{"id":19657,"date":"2020-06-29T09:20:53","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T16:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=19657"},"modified":"2020-06-29T11:29:39","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T18:29:39","slug":"camosun-grad-wins-2020-lieutenant-governors-medal-for-inclusion-democracy-and-reconciliation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/06\/29\/camosun-grad-wins-2020-lieutenant-governors-medal-for-inclusion-democracy-and-reconciliation\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun grad wins 2020 Lieutenant Governor\u2019s Medal for Inclusion, Democracy and Reconciliation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun Indigenous Studies 2020 grad Shane Baker was recently awarded the BC Lieutenant Governor\u2019s Medal for Inclusion, Democracy and Reconciliation. It hasn\u2019t been an easy journey to get there, though: in 2003, Baker was deeply entrenched in alcoholism, and living a life that was lacking his First Nations culture. But after an accident that resulted in a skull fracture, a brain injury, optical nerve damage that rendered him legally blind, and, later, facial reconstruction surgery, he left alcohol behind. He says he drank a few times after the accident, but the association was so strong for him that it willed him to quit booze, cocaine, and OxyContin, which was prescribed to him after his accident.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of got a wake-up call,\u201d he says. \u201cMy mom told me, \u2018We almost lost you once, but now we feel like we\u2019re actually losing you for good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After that moment with his mom, he quit everything in three days, but he was unaware of the many dangers of detoxing from opioids.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was using pretty regularly, so it wasn\u2019t a safe thing for me, but I didn\u2019t know about it back then,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize that you could be in big trouble coming off heavy-duty opiates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baker went to a First Nations treatment centre; however, it wasn\u2019t able to deal with someone who was legally blind from a brain injury. So he got involved in one-on-one counselling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was fortunate enough to work with some traditional medicine people,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Eventually, after doing work on himself to find his footing in his own recovery\u2014which involved sharing circles and speaking to elders\u2014he got involved in counselling youth for mental health and addictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of it was getting involved with my culture,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Recent Camosun grad Shane Baker (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Baker, loss of culture led into an unhealthy life. In keeping with his journey, then, in September 2017, he enrolled in in the Indigenous Studies program at Camosun.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had really high hopes of linking up with everybody [at the college], but because of my brain injury, I was really struggling with overstimulation,\u201d he says. \u201cJust arriving at school and being around all these sights and sounds that I\u2019m not used to was really overstimulating for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baker felt really alone when he was first at Camosun. It took a month for him to get notes for classes in a format he could read (his experiences came before the college\u2019s Equity, Inclusion and Diversity policy was approved on February 4, 2019). Baker says that every time he met with an instructor, things would go a lot smoother.<\/p>\n

As time went on, Baker got more involved at the college: he worked with Camosun library staff to make an American Psychological Association citation guide for people with visual disabilities. He made connections with people in the Centre for Accessible Learning, and got to know his cohort. In September of last year, Baker was hired by the college to help create Camosun\u2019s Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a web-based project that aims to decrease accessibility-related challenges at the college; the UDL is funded by the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training. For the project, Baker suggested engaging students in sharing circles\u2014an important part of oral tradition in Indigenous communities\u2014rather than focus groups. The UDL takes a strength-based approach, says Baker, instead of coming at it from an angle of what is being done wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho wants to be told everything that they\u2019re doing wrong?\u201d says Baker. \u201cI had just taken an Indigenous research methodologies course; a lot of the work that I did in the school system was done in sharing circles\u2026 We\u2019re not just looking at the gaps, we\u2019re also looking at the interesting and creative strategies that students use to overcome barriers at school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baker says he hopes students can have an easier time at the college through the work he\u2019s done and reminds them that it\u2019s not always going to be smooth sailing.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife is life,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have these really tough times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Correction: We originally reported that Shane Baker had been in a car accident, which was incorrect. We apologize for the mistake.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun Indigenous Studies 2020 grad Shane Baker was recently awarded the BC Lieutenant Governor\u2019s Medal for Inclusion, Democracy and Reconciliation. It hasn\u2019t been an easy journey to get there, though: in 2003, Baker was deeply entrenched in alcoholism, and living a life that was lacking his First Nations culture. But after an accident that resulted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19657"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19669,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19657\/revisions\/19669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}