Opinion
Arts
Sports
LHSA should be disbanded 9
Royal Bison art fair gets crafty 14
Puck Bears stomp Dinos, now tied for second in Can West 18
gateway
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA’S CAMPUS MEDIA SOURCE
THE
November 18th, 2015
Issue No.16
Volume 106 GTWY.CA
From street-life to student life Jamie Sarkonak
staff reporter @SWAGONAK
When Aimee Bellerose walks around the University of Alberta, she’ll overhear other’s “struggles”: a girl complaining about her hair being four inches too short, a guy talking about the party coming up on Friday, or someone else gossiping, “Oh my God, did you see her shoes?” As a 22-year-old indigenous woman who’s lived through homelessness, incarceration, addiction and mental illness, Bellerose’s concept of struggle is much different. The city is a different place for an indigenous person who has been in and out of the system. Bellerose, and other women in similar situations, worry about things like whether they’ll eat tomorrow or find a place to sleep tonight. Or about whether they’ll get stopped by Edmonton Police Services for jaywalking and arrested for something completely different, which Bellerose said she has seen happen. “Go downtown, even on the south side” she said. “When you’re a native person and you walk down the street people look at you like you’re an outsider.” Like many enrolled in university, Bellerose has gone through the provincial schooling system, and possesses a high school diploma. The challenges started early, when Bellerose could never finish mad minutes in time. She remembers
being kept from recess for a whole two months as a result. High school is harder to remember, but Bellerose’s diploma proves she got through. She was homeless during that time, and often under the influence of drugs. Those days were cold, hungry and numb, she said. What got her through was the art teacher, who’d walk Bellerose to school and make her toast and coffee every morning. “A lot of people think (food) is a necessity. People think that only happens in Third World countries. No. In Canada, in Edmonton, food is a luxury for a lot of people. And that’s the reality,” Bellerose said. As for clothes, Bellerose looks down at her outfit and wonders what everyone else on campus thinks of her. Bellerose is one of the 21 young women attending the newlypiloted Moving the Mountain program, a learning initiative for high-risk youth, mainly of indigenous descent, between ages 12 and 22. Many of the women in the program haven’t completed high school and have struggled in the education and criminal system. The majority of them are, or have been, homeless. Some have been diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, while all have had severe problems with substance abuse.
continued PAGE 5
Winter Wheelin’ ∙ 12