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Growing Leader

Kevin Settee, Photo © UWinnipeg

Kevin Settee ©UWinnipeg

Originally published in the Spring 2016 UWinnipeg Magazine

With Kevin Settee’s increasing reputation as a leader, it’s difficult to imagine the University of Winnipeg Students’ Association (UWSA) 2016–17 President living life on the sidelines. But that’s exactly what his health once forced him to do, and he’s been making up for it ever since.

Settee is now a 25-year-old student who works long days—devoting time to activism, student politics, Indigenous ceremony, and raising his 16-month-old son. But it wasn’t too long ago that his first foray into university was cut short by kidney disease, with regular and lengthy dialysis treatments keeping him in relative isolation at his home in Winnipeg’s West End.

While recovering from a kidney transplant in 2012, Settee enrolled in a youth entrepreneurship program through UWinnipeg’s Wii Chiiwaakanak Learning Centre that he says helped him transition back into a classroom setting. When the program was done, Settee returned to Wii Chiiwaakanak as a mentor for new students, and later as a community youth worker. He also restarted his university studies (dual-major in Geography and Urban and Inner City Studies) and continued with community work—organizing a fundraising golf tournament for Indigenous language programs and the All Nations Medicine Walk.

As UWSA President, Settee will continue much of the work he began this past year as the UWSA’s Vice-President External, including promotion of the Divest UWinnipeg initiative and the consent culture on campus. He also serves on the Indigenous Course Requirement Advisory Committee and is one of several minds behind “Red Rising,” a new publication that gives voice to the urban Indigenous experience (and is headquartered in his McFeetors Hall apartment on campus).

Settee notes that his involvement in student politics was inspired by requests from people in the community. “Inherently, in who I am, in my traditional side, my name has ‘ogima’ in it, and ‘ogima’ means leader. So if there’s a time where I think I need to step up, I’ll do it.”

His motivation is also tied to the West End itself, where he plans to stay after graduation. “In a lot of the work that I do within the neighbourhood, and within the University, I always have my son in mind, and other kids that are going to be coming up,” says Settee. “That’s why I love working for the students and trying to help shift the university so it’s more accessible, inclusive, safe, and so that we can continue to be a leader in social justice and environmental sustainability.”

Megan Benedictson