They found hope in Winnipeg.
North Vancouver residents Crystal Lewis and her partner Kevin Good were recently picked as Ambassadors of Hope for We Matter, an Indigenous youth-led non-profit organization. Along with that selection came an invitation for a week of training at the organization’s national Hope Forum held on the last week of May in Winnipeg.
Lewis and Good listened to discussions about mental health, reconciliation, loneliness and racism. They heard stories about addiction and relapse, friends and family lost.
But what struck Good was that, at the core, the stories were about overcoming adversity.
“They’re still here,” he says. “They’re still having a positive impact.”
Good and Lewis found hope at the forum. But now they face something harder: holding on to that hope and sharing it with the young people who need it at schools and community events.
There’s a phrase that was repeated at the forum: “I matter. You matter. We matter.”
A lot of people need to hear that message, Lewis explains.
“It’s OK to have these feelings and know that you’re not alone,” she says.
For Good, the program was a reminder to be the change you want to see.
“You have to go out there and do it yourself.”
Lewis, who has run twice for Squamish Nation council and has also served as a director for the Squamish Nation Youth Centre Society, is currently hoping to work in Ottawa for GreenPAC, an organization that has the stated goal of supporting environmental leadership in Canadian politics.
She’s wanted to be a leader since she was six years old, she says. But while ambition came easily, Lewis struggled with her sense of identity.
Lewis was put in foster care when she was a toddler.
“I held a lot of resentment toward [my birth mother] for years for not being there for me,” Lewis says.
At 16 she suffered from anxiety and depression. Generally an overachiever, Lewis started struggling in her classes.
“Just kind of losing myself,” is how she describes that period.
But it was around that time she reached out for help.
Maybe for the first time, Lewis realized she had community support. She realized how lucky she was to be raised in the Squamish Valley and to have that connection to the land. It’s a sense of connection many of us are looking for, Lewis says.
“I started seeing the beauty in the world,” she says.
Since then she participated in UBC’s Institute for Future Legislators and also received a scholarship for the Indigenous Women’s Community Leadership program at St. Francis Xavier University.
“It’s really important to broadcast Indigenous success,” Lewis says.
Lewis is proud of her achievements. She’s equally forthcoming when discussing the sorrows in her life. Her mother, Elizabeth Margret Sunrise Lewis, died in April 2018. Less than a year later, her sister Lila Moody Ogilvie died at the age of 34.
Ogilvie had a facial deformity. She was bullied all her life, Lewis says. Holding a job was a trial. But while Ogilvie never felt good enough, she constantly pushed her younger sister to get an education and to be a leader.
“She was my cheerleader,” Lewis remarks.
Her sister’s death was a reminder to tell people what you like about them, Lewis says. Let them hear positive words, she adds.
For more information visit wemattercampaign.org.
