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Legacy of the Indian Princess

Suzanne Kilroy/Huculak always gives a little extra

September 5, 2024

When Suzanne Kilroy/Huculak was a young woman entering her first year of college, she remembers thinking to herself that if she could afford a nice place to rent, food to eat, a man to call her own and the gift of good health, she’d be successful in life.

“And I did it,” she said. 

But for anyone who knows Suzanne, they know that she’s achieved so much more.

Suzanne, a.k.a “Indian Princess,” is a medicine carrier and palliative care worker. She’s the smile from across the street, the warmth of a bear hug, the sister you never had. 

She’s a member of the Thompson Okanagan First Nation near Kelowna, where she grew up on-reserve gathering food and fish from Okanagan Lake. 

Like so many Indigenous Peoples, including her family, Suzanne is a residential school and day school survivor. Suzanne says that out of her 17 friends who left the Okanagan as teenagers, she is the only one still alive. 

“All the rest are dead from being murdered, overdosed, or got real sick,” she said in Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a report in response to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

The legacy left by residential schools has resulted in generations of trauma and suffering that is still being felt by Indigenous Peoples across Canada.

At 17, Suzanne left home and went to En’owkin Centre arts college before moving to Vancouver for university, where she studied psychology and social work. The rampant racism and sexism she experienced as an Indigenous woman made her feel like she couldn’t catch a break. 

It was during university that Suzanne became a sex worker, surviving extreme violence and substance abuse.

“I lost my life down here [in the Downtown Eastside] for a while, my vision,” she said in a 2021 interview for Megaphone. “Then I went home and found my way again.” 

Today, Suzanne surrounds herself with culture — Indigenous blankets, medicine bowls, ribbon skirts, earrings. She’s rarely seen without them.

 “I value and honour my Indigenous self. I honour my Indigenous womanhood. I honour my children, my husband, my mother, my father. I honour my family. I honour all the people that have paved a path to help me get to where I am today,” she said.

For Suzanne, it’s always been about gratitude and helping others. For the past 26 years, she’s worked at the WISH Drop-In Centre Society as a support worker and Indigenous knowledge keeper. 

“Despite everything Suzanne has been through,” said Jenni Sloman, InReach Program Manager for WISH, “she is still the first person to say ‘hi’ to everyone she passes on the sidewalk, the first person to offer food to each person she sees who doesn’t have any, and the first person to make each person she encounters feel seen and valued.” 

Suzanne said it’s just her nature.

“I’m Vancouver’s Indian Princess. Somebody’s got to love the people and I do.”

Suzanne said she’s seen more people die in the last two years than in the entire 26 she’s worked at the society.

“Don’t take anything for granted because you never know when they’ll be gone,” she said.

Megaphone founder Sean Condon remembers the day Suzanne turned up at the street paper office 15 years ago, and reflects on his time working with and alongside her.

“Suzanne is just a ray of light, an absolute joy to be around,” he said. 

“People are often pigeon-holed into certain moments of their lives. We look at folks who are really struggling and don’t always understand what led them there, or care to imagine their future and what’s possible for them. Suzanne has always been someone who can show the possibility, as someone who never stopped believing in herself and believing in others. And that is, to me, an especially amazing quality.” 

Suzanne has lived through more health challenges than a dozen people usually experience in a lifetime, enduring two heart attacks, two strokes, two occurrences of breast cancer and double pneumonia that led to her being placed in a coma, eventually forcing her to adapt to a new, less-mobile life on wheels in a scooter.

Suzanne draws strength from her medicine, prayers and her family. Her husband of 29 years, her many children and numerous grandchildren (she’s too scared to count how many, she giggles) are all born and raised in Vancouver.

Her sister Crystal Spahan, who grew up with her in the Nicola Valley, said the pair has had hard lives, but Suzanne has always been there for her.

 “Our mother raised us to be strong women and often said things like, ‘Don’t take shit from anyone, don’t give none either; chin up chest out; if you got it, flaunt it.’ Suzanne was always strong and proud. She always showed me anything was possible. Even in the darkest of times, she showed me how our prayers always got answered and how we were never alone because we had each other,” Spahan said.

When Suzanne speaks, she weaves lessons throughout her words, privileging anyone smart enough to listen. It’s how she got her name, Indian Princess, at the Trout Lake powwow in 2017.

Suzanne says she was told that she wasn’t chosen because of her singing or dancing, “but because when I speak, people listen.”  

Condon, who is now the director of social and economic innovation with Vancity Community Foundation, said Suzanne has always been so strong.

“I think that’s why there’s so much love for Suzanne. For both the vendors and the broader Megaphone community, we’ve all really appreciated having Suzanne as a leader among the organization.” 

Leadership and empathy come naturally for Suzanne.

“Somebody once asked me why I do what I do,” she said. “As a child, when we used to cook on the reserve, grandma would say, ‘Better cook some more — you don’t know who’s going to be stopping by.’ So why do I do what I do? I guess this is my way of adding extra to the pot — to give to the people.”