08/01/2025
Congratulations to the 2025 Athena Award Winner: Maria Dussan!
Thank you for your efforts as an outstanding union activist, and for your dedication to justice, migrant rights, and anti-racism organizing in our province.
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From her nominator: "Maria Dussan (she/her) is an absolute phenomenon, she is an extraordinary, Queer-Latinx writer, restorative/transformative justice facilitator (Human Rights Commission) and an especially key, infinitely generous, anti-racist activist in our province.
Maria came here as an International Student and attended MUNL on the West Coast. That's where her union activism started - as part of the student union. Since then, she has been a vocal and visionary activist - in so many different arenas. Most poignantly, she has been a creative and joyful proponent of health care access for migrants in the province.
Recently, she organized 'Writing and Spoken Word' opportunities for migrant voices (in partnership with ARCNL) and co-hosted the city's first Transformative Justice two-day workshop with the Social Justice Co-op.
As a union member she has been asked to participate in key, high profile roles on panels and 'teach-ins' both with NUPGE and with the NLFL. In both instances, she was asked to speak about the important work that we can do within our unions in relation to building a culture of anti-racism and how, by extension, this work extends to supporting policies that protect migrant workers in our communities.
In addition, Maria volunteers with NL's Sexual Assault Crisis and Prevention Centre.
This year, Maria's NAPE 'work family' got to celebrate her officially becoming a Canadian! Maria's motto (based off a quote by adrienne maree brown) is "What you pay attention to grows." She considers this a reminder and invitation to be intentional about where we put our energy.
She is a member of NAPE and does our union PROUD."
