Native youth walk the walk

Page 4

A Native group from Winnipeg, hoping to raise awareness of the many serious problems facing the country's Aboriginal youth, ended a 10-week walk across Western Canada when they arrived in Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, on Sept. 13.

The group, which calls itself the Native Youth Movement and its trek Walk and Talk '95, wants people in positions of responsibility to understand that youth suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, violence and youth gangs are problems that require immediate attention.

The group was 30-strong when it left Winnipeg on July 9. It traveled through Regina, Calgary, Banff and Vancouver, and made other stops to discuss the initiative. While only seven walkers ? Renee Thunderhawk, Peter Bighetty, Karen Angeconeb, Kim Sayer, Harvey Sinclair, Russell Angeconeb and Cecil Sinclair ? completed the entire journey, the walkers were joined along the way by many young supporters and numbered as many as 57 at one time.

Walk organizer Edee O-Meara, 25, had the original vision of the trek and was part of the walk until tragedy struck outside Calgary. A drunk driver hit the camper that was accompanying the walkers and Edee's 3-month-old daughter was killed. Her five-year-old son Josh, along with nine other youth were also injured.

Steven Allen Youle, 23 of Gleichen, Alta. was charged with impaired driving causing death.

"(The accident) made a lot of our people more determined to finish, to keep going," said O'Meara. After taking time to bury her baby, and to take part in some healing ceremonies at Tsuu T'ina First Nations near Calgary, O'Meara rejoined the group in Golden, B.C.

O'Meara is particularly concerned with the number of young Native people joining gangs in Winnipeg and getting involved in shootings, drugs, and child prostitution. Several young people have died in Manitoba's capital in gang related incidents this year.

"The only way out of those youth gangs is death," said O'Meara in an interview with the Times Colonist, a newspaper in Victoria. "Our young Indian people are killing each other off. Our Elders are burying our youth."