Indigenous skateboarders want to ramp up infrastructure for youth on Alberta reserves

An Indigenous-led non-profit group called Cousins Skateboard Community has put in bid for mobile skate park equipment from the City of Calgary, in hopes of bringing better infrastructure to Indigenous youth boarders.

"Because skateboarding has had such a positive impact on our own lives in different ways, we just wanted to see Indigenous youth potentially access that same opportunity," said Stuart Young, executive director of Cousins Skateboard Community.

The group launched officially last week with an event at Tsu'ut'ina Nation.

• Watch the video above to see the launch, which was filmed before Alberta banned outdoor gatherings of up to 10 people

"Every reserve has skaters, but every reserve doesn't have a park," said C.J. Cutter, a board member from Siksika. "If  another reserve had stuff that were there all-year round where people can go, people can skate with them, people can teach them, the sky's the limit on skateboarding."

Cutter said skateboarding allows a sense of community and connection that is vital for youth.

"You can go to any park in Alberta, probably the world, and you'll talk to somebody you've never met and you have this connection through skateboarding that it feels like you knew each other for years," Cutter said. "We have this community."

Young said the group has been trying to find ways to bring more skateboard infrastructure to reserves beyond building their own wooden ramps.

"We thought about … we have these wooden ramps, but they can be kind of challenging to pick up, put in a trailer and take," he said. 

That's where the City of Calgary comes in.

Recently, Calgary put five mobile skate parks up for tender, portable infrastructure that was used while the city was planning and building permanent parks. 

Every spring and summer, the city rotated the mobile skateboard parks throughout communities that didn't have permanent parks. It was called the mobile skate park program.

But it was cancelled in 2019 — when its operating budget was cut.

Now, the city has five different mobile parks available for sale and is looking for not-for-profits or government groups to scoop up the ramps.

"We're hoping to get a good cross-section of different organizations, and they need to be non-profit or government agencies," Stephanie Won with Calgary Recreation told the CBC in November. 

"They also need to be interested in providing affordable, accessible wheeled sport opportunities for children and youth and families. So those are the organizations that we're looking for."

Young said that could be a win-win opportunity, and his group has put in a bid.

"It just gave us a great opportunity to say, 'Hey, that's exactly what we need to be able to go out to these communities. You know they come ready to pack, ready to travel. And so that is a great opportunity for us to kick off and get started," Young said. 

"We put in a bid, we haven't heard yet, and we know that there's only five parks and there's a lot of well-deserving non-profits there, and so, of course we hope to be successful. But if we're not, we're still going to go forward, we're still going to figure out, how do we partner, how do we get ramps, to make sure that we're providing skateboarding where it's needed." 

There are skate parks all over Alberta, Young said.

"There's not a lack of facilities in Alberta. There's an abundance of facilities in Alberta. And actually that's a testament to the city of Calgary," Cutter said. "They have 13 permanent skate parks. Many different municipalities in the different locations, skateboarding is exploding across the province, and has been. Unfortunately we don't see that same thing happening within Indigenous communities."

Young said of 140 reserves in Alberta, he knows of "three to four max" that would have skateboard facilities. 

Wooden ramps

The group has been building temporary wooden ramp facilities in some communities.

"You see the positive impact these wooden ramps have … and they're deteriorating, you know. If you were to compare these compared to like, take a tiny town in Alberta and theirs would be way better, right? And so if you see the positive aspects that even this brings, you know, if we can build a community where people can come together and socialize, recreation, you know all of the positive things that come, it can have a big impact," Young said. 

Cousins Skateboarding hopes that by organizing around the cause, the group will get lasting, positive results for the kids.

Cutter said skateboarding gave him a purpose when he was younger, and he now runs a skate shop out of his house selling boards and clothing.

"It's a feeling of going back to someplace and more kids are more happy to see you. And they have more confidence, because you're there," he said. "Because there's somebody there that's going to help them, take time out of their own skating to help you. That's what I always try to do, and now we're trying to bring it to life through our organization."