Read Kristen’s interview below.
Can you tell me a bit about who you are and where you’re from?
I’ll start off by introducing myself in SENĆOŦEN.
ÍY, SȻÁĆEL SIÁM, XÁMEĆTENOT TŦE NE SNÁ ĆSE LÁ,E SEN EṮ W̱JOȽEȽP
Good Day, I’m Kristen Morris, and I am from Tsartlip First Nation. I am 22 years old, and I have grown up in the Tsartlip community all of my life. I have been taking part in Canoe Racing with my family’s crew since a young age. My family is very important to me. I am grateful to make them proud working with my community. It’s a very big success for me, I’m happy.
What’s your new title and what are you going to be doing?
So my position in Tsartlip is Youth and Family Program Assistant, and I will be responsible for
giving support to families and youth in our community, as well as being a role model and an advocate for our youth. I’ll be assisting, planning and developing programs and workshops that will benefit our youth and families in our future.
My role with the community really depends on what our community has going on.
Could you share some of the background and experience you bring to this position?
Some experiences I have growing up, going through with working in the summer student program as a student, I’ve worked three years in a row once I first applied at age 16. Then I worked two years in the summer for reef net revitalization with the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership.
And after those two years, I came back in the summer of 2024 and applied as the student supervisor and that went really great.
What’s the most important thing that you’ve learned from those prior jobs, as a summer student or the reef net?
One important learning from those is learning how to work well with our community members and learning how to hold myself in a respectable way.
What kind of impact do you hope to have during your time at Tsartlip?
Being a part of the youth council as well had me excited looking into possible future projects that we talked about as youth, and now coming into this position as the Program Assistant, it’s very exciting to see if I could bring those discussions back and see if we can establish those discussions. As one who went through the program myself, to becoming the program assistant I hope our community also sees that as a success of our program. I cannot wait to see more successful progress for our community
Was there any particular program that you are most interested in working on?
There’s no specific program I would say that has more interest from me, one thing I believe should be brought more attention to is awareness of bullying, sexual assault, violence, and drug or alcohol use. Providing workshops for youth to learn more about that would be important.
What do you like to do outside of work?
Outside of work, I have a niece, and she’ll come hang out with me for hours and we play multiple different kinds of games, occasionally her siblings would join too. In the spring and summer, I am also very busy with Canoe training or racing almost every day.
