Hard work rewarded at ceremony
Kahnawa’kehró:non students pursuing an education in healthcare got to bask in the limelight at the ninth-annual Karonhiaráhstha’s Memorial Fund award ceremony last Thursday at the Golden Age Club, which saw 17 awarded scholarships ranging from $500 to $5,500.
The recipients include five Kahnawa’kehró:non receiving the scholarship for the first time ever. The future doctors, nurses, psychologists, and paramedics represented among them are currently studying at colleges and universities across North America, from McGill University to the University of Florida.
“For me it’s not about the money - it’s about the community support,” said Craig Sky, currently in his third year of medicine at McGill.
“Throughout the school year there are moments where you get really down – you’re under a lot of pressure, you’re upset, you’re not sure if you’re in the right program, or if you’re meant to be where you’re at,” he said. “The Karonhiaráhstha’s Memorial Fund scholarship just reminds me that I am on the right path, and that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”
He was among four students awarded the newly created Dr. Jones memorial scholarship on Thursday, named after the late Suzanne Jones, a doctor at the Kateri Memorial Hospital Centre (KMHC) who left a mark on hundreds in the community. She passed away in the fall of 2022 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
“She’s touched us all in one way or another. She was a very dear friend of mine, one of my mentors within the KMHC, and she's delivered a lot of babies. I'm sure she's even delivered somebody in this room,” said Valerie Diabo, KMHC’s executive director. “Dr. Jones was not only a physician here at Kateri, she was a community member. Everybody loved her.”
Respects were also paid to the late Kourtney Karahkwi:io Montour at the award ceremony, a nurse with a scholarship in her name since 2020.
“She was the best ever. She took care of people when they were sick and made them feel better with her kind smiles and big hugs,” her niece Ziah Phillips said right before presenting the award to Erin Patton, a master’s student in nursing at McGill. “Even though she is not here, I know she’s still watching over us and helping people from up there.”
A total of $45,000 was awarded by the Kateri Memorial Foundation (KMF) at the ceremony, with much of it raised through the annual Karonhiaráhstha’s Winter Wonderland this past December.
“All you ever want for your children is the best for them, and for them to reach the potential that they’re meant to reach,” said Natalie Beauvais, who came out to celebrate her daughter Danika Zachary, a Master’s of physiotherapy student at McGill. “It is so rewarding, so humbling, for me to watch her and say I was part of this journey with her. But all the work was hers. All the commitment was hers.”
The scholarship was created nine years ago by Carla Skye and Iohahí:io Delisle in their daughter’s namesake after she tragically passed away in 2013 during a vacation in St. Martin, a tropical island where emergency services were scarce. Karonhiaráhstha Sky Junie Delisle was less than four months old at the time.
“We came home, and we said we want better for our community. We want to send people to school. We want better nurses. We want better doctors,” Skye said.
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Delisle said he felt strengthened as he sat through the award ceremony.
“To see our healthcare students are pursuing this, and to see them come back to our community to strengthen our system and our services is a tremendous honour,” said Delisle, also a chief with the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK). “The community helped me turn this tragic event into a silver lining, and I really was able to see that today.”
This article was originally published in print on August 16 in issue 33.33 of The Eastern Door
