EDMONTON -- Cree professional skateboarder Joe Buffalo has opened up about his experience inside one of Canada’s residential schools and the subsequent mental health and substance abuse issues he suffered as a result in an effort to empower Indigenous youth.
Originally from Samson Cree Nation in Maskwacis, Alta., south of Edmonton, Buffalo was taken off of reserve when he was just 11 years old and forced into residential school -- an experience that would lead to decades of mental health and addiction struggles.
But he survived it all with his skateboard by his side.
"Skateboarding for me is definitely like an outlet, you know, growing up, because there was no real box that you fit in," Buffalo told CTV National News.
"There's no racism in skateboarding. Being raised around that... was really difficult to navigate that when you were young.â€
Buffalo, 45, attended two residential schools for a total of five years. In 1992, when he came of age, he left and moved across the country to Ottawa to start a new life.
“It was an outlet for us growing up on the reserve,†he told in January 2020.
“It was really weird, coming from the Prairies and trying to escape the barriers… the obstacles… there were genocides that were put in front of me that I had to overcome like an obstacle.
Do yourself in like they want, or overcome.â€
Adjusting to life in what Buffalo described as the “most white-privilege part of Canada†didn’t come easy. Despite experiencing intense racism, his childhood love for skateboarding began to pay off when he started attracting sponsors.
But his struggle with addiction eventually came to a head.
"The scariest moments are when you are not in control of your life," Buffalo told CTV National News. "There were times when I just gave up because that is what I was programmed to do... just roll over and die.â€
Now sober, the pro skateboard dedicates a good portion of his passion to empowering Indigenous youth through a non-profit he co-founded, dedicated to sharing the positive impacts of skateboarding.
"I am coming forward and saying my story and it is only because I have worked up and built the strength to do so by sobering up," he said.
"We just want to pass that on. Teach the kids that this is a super power you can have."
His life’s story is chronicled in the award-winning documentary, “Joe Buffalo,†a film he hopes will appeal to a wider demographic that may not normally watch a documentary on residential schools.
In a social media post published Monday, Buffalo notes that the recent finding of the remains of 215 Indigenous children at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., has been “especially triggering,†but he continues to advocate for justice.
“I really mean it when I say I challenge the government to do more of these ground-penetrating radar tests at every residential school clear across Turtle Island,â€
“Prayers down for the 215 children who were victims of genocide that the government is responsible for.â€
