Niky Tevely, Eco Resort Business Owner
My name is Niky Tevely, I am the President of Sustutdene Eco Resort. We are located at 111300 Leo Creek FSR, Takla Lake BC. I am Sustutdene. Our people were renamed “Takla Nation” and relocated to Takla Landing, BC. I am next in line to receive my mother’s Hereditary Name, and I am proud to be in training to receive this name, and I look forward to becoming a leader within my community.
My daily routine revolves around caring for my children before anything else. On an average day, I get my kids ready for their day, get them to and from school and their afterschool sports/activities. When I am not working as a full-time mom and part-time athlete, I am home developing my business. I have done things like working with our website development team in creating our website, organizing invoices for our accountant, making bill payments, creating social media content, and working with clients in organizing and accommodating trips to our resort. I also take care of other administrative duties, purchasing supplies, assisting in construction planning and details, and working on my own horsemanship.
The thing I love most about being a business owner is that it reconnects me and my children to our traditional territories. It reconnects me to my community, and it gives me an opportunity to meet and create relationships with other Indigenous people from surrounding communities. It allows me to educate non-Indigenous people in our traditional ways of knowing and living. We have an opportunity to support other Indigenous people in their healing and reconnection efforts. We also get to share this wealth of beauty with people from all over the world, showing them what the Indigenous people of Canada have to offer.
I took Tourism 11 and 12 in high school, and it was then that I dreamt of opening a resort with horses in my traditional territory. After completing high school, my life took a turn, and I became a mother. I still went on to obtain a Bachelor of Science in Psychology at UNBC in 2019. It was during my time at UNBC that I realized how disconnected from my culture I had become. At this time, I had been away from my reserve for 15 years, and I believe it was divine intervention that led me to an opportunity to start my business, as I had imagined all those years ago.
Something I wish someone had told me when I was a teen is that it is up to me to heal from the intergenerational trauma passed down from the Residential Schools my parents and grandparents attended. I wish I had begun my self-development journey as a teen because I would have learned how to love myself, forgive myself and avoid the toxic cycles that I was exposed to. I am so glad I put in the effort to learn how to heal and end these negative cycles for myself and for my children.
I moved off the reserve at the age of 15 to attend high school, which wasn’t provided on my reserve. As a young girl, living away from my mom and community, I experienced culture shock when moving to the city of Prince George. I had so many lessons to learn outside of those taught in high school. One thing I learned during this time is the importance of organized sports and activities. I feel lucky to have joined a boxing club (Inner City Boxing) in high school because it kept me out of trouble. It also provided a safe place to learn self-defence and offered numerous lessons in self-discipline, which gave me confidence in myself and my abilities. It was so influential that even at the age of 38, I am still an athlete and even went as far as winning a Gold in the 2023 WKU World Championships in kickboxing.
I have overcome so many challenges in life that I could write a book! I think the thing that helped me most was using positive coping mechanisms starting at a very young age. I journaled and turned to sports to cope with challenges as a teen. As an adult, I turned to self-development books and found that reconnecting to my culture and language provided the most healing.
Walking in two worlds as an Indigenous Woman has been challenging. I have been very lucky to find people who are accepting of me and my culture. I am lucky to have a strong mother and mother-in-law, who both served as examples on how to conduct myself and how to be assertive when I am not being treated with respect. I have learned to set boundaries and to remove people from my life who are not contributing to my life in a positive way and sometimes that includes family.
I am lucky to have a career that brings people in from all around the world to show them firsthand who Indigenous people are and what we have to offer. I get to dismantle stereotypes and educate people on Canada’s real history surrounding the genocide the Indigenous people here survived. We have an opportunity to show them how amazing our people are and how beautiful our cultures are.
I believe being an Indigenous Woman has created a relentless resilience within me. I excel at problem-solving and thinking creatively to achieve anything I want.
As a woman, I think there is an enormous pressure or expectation to follow the traditional colonial path, which often includes marrying young and having children. Having two daughters of my own, I will encourage them to prioritize their education and career before becoming mothers. It's important to note that having children does not prevent you from obtaining education or a career, but it certainly does make it more challenging. I would also recommend searching for positive role models and being careful about the company you keep. It has been shown that your salary is the average of your five closest friends. It is also shown that you become like the people you surround yourself with, and this includes the online content you consume. te
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