Hello! My name is Shayla Desjarlais. I'm from Lumsden, Saskatchewan, Canada but currently live in the Queen City (Regina). I attended high school at Archbishop M.C. O'Neill High School where I was first introduced to New Media. I am an Adobe Certified Associate in Photoshop and a Cinemania and BIFFY award recipent for a New Media project. After high school I took a year off then enrolled in the New Media Communications program at Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology. I graduated in May of 2013 with two certificates. I currently attend the First Nations University of Canada taking my Bachelor of Arts degree in Indian Art.

I was raised in a proud Métis household that was very traditional and taught me how to be proud of who I am which gave me a better understanding of my identity. I can remember jigging my heart out for all to see when I was a little girl and watching my aunty make bannock and fry bannock and hoping I’d get the first piece. I was nominated for a Sasktel Aboriginal Youth Award in the Science & Technology category in my senior year of high school. I volunteered religiously at Regina Métis Sports and Culture, the building which my grandfather, the patriarch of my family, had previously owned before transferring it to GDI. I was a youth ambassador for the Aboriginal Peoples Pavilion at the Mosaic festival from 2009-2010 and danced at the pavilion from 2009-2011. I danced in my grandmother’s traditional Métis dance group, the Riel Reelers until they disbanded in 2012.

​In my spare time I like to doodle on napkins, cook dinners, sprawl on the couch and watch reality tv, spend hours upon hours reading blogs, hangout with my laptop, sleep, watch a ton of movies in one sitting, and talk to my mom on the phone.

I love to look at beautiful things such as floral arrangements, antiques, sofia coppola movies, pastel colours, doilies, seashells, nature photographs (especially space and animals), my boyfriend James, and duran duran.