Xee Goodwin’s chipped yellow nail polish and bright yellow hair contrasts with the 19-year-old’s grey business suite. The Squamish local has multiple piercings, pretty eyes and two fake fangs. Xee’s eloquent words hit you with their insight.
Xee is sharp. Xee has knowledge to share. Xee is agender — not identifying as a male or female. And Xee was brutally bullied throughout school.
“I got death threats in Grade 4,” Xee says.
In March, Xee was one of 10 youth chosen by Squamish Youth Centre organizers to attend the national Unite and Ignite Conference. The annual event brings 350 teenagers from across the country together in Ottawa to brainstorm action plans on key youth issues.
For three days, Xee made friends, learned about the lives of the people in attendance and shifted through challenges and resolutions addressing bullying and suicide.
“There were a lot of tears,” Xee says.
There was also a lot of learning and laughter, 15-year-old Callista Ryan says. She was part of a group that focused on healthy relationships and delved into hypersexuality. It’s an interesting topic, Ryan notes, adding the group examined how hypersexuality breaks down into gender roles.
“It took an hour to nail down the definition,” she says.
While Ryan is sure the knowledge the Squamish youth accumulated at the conference will be shared with residents in their hometown, but making friends was the highlight.
“We made friendships all the way up to Inuvik,” Ryan says.
All participants hung envelopes on a wall. In each envelope, others could leave messages of encouragement or “fuzzy feelings.” By the end of the conference, Xee’s envelope was stuffed to the brim.
No matter who you are, where you are from and what you look like, people at the conference were open and accepting, Xee says.
It’s a trait Xee would like to see spread throughout communities, especially into the school system.
“There was almost no negativity there,” Xee says.
