those positions that they are sober. We are very careful of who we put into interacting with our youth and are careful to address the inner core of the individuals working with our youth.