Meet some of the 2023 Indspire Awards recipients making a difference in their communities

As a child, it was always tough for Indspire Awards recipient Lori Campbell to get a grasp on her identity.

But that changed when she found cultural acceptance at her university. The experience later helped her give back to that same university community.

Now, she and other recipients are being honoured at the Indspire Awards, which recognizes the accomplishments of First Nations, Inuit and Métis individuals who have achieved outstanding feats in a range of fields.

Rosanna Deerchild, host of Unreserved, spoke to Campbell and three other Inspire Award recipients. Here are their stories.

Lori Campbell, education

Campbell said she recalls thinking that to find success, she had to be white.

Growing up, there was no one to talk to about how she felt. It was an “isolating” experience, she says.

That’s because Campbell was part of the Sixties Scoop, a period beginning in the ’60s and continuing until the 1980s, when thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes and placed with non-Indigenous foster families.

Without much connection to home, it was at the First Nations University of Canada where she felt like she found community.

That journey led Campbell to her role as an educator, and now, the University of Regina’s associate vice-president of Indigenous engagement. Campbell helps Indigenous students reconnect to their roots and find confidence in who they are.

“I try to focus on creating a space and place where Indigenous students, staff and faculty can bring their unapologetic Indigenous selves … and take what they want or need from what’s in the institution already to use for their benefit,” she said.

In her role, Campbell often works with students whose family members had been part of the Sixties Scoop, and encourages them to talk to their parents about it in order to reconnect with their culture.

“As they’re learning healing backwards, there’s this chain reaction and I think that’s a beautiful thing,” she said.

“I’m not that person — so don’t hire me,” she said. “I’m not the one who’s going to come in and teach people about Indigenous awareness or Indigenous history.”

Reflecting on her position, Campbell said a younger version of herself would not believe she’d be in an executive position like hers.

“This is like a full circle thing,” she said.

Joe Dion Buffalo, sports

In an effort to overcome trauma as a residential school survivor, Joe Dion Buffalo turned to skateboarding.

Buffalo, who attended one of Canada’s last residential schools, is a co-founder of Nations Skate Youth. Now he helps youth find courage and strength in themselves.

“We figure out what their interests are,” he said. “It’s purely self-expression, we pass that message along to them and it’s just amazing seeing them lose these layers.”

Buffalo, 47, and his team go directly to Indigenous communities and bring skateboards, safety gear and anything else needed for the sport.

Since that enterprise began in 2020, Buffalo says it’s been “quite the trip.”

But he says the most amazing part is that the sport allows him to connect with Indigenous youth. “We’ll get to know the kids on a whole other level,” he said.

With that comes helping kids get out of their shells and embrace who they are.

“When we’re our truest selves, that just sheds layers off of them.”

Buffalo notes that skateboarding offers each kid an opportunity for self expression.

“Knowing that you don’t have to fit into some sort of box, there’s no rule book,” he said. “There’s no two kids that skate alike; everyone has their own style.”

Teaching and bonding with others through skateboarding has been a kind of therapy for Buffalo to work through issues stemming from his time at residential school, he said.

He said he hopes by relaying the stories of his trauma, it’ll encourage others to speak out too.

“I hope to inspire others to come forward,” he said.

Reanna Merasty, youth

Reanna Merasty was born a builder. But that’s not the only hat she wears.

Merasty, an architectural intern at Number TEN Architectural Group in Winnipeg, also advocates for and writes on Indigenous inclusion in design education. She’s also an artist and a role model that the Indspire awards cited for amplifying Indigenous voices in her field.

Her ambitions have deep roots. During her childhood, she spent summers with her grandparents, in particular, her grandfather, who builds log cabins on the family’s islands in Northern Manitoba.

Tagging along to his job sites, she admired watching her grandfather make something out of his own two hands.

“I did a lot of building forts on the side, I’d always build my own little tiny houses as well — so that also influenced me to get into architecture,” she said.

But it’s also a small field, according to Merasty, with very little representation of Indigenous people.

Indigenous people should be at the forefront of the conversation and decision-making processes when it comes to building on and for Indigenous people.– Reanna Merasty

As a student at the University of Manitoba, Merasty said she faced racism and misrepresentation, so she worked to change the culture and upbringing of architects there.

She founded the Indigenous Design and Planning Students Association at the university, where she was able to provide the support needed to Indigenous students.

“That’s something that I really lacked when I was in school,” she said.

Her work meant shifting the “colonial mindset” that often stands in the way of lifting Indigenous people up, she said.

“It’s always about shifting the colonial process of exclusion, of destruction, of mistreatment of various institutions … and also colonialist architecture which was also representative of Indian residential schools.”

Merasty said Indigenous people should be leading those discussions in order to repair aspects of those colonial processes.

“Indigenous people should be at the forefront of the conversation and decision-making processes when it comes to building on and for Indigenous people.”

Willow Allen, youth

Although social work student Willow Allen has been met with multiple successes in modelling and content creation, she says her home and community are the driving forces behind everything she does.

Sharing Inuvialuit history on social media is especially important when it comes to keeping her culture alive. Allen does so by talking about the traditional way of life in Inuvik, N.W.T.

“It’s always been really important to my dad to teach me those things that his parents taught him, so that it’s not lost,” said Allen. “He’s always just loved the way of life in the North.”

In one video, Allen drives to Tuktoyaktuk with her dad and nephew to pick up dried meat for her wedding. Others focus on traditional activities such as berry picking.

“Seeing how important it is to my grandparents and my dad and my family to carry it on, that’s always been something that’s been really on my heart — to always ask questions and learn,” she said.

Allen’s modeling career is also a factor in how she represents who she is to the world — a challenging feat at first.

She says finding her voice in that industry wasn’t always as easy, mainly because she wasn’t aware how her Indigenous identity would fit into the modelling landscape. “My first modeling trip, when I had gone to Singapore, they wanted me to say that I was Asian because of how I looked. I found that part really challenging,” Allen told Unreserved.

Afterwards, Allen found herself telling people about her background. That’s when others began to encourage her to showcase her culture and where she comes from.

When she moved to New York to continue her career, she began to have conversations with people about where and how she grew up. People valued it, she said, especially when she took those stories to social media.

“That’s kind of where I started finding my voice more,” she said.

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Watch or listen to the 2023 Indspire Awards on Sunday, June 18th at 8:00 p.m. ET on CBC TV, CBC Gem, CBC Radio One and CBC Listen.