Indigenous youth share experiences with Senate committee

Indigenous young people from across Canada are sharing experiences with members of the Senate in Ottawa.

Nine participants were chosen to appear before the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples after being recognized as leaders in their communities. The Inuit, Métis and First Nations young people are between the ages of 18 and 33. Their input is to contribute to the committee’s study on how a new relationship between Canada and Indigenous people should look.

On its website, the committee said senators know they won’t be getting the full picture unless and until the voices of young people are heard.

Spirit River Striped Wolf, 24, is a member of the Piikani Nation in southwestern Alberta and is the Alberta representative. She is taking a BA in policy studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

“I’m going to talk to them about trauma. I’m going to talk to them about my experience, living on the reserve where I was on the youth council,” he said.

Striped Wolf said a lot of the problems facing youth on reserves relate to them becoming disconnected from their cultural heritage.

“It isn’t about the institutions anymore as it may have been during the residential school era,” he said. “Now it has a lot more to do with trust and that really resonated with me because of high suicide rates and the lateral violence we see in our communities. I’m trying to look at how trust interacts with the trauma.”

Striped Wolf said it is only when Indigenous youth are able to find the confidence to trust themselves that change can actually be achieved on many First Nations.

Striped Wolf hopes to become a researcher and develop policies that can be applied to Indigenous communities.