AIM wants to connect with youth

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This article was published 29/06/2015 (3777 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Blackwolf Hart is following in his father’s footsteps, but he’s not trying to “fill his moccasins.”

Hart is the chairman of the American Indian Movement Manitoba Chapter. His father, the late Vernon Bellecourt, was a long-time leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM), an American Indian advocacy group founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minn.

Hart’s mother, Lyna Hart, was a Cree nurse and residential school survivor who shared her story in the 2012 documentary We Were Children. She died of a heart condition in January.

“I’ve just always grown up around AIM life and ceremonies,” said Hart, 37, a Maples resident who grew up in the North End.

Hart said AIM Manitoba has members and supporters from all over the province and is in the process of setting up support groups in The Pas and Buffalo Point First Nation. He said AIM Manitoba’s focus is on connecting Aboriginal youth with their culture.

“I presently do drum workshops, cultural workshops and residential school workshops in 46 different schools in Winnipeg, usually Seven Oaks and River East Transcona school divisions,” Hart said.

“A lot of our youth, they want to find a sense of belonging and the gangs they accept everybody. We want them to know that we accept them also. If they want to come to ceremony, if they want to find their cultural identity, their way of life, we want them to know they can do that.”

Hart, who has three daughters, said he’s just come off participating in a Sun Dance ceremony and often drums and sings at vigils for missing and murdered indigenous women.

Hart said his culture has “saved my life many times.”

“I feel most comfortable in the ceremonies and it’s been like that since I was a kid,” Hart said. “My culture has helped me in my life. It helped me finish school, get my life together and start my family. It just gave me a purpose in life.”

Although AIM’s history at times has been shrouded in controversy, with the movement connected to incidents of vandalism and violence, Hart said AIM Manitoba has nothing to do with militancy.

“We respect the work the past members did, but we just use that as our drive,” Hart said.
“We’re a culture-driven youth movement, showing our way of life to our youth, taking them to ceremonies and to sweat lodges, getting into their names and culture and colors and clans.

Everything that goes along with our culture we want to bring to the youth and give them hope.”

To keep up to date with AIM Manitoba, go to www.facebook/AIMWinnipeg