Kanesatake youth featured at Dawson

Dawson College’s Indigenous Peoples’ Week, which took place this week, has been a yearly staple of the Montreal CEGEP’s event calendar, thanks to the hard work from the First Peoples’ Center.

Jessica Quijano, who works as a social worker with the First Peoples’ Center and organized the week along with students, said that first and foremost, it was important that the students put on activities that they wanted to do.

“We have so much talent within the student body,” said Quijano.

“It’s more about being a celebration of the week. When we talk about First Peoples, we almost always talk about the really difficult things, the sadness. But there’s just so much positivity out there. We have such a good time at the First Peoples’ Center. We just wanted to extend that to the College.”

There is also an educational aspect to the week, educating non-Indigenous students on some of the challenges students from Indigenous communities face as well as showcasing their culture.

“I think a lot non-Indigenous students, they don’t realize there’s different challenges that Indigenous students have when they start go to post-secondary education. Just coming from Kahnawake or Kanesatake, there is so much traveling to do just to have access to education,” said Quijano.

“It’s nice to be able to educate young people, because thinking about when I was in CEGEP, there was nothing, absolutely nothing. Nobody talked about these things.”

Among those involved was Kanesatake’s Taio Gélinas, who put on a workshop on being an Indigenous actor and the film industry, which was moderated by Quijano.

Gélinas most recently appeared in the Radio-Canada series aux Turbulentes, and also appeared in the Avatar: The Last Airbender live-action remake series released last year. He is also working on his own short film at the moment.

“I wanted to really hear his perspective as a young Indigenous actor, how he sees the industry. He had a lot of really interesting reflections,” said Quijano.

Part of the conversation was about the increase in representation of Indigenous people in media, and how to avoid playing into stereotypes.

“There’s often one pan-Indigenous way of seeing people on the screen. He’s really challenging that, which I find really refreshing. He’s Indigenous, but he’s also Taio,” said Quijano.

“I think it is really important for people to see that people are not just their cultural identity, people are a lot more complex than that.”

Gélinas also spoke of the challenges he faced as a young actor, balancing life between acting work, schooling, and other activities - on top of his work and school, he also plays rugby.

“In truth, I kind of told them that I’m still figuring that out myself,” said Gélinas.

“There’s not one clean cut answer that I can give that will work for everyone, because everyone manages those kinds of things differently. When you make the conscious decision to pursue art for the rest of your life, you still have to do other things. It’s just something that you constantly learn and get better at.”

Gélinas said that as a Dawson student, he knew that the schedule can be hectic, but he felt that making time for the Indigenous Peoples’ Week activities was worth it.

“I think it’s important to put on events like this, just because students get really busy, with exams and stuff. It’s important to have those things and to just be aware of what’s going on in the world, and be aware that the world is bigger than ourselves, and there’s communities and cultures that we might not know a lot about,” said Gélinas.

Another Kanehsata’kehró:non student participating in the week’s events was artist Shayla Etienne, who started work on a new mural painting in the Conrod’s student space.

The mural is of a turtle rattle and strawberries, painted on a purple background.

Etienne explained that she chose those elements specifically because they represented many First Nations, not just her own.

“I didn’t want to do just one nation, it’s Indigenous Peoples’ Week, not Mohawk people’s week. I wanted to do something that was universal,” said Etienne.

Etienne was able to work on her painting with some good music, too, as Kahnawake’s DJ Pøptrt held a performance in Conrod’s, where students danced or just enjoyed the music along with cotton candy given for free.

“It’s all to celebrate and help bring people together,” said Quijano.

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