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<\/a>Originally from Driftpile First Nation in northern Alberta, Caudron-Robinson, who is Cree\/M\u00e9tis, says he was urged to go to school because of the circumstances created by life during COVID-19.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pandemic hit and we were just hanging out and partying lots, and I woke up one day and I was like, \u2018Well, this is getting to be a little bit tedious; I\u2019m kind of sick of it. Let\u2019s go do something else,’\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
When she graduated from law school, that same sister gave Caudron-Robinson a blanket as part of a blanket ceremony.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still have that blanket,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I want to give it back to her when I\u2019m done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caudron-Robinson says that Indigenous people can get kicked around, but they\u2019re still here.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t let anybody tell you you can\u2019t do anything,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re still out here, and we\u2019re still alive, and we\u2019re still kicking it. They tried, they did their best, but we\u2019re still out here. Got to make sure that they know, that everybody else knows, we\u2019re still here, so that\u2019s kind of what I\u2019m trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of Caudron-Robinson\u2019s reason for going back to school was to reconnect with his culture\u2014he has been taking a few Indigenous Studies classes, and despite a focus on social work, half his courses up to this point have been in Indigenous Studies, which comes down to wanting to \u201cdo right by my community,\u201d he says, \u201cand be able to put Indigenous people into positions of power.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of space that has been created for us in different ways, but oftentimes that doesn\u2019t end up meaning much until you have somebody there who\u2019s really going to take the full advantage of it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
But Caudron-Robinson had his reservations about accepting the award: he wondered if taking the money would make him complicit with a big cooperation patting itself on the back for helping out Indigenous students. But he realized after speaking with his sisters that it was important to not be too proud. Caudron-Robinson says that if you don\u2019t want to use the system in positive ways when the opportunity presents itself, doing something for your community won’t extend much further than, say, giving your cousin money for a pack of cigarettes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really neither here nor there,\u201d he says, regarding his hesitancy about using the money to further his education. \u201cIf the space is there, take advantage of it. You have to make the system work for you more than the system works against you. And the system works against Indigenous people in a lot of different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other winners were Denae Edgar from the Ditidaht First Nation, Zoe Cameron-Johnson from the Peguis Nation, Kona Loedden, who is from Waterhen Lake First Nation, and Devin Sheehan, who is M\u00e9tis and from the Red River area of Manitoba.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kit Caudron-Robinson was working on the oil rigs in Alberta, but it wasn\u2019t what he wanted to be doing. After listening to one of his three older sisters, a practicing lawyer, talk about how going back to school would be the best possible thing he could do, he enrolled at Camosun with the long-term goal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20614,"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-20611","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\/20611","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=20611"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20630,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20611\/revisions\/20630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}