Ojibwe-owned business promotes confidence
By Rick Garrick
GARDEN RIVER FIRST NATION — Turtle Concepts now provides services “with a new twist” after quickly adapting to the changing world when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020.
“We were on a major tour in northern Ontario from the James Bay over to the Couchiching-Fort Frances area when the pandemic hit us and like everybody else, we had to fall in and try to get home,” says Dave Jones, founder of Turtle Concepts and Garden River citizen. “It was a good time, in the beginning, to have a rest and refresh our energy and look at our approach and how were we going to survive this.”
Jones says his previous experience as a teacher and his education and confidence enabled them to be inventive and creative and to “come back with a new twist,” noting that the Turtle Concepts team includes his brother Daniel Jones, co-founder of Turtle Concepts, and a couple of interns.
“We kept the same amount of energy, the same amount of creativity in our online presentations, but we took time to develop them,” Jones says. “We did a lot of research, we had to learn like the rest of the world about Zoom and high speed, so I immediately phoned for an increased Internet service so I could broadcast. So we did that initial pause, how are we going to do it, and then we came back with greatness and our programs have survived wonderfully and we are extremely grateful for the creativity and the gifts the Creator gave us to come back with a new format — same content, new format.”
Jones says one of their new initiatives was a Turtle Talks program with guests attending virtually.
“Doing Turtle Talks kept a lot of people engaged because people needed to feel good,” Jones says. “We launched those kinds of programs where they watched me make bread like everybody else, where they watched me go outside and make gardens, where they watched me go outside and use tools that I didn’t have the time to in my normal job pre-pandemic.”
Jones says they also did a program on addictions called Get Addicted to encourage people to rethink their ideas on addiction.
“So we talk about the unspoken things creatively and we encouraged people to get addicted to loving, to caring, to sharing with the hopes that it will prevent negative addictions,” Jones says. “Dan and I talk about being addicted to confidence, being addicted to happiness, and people needed to hear that is OK.”
Jones says they also did a Parenting Relief program, which is still going “extremely well.”
“It wasn’t parenting, it was relief from parenting because parents were [home] with their kids and parents became teachers,” Jones says. “So all the classic things that the news and the world was trying to understand, we were able to give back to our Turtle families, and new requests came from out of the woodwork — there were so many different communities that finally understood the magic of Turtle Concepts.”
Jones says they also took people down the Garden River in kayaks.
“People got to see me on the land,” Jones says. “We did national conferences and people enjoyed the zest — we had jigging, we had goose calling, all the stuff that people do but because people knew our legacy of how we present ideas, it was easy to come back into the Zoom world and just give back.”
Jones adds that he accepted a teaching job during the pandemic where he taught Anishinaabemowin to Grade 9 and Grade 12 students and a careers course for Grade 9 students.
“People have come to know Turtle Concepts for promoting confidence and our technique to promote that involves what is confidence, when did you hear about confidence, how does confidence look, how does confidence sound, but more importantly how do you respond when you hear a confident person,” Jones says. “That has always been Turtle Concepts most successful program, our technique to building confidence and self-esteem in our clients.”