A grandmother from Yorkton, Sask., has acquired quite the social media following with her wholesome cooking videos. “I started and within a few months I was up to 25,000 [followers]. I went up, and now I’m at 220,000. It just kind of crept up like that,” the creator, who goes by “Grandma Sherry” on TikTok, told CTV News. Sherry has always loved teaching and cooking. At first, she would invite her family and friends over, but soon she took it to the world wide web. “One day [my granddaughter] said to me, ‘You know, Grandma, can I start you on TikTok and tape all these stories so that someday, when you’re no longer with us, we can listen to them like the other grandchildren,’” Sherry recalled. In the beginning, she shared teaching and smudging videos, which were already popular. It was not until her niece suggested she upload a TikTok of herself making bannock that things changed. “I said, ‘Oh, there are so many people that make bannock on here,’” Sherry recalled. But she made the video anyway, and it went viral. “And I said, ‘Oh my goodness.’ Well, I didn’t even really understand what was going on, but I called my granddaughter and she explained it to me,” she said. And so, her social media fame began. “When I first started, I used to put makeup on and everything, but it was exhausting,” Grandma Sherry said with a smile. “I found out people didn’t care whether I had makeup on or not. They wanted to hear about my experiences on the reserve and growing up. They wanted to hear the history of our people, and they didn’t care how I looked.” Much of her inspiration comes from her own grandparents. “All I learned from my grandparents was the love that they had,” she told CTV News. “I grew up in a one-room little log house. I never thought that I was living in poverty or that there were things in life that I didn’t have. I never thought that.” Originally from Manitoba, she started school and moved to live with her parents when she was seven years old. “It was then that I integrated into the white world. But the odd thing is that my mind was always back at the beginning, and there were many times that I came upon things that hurt me, like when someone would make hurtful remarks. But I remembered what my grandmother taught us, to just be kind and not react. Be loving and treat people the way you would want to be treated,” Grandma Sherry shared. She now hopes to inspire other people to focus on the goodness in their lives. And for her, these are not just words. Years ago, she helped a teenager in trouble, who later became the mayor of Yorkton. “I moved into their basement with their two sons,” Mayor Aaron Kienle said. “They took me in for a good period of time until I could kind of get my feet under me.” Kienle said he is not sure he would be living the happy and fulfilled life he has today if Sherry and her family had not taken him in at such a critical time. “She’s such a special lady, and what she did for me is something I know she’s done for so many others. [She’s] just very caring, very generous, very supportive, and non-judgmental,” he said. Grandma Sherry is set to debut her own television cooking show, using the language of her ancestors, Dakota, while continuing to share wholesome cooking videos on TikTok for years to come. RELATED STORY: Meet the Indigenous influencer who shares traditional knowledge through TikTok
