Beloved teacher remembered 

Krissy Goodleaf will be remembered for many things: her athletic spirit, her love of the future generations of Kahnawa’kehró:non that she helped raise as a teacher, and her pure adoration of her family to name just a few.

For many of her loved ones, it’s her smile and the memory of her laugh that’s provided comfort in recent days, as the community comes to terms with her tragic and sudden passing.

“If you ever had the privilege to even hear her trademark laugh, you’d know that laugh could only come from someone who was living and experiencing the true joys in life,” Goodleaf’s Kahnawake Survival School (KSS) teaching partner, Heather White-McGregor, told a packed church at Goodleaf’s funeral this week.

She recounted how Goodleaf was an excellent singer - “she never met a karaoke microphone that she didn’t love” - and how she was always the life and soul of the party. She shared stories, like how one time when she, her husband Shoronia, Krissy, and Krissy’s husband Jeff Brown found themselves squealing with laughter on the children’s bumper cars at a Mexican festival, and how most recently she had shared the stage with Krissy for the Turtle Island Theatre Company’s show Murder With Ghosts.

Each night of the show, Goodleaf had painted on her unibrow darker and wider, asking White-McGregor with a playful smirk, “Is my eyebrow too much?”

White-McGregor shared her eulogy with The Eastern Door.

“When I really think about who Krissy Goodleaf was, I can’t help but think that she was a woman who absolutely, wholeheartedly lived her life,” she said.

Goodleaf’s death on December 30 was unexpected, and the family asks that people respect their privacy as they deal with their loss. Her sister Suzy Goodleaf said she is appreciative of the outpouring of love and support from the community.

“It was really wonderful to be able to see people appreciate her life and what she had done, and to hear it,” Suzy said. “It was very powerful to see the amount of people that came to her funeral and gave their support.”

Suzy said that it was especially poignant in the context of the difficulties Krissy and her family had back in 2014, when she and Brown, who is non-Native, were evicted from the community with their young children during residency disputes.

“At the time, and since then, she’s wondered what kind of support she had from the community,” Suzy said. “She had the one extreme of being ostracized in the community to what we saw, which is how much people obviously loved and cared about her.”

Krissy was propelled by that experience, as upsetting as it was, to focus on bringing people together, Suzy said.

“I know it’s hard to bring it up in this situation, but it was definitely something that made life really difficult for her, and kind of upped her efforts to make sure that people didn’t feel excluded,” Suzy said. “Her work on inclusion was really from that place of not wanting people to experience what she had experienced.”

Krissy was known for treating people with kindness and spearheaded many anti-bullying and inclusion initiatives at KSS – including in 2010, when she was involved in the Live Like a Champion program, where students were focused on bettering their lives through athletics.

Now, the program is being revived in her honour, with the creation of the Krissy Goodleaf Live Like a Champion Scholarship Fund.

“It’s going to enable students to continue on their path and with the legacy that she carried, and that’s what she wanted for all of them, was to feel like champions,” said Sha’teiohseriio Patton, associate principle at KSS. “I think the scholarship is a really beautiful way of honouring her name and her power as an educator, as a person, and as a community member. She was such a beautiful person, and it’s going to be an honour for any student who receives that scholarship.”

Kahnawake Education Center (KEC) director of education Falen Iakowennaiéwas Jacobs said that supports have been put in place for students and staff, including traditional medicines from Otsi’tsakèn:ra Charlie Patton as well as talking circles, and group and individual therapy, and other outlets.

“She’s irreplaceable. There’s absolutely nobody like Krissy Goodleaf, and we’re definitely going to feel the impacts of her loss,” Jacobs said. “But we’re going to work together not only at KSS but as the KEC, to continue her legacy, and her work, and the passion she had for the betterment of the community. We’re dedicated to that.”

Krissy’s legacy will live on in the teaching staff at KSS too - her mentorship is what molded so many teachers into who they are today, White-McGregor said.

“Once Krissy became my teaching partner, my career as an educator, and my life, was kicked into high gear. She was the most perfect kind of mentor or partner any new teacher could ask for,” she said.

“It was this determination to change things, and the wholehearted belief that this change was attainable, that gave Krissy this special inimitable power.”

Krissy often put the needs of her students before her own, a similar attitude that she embodied at home, where she was a devoted mother to Lizzy, 12, and Bruce, 11.

“She was an amazing mom. She gave them all the love that they really needed, and we’re hoping that’s going to help to hold them as we try to make up for what they’re going to be missing,” Suzy said. “It was unbearable for her to think of being away from them, ever. Everything she did, she did for them.”

Krissy was the youngest of her siblings, Suzy, Alana Rice, and Mike Goodleaf, by 13 years, and is survived by all of them as well as her mother Vera Goodleaf.

Suzy said that the family are going to hold each other tight as they grieve, and will be there to continue to support Krissy’s children.

“She wanted them to know that it’s a big world out there and they can be a part of it, do whatever you want to do,” Suzy said. “I hope they can really, sincerely, feel that support and welcoming of the community.”

Community members and loved ones are invited to support the Krissy Goodleaf Live Like a Champion Scholarship Fund at www.katerifoundation.org or via e-transfer to [email protected].

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