Guelph Sikh Students Association shares culture with U of G community
Photos and Interview by Michael Cimesa
Quotes by Antarpreet Kaur, Sikh Students Association
As you see here today, women are getting a turban tied. It’s not limited to just males, women tie the turban as well — it’s a sign of equality.” So I dress in a certain way, I come to school every day dressed differently; the whole idea is to make myself more approachable, to talk to people, to end that stigma, to end racism.”
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“In a lot of history, you only see men as warriors, but we have so many female warriors within our community and within Sikh history. I think it was an important story we had to share, and International Women’s Day was our way of sharing with everyone how important Sikh women are and how important women are in society.”
“We want to tell people that we are a peace-loving community and the only way to get it out there is if we do it ourselves and talk to people.”
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“We’re pretty active — we have our Sikh Students Association where we meet weekly to build a community within the Sikh population. Also, what we try to do is get out of the community — there’s a local Gurdwara in Guelph, which is our temple, and we try to organize events with them. We’re trying to plan an event coming up a few weeks after [Turban Up!] to do our prayer there. We try to host events like a food drive and we go to the Guelph Food Bank and donate food to give back to the community. We try to take an active role on campus as a community.”
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“I think the biggest thing is don’t be scared to talk to us. If I walk into a class, don’t feel that I’m the odd one out — [we’re] very approachable. The whole idea is that we’re like anyone else, we have a religious side that we want to talk about, like why we dress a certain way, so the biggest thing we want people to [take out of] Turban Up! is to come and approach us and talk to any one of us from our community.”
Photo by Michael Cimesa