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Kalispel Career Training Center supports community workforce
CUSICK — Two years ago, metal artist Louis Boyd had never even touched welding equipment.
At the time, Boyd said he was a stay-at-home father. He needed direction but could not find it since there were so few jobs in the area.
Then, he saw metal art made by welders at the Kalispel Career Training Center in Cusick.
“I’ve always been an artist with paper and graphic design and stuff,” said Boyd, 39. “But this just really caught my eye.”
Boyd is now one of eight apprentices at KCTC, a service of the Kalispel Tribe of Indians that has provided youth and adults with vocational training for the last 15 years. Besides welding, apprentices can train in carpentry, heavy equipment, plumbing and electrical work.
KCTC’s “ultimate goal” is for the apprentices to find full-time employment with a living wage, special projects director Colene McKinney said. After training, some have gone on to work for Garco Construction in Spokane, Hewescraft in Colville and KCTC itself.
“It’s what the tribe believes in, that people support each other, they support their employees, they support their people, encourage them,” McKinney said.
The apprenticeships are individualized, meaning apprentices can choose between any of KCTC’s five trainings. Several apprentices have started with one training, only to switch to others during their apprenticeship, McKinney said.
“When a person comes here, we ask them what they want to do,” McKinney said. “We don’t say, ‘This is the opening we have, this is what you need to do.’ We give them the ability to choose.”
At 85 Tule Rd., KCTC is located in the same building as the tribe’s first enterprise — Kalispel Case Line, which made aluminum gun cases apprentices continue to make today. When Kalipsel Case Line shut down, the tribe got together with the school districts, the Pend Oreille Economic Development Council and Seattle City Light to reopen it as KCTC.
Some of the earliest apprentices at KCTC were students from the Cusick School District, which McKinney said did not have the strong career and technical education program it does now.
“We did have students that came over from Cusick to fill some gaps for them,” McKinney said. “But as they built their CTE program, we moved towards more of the adult training.”
Apprentices are 18 and older, most in their late teens and early 20s. A lot of the apprentices face barriers to employment as Boyd did, McKinney said. And nine times out of 10, the barrier is that they have never had a job before.
KCTC’s apprenticeships are jobs — paid positions with benefits underwritten by the tribe.
“That’s a huge plus for a lot of people like Louis that are supporting a family, that it’s actually a paid position,” McKinney said. “You learn and get paid at the same time.”
As the welding shop of the Kalispel Tribe, KCTC makes work for all of the Kalispel Tribe’s departments as well as cities, parks and other tribes on the Kalispel Tribe’s behalf. This work includes art installations and public works projects such as garbage cans, benches and picnic tables. In collaboration with Kalispel Metal Products, apprentices make welding and custom fabrication products like the Kalispel Case Line’s aluminum gun cases.
KCTC also built all eight tiny homes at Kalispel RV Resort.
“The apprentices are not necessarily in this shop for their workday,” McKinney said. “They could be out building houses or remodeling or doing anything that the Kalispel Tribe is working on.”
KCTC is one of the services encompassed by the Kalispel Tribe’s Camas Path, said Donna Molvik, the tribe’s principal publicist. Camas Path provides health and education services to members of the Kalispel Tribe, other tribes and the rest of the community. As such, apprenticeships at KCTC are open to all whether they are members of a tribe or not.
Boyd is part of the Sinixt band and a member of the Colville Tribes. Though he has always been an artist, Boyd could not go to art school — he could not afford it, he said.
“We don’t get as many opportunities,” Boyd said. “But I was just really thankful that the Kalispel Tribe was able to take someone in like me and help get me to do this stuff.”
Boyd has been a welding apprentice at KCTC for two years. Some of the metal art he made during his apprenticeship will be on display in a Salish school his children attend in Spokane and the Camas Center for Community Wellness’ expanded clinic.
He is working to earn a license to open his own business. With his own business, McKinney said Boyd could make even more than the wage KCTC can pay him.
“I’m not that kind of person that could do a business,” Boyd said. “But they’ve inspired me to feel like I could do it based on the stuff that I’ve been doing.”
