Riding Toward Reconciliation: The Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program

We sit down with Patrick Lucas, founder and director of the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program, to unpack how riding and trail building can become a doorway to confidence, health, and a renewed relationship with the land. What starts as kids building “stupid looking jumps” turns into something much larger: community-designed trails, youth skills training, and outdoor spaces that people actually use every day. 

Patrick shares what he’s learned about consent and respect in outdoor recreation, plus the real-world partnership work that trail clubs can do when building on Indigenous territories. We explore surprising outcomes like women-led running groups becoming the biggest trail users, and how schools and community members use the same trails for language learning, harvesting, and wellness. 

Transcript

Why Cycling Changes People

SPEAKER_02 0:32

I hope you enjoy the show.

Peter Ladner 0:46

All of us who bike revel in the benefits we so much love to talk about. It is fun, mentally healing, physically satisfying, often life-changing. Our guest today almost accidentally jumped into harnessing the benefits of cycling to change the lives of indigenous youth around BC. Their new journeys didn't just involve mountain biking, but also building trails, building self-confidence, and in some ways, transforming their communities and intercultural relationships. Patrick Lucas is the founder and director of the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program. Welcome, Patrick.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Hi, thanks for having me. Patrick, how would you describe yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Well, professionally, uh my background is I'm a community planner, and I've been working with indigenous communities now for uh about 18 years. Uh and I like to describe myself as an activist and a storyteller.

Peter Ladner 1:45

Tell us a story about the last time you rode your bike.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Well, it's been some time now. I I've been so busy over the last year or so. Um, so I haven't been able to ride as much as I would like. But I think the last really good time I had out on Mount Bike was uh last year. I was attending the opening for a new trail out in Hope called First Blood. It was built by uh my best friend and business partner, Thomas Schoen. Uh it was a great day of community coming together to celebrate a trail that uh they had built together and worked for many years to finish. Uh, and something that they did with the consent of the First Nations on whose land they were building. And I think that's something that makes for a very positive experience. So it was quite the day of riding every riding down the trail together and experiencing community in a really positive way.

Peter Ladner 2:33

Was that part of the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Not that project, no. Uh Thomas Schoen is has been my business partner for years, uh, but he built that trail through his company, First Journey Trails. Um, but we attended the opening uh and we're always happy to celebrate new trails as they're completed.

Peter Ladner 2:52

Tell

A Trail Opening Done Right

Peter Ladner 2:53

us about how you got started with Indigenous youth and biking.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Well, I was working as a community planner with First Nations around the province. I've been doing that since about 2008. And it was kind of the classic uh situation where I'm non-Indigenous myself and I was being retained by the government through a company that I worked for that specialized in Indigenous community development. And I would find myself going into these small, remote communities around the province. Um, and even though I, you know, I had a fair amount of education, I didn't fully grasp or understand the challenges and the situations that they were dealing with. And for the most part, I struggled to make the connections and to help the communities move forward in a meaningful way. And I was sitting in one of the communities, a small cutmuk community in the Fraser Canyon called Boothroid Indian Band. That's how they refer to themselves. And they were talking about their kids and they were talking about how they were struggling with uh sedentary lifestyles and they're concerned about drugs and alcohol and getting in trouble with the law, and they were trying to brainstorm new ideas that get kids outdoors and being active. And I remember sitting there feeling this knot in my stomach that despite my years of education, my supposed expertise, I had nothing of value to offer them. And it was in that meeting that uh one of the elders leaned over to me and he said, Hey, what do you know about mountain bikes? And he asked me because I always showed up with a mountain bike on the back of my car. I would go for a ride after the meetings. It's kind of how I kept my sanity. And I remember saying, Well, I don't know, enough to keep both wheels down, I guess. And he said, Well, our kids are doing it. They're riding all over the community. We can't build a we can't leave a pile of dirt without them building some stupid looking jump out of it. They were taking uh boards from our fences and wood piles to build their tricks and their features. We want them to keep outdoors. We want to help them, we want to support them. Can you help us? And of course I said yes. Now, I didn't know anything about building trails or bike features at that time, but I reached out to people in the community. I I met a lovely gentleman by the name of Doug De Doug Detwiller, who runs the SPRA Kids program, which was a huge program for getting kids into mountain biking for many, many years. And we returned to the community and we worked with the kids. Of course, they wanted jumps. So we built them a little bike park. And it just completely transformed my relationship with the community at that time. So I formed the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program. And the whole idea was that we were going to use bikes to connect with kids and communities and um, you know, support people getting out on the land and living healthy, active lives, and it blew up into something much bigger and much more meaningful

The Meeting That Sparked It

SPEAKER_00 5:36

than I could have possibly imagined. How big is it? But we've worked with uh about 40 different First Nations all over British Columbia and in Ontario. We've trained more than 500 youth to become trail builders, and we've built more than 200,000 meters of single-track mountain bike trails in those communities, supporting thousands of people to get outdoors and reconnect with the land to engage in outdoor recreation, uh, including hiking and dog walking and mountain biking. But probably our biggest user group is actually ladies' running clubs. How is that? Well, that's that's kind of an ongoing question. It was it was not something we expected, but a lot of the clubs that we uh or a lot of the first nations we work with, we would build these trails. And then for the most part, a lot of the first nature communities um women play a very central role in running the community and keeping things moving. And they started using the trails to get out and run during their lunch times. So we call them the running aunties. They usually have better names for themselves, like the Wolfpack Mama Running Club or what have you. But yeah, they became one of our biggest user groups uh in almost every community we work with. Uh, one of the things we love about the projects is we love returning to the communities and learning how they're using the trails in ways we never expected. Um, we always build the trails to be, you know, really good for mountain biking, but it's often like the schools start using them for language training and cultural revitalization. Uh, the community members use the trails to go out and access their berry patches and their medicines and to harvest cedar. Uh, and that's the kind of stuff that really keeps us excited and involved.

Peter Ladner 7:17

So you started out with kids doing sort of stunts and tricks and having some fun in the backyard. And it sounds like you've turned this into a way to build multi-use paths in communities that didn't have them before.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Uh exactly. I mean, the the key thing about this, I think the reason that we've experienced the success that we've had is we really listened, we learned to listen and respond to what the communities were telling us they wanted. You know, when I first started doing this, I had a vision in my head. We were going to create a mountain bike Shangri-La and we were going to bring all these people together and ride together on these trails. And we do get to do that, absolutely. Um, but what the communities ended up telling us is, you know, we want these trails because the reserve communities, and I say this without hyperbole, were designed as prisons. They were designed to keep people in and sever their relationship with the land to remove them as obstacles to uh development um and colonialization. So for them, they're like, we need to reconnect with the land, we need to reconnect our kids and our people with the land. So for them, rebuilding their ancient trail systems was a key part of that. And we responded to that need and we let go of our idea, our vision for this mountain bike Shangri-La, as I said, and that's where we really started to uh find success. And we end we still ended up building some absolutely brilliant and epic and gnarly mountain bike trails along the way.

Peter Ladner 9:01

Well, speaking as somebody who at one time in my life, many years ago, supervised trail building in Garibaldi Park, there's something about trail building that's pretty special. People like to do it, they go out and do it on their own, and the province is just introducing some active transportation guidelines, and I'm sure they require there's so many meters and so many, you know, safety features and whatever. But trail building is a little more ad hoc, it's a little more do-it-yourself, and people love to volunteer and do it. It's not like you have to pay a big team to come in. Has that been your experience that somehow the magic of trail building has gripped uh the people who built these trails?

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Absolutely. And I think that's another element of how we experience the successes that we've had, is trail building in and of itself is a form of art. You know, when I'm working with the kids, we always tell them that this is not a construction project, it's an art project. We are creating an experience. Um, when people walk your trail, they're going to experience the story that you created through this trail. And that's something that really appeals and resonates with the people in those communities. Um, and it was something that they could get behind really quickly. And we found again, like when we showed up and we're trying to talk about mountain biking, it was something that we brought in from an outsider perspective. You know, it was something that came from outside the community. But when we're out in the woods and we're building trails, we're working with their land. We're working with their stories. Um, and we're building to their needs. And that was

From Bike Parks To Community Trails

SPEAKER_00 10:40

something that just really connected with people in a in a much deeper and more meaningful way. And a lot of the youth we work with, you know, often they're the kind of the kids that don't really fit in anywhere else in in the school or, you know, the programs that are available to them. And they can be quite artistic. You know, we work with a lot of kids who carve and who want to paint and who want to experience the land in that kind of way. And that was something that worked really well when we started working from that perspective. And that's the beauty of trail building. It it is it's landscape art. Can you give us an example of a story related to one of these trails? One of my favorite stories, actually, is I I call it the Herbie Standard. And it started, I was working in a coastal community, and you know, I'd be going into the band office and preparing the project, and we were given a team of youth and some community members, and we were going to build a trail from the community out to this little bay overlooking the sound. And there was a gentleman who was always in the band office, he was an elected council member. His name was Herbie. And Herbie was uh a very large individual. Um, and he had trouble walking, and he would usually just kind of hang out in the band office and talk to everybody who came in. He was just a lovely, lovely man, always telling jokes. And he told me one day, he came into the office and he had bought himself this new pair of really big white sneakers and some walking poles and this fleece, bright red fleece jacket. And he had been told by his doctor that he was pre-diabetic and he needed to get knee surgery, but he could do neither. He had to get his diabetes under control, and he had to lose a very significant amount of weight before he could get his knee surgery done. And he was talking about how he needed to change his diet. He kept saying, you know, I'm eating a very Western colonial diet. I've lost connection with the diet my people had. And he knew he had to get out and start walking. Now, this is a tiny little coastal community, so there was really only one little ring road around half a dozen homes where he could walk. You know, everything else was kind of closed in. Um, and he would get out every day and he'd walk these trails in this loop over and over and over again. He'd have to get his 10,000 steps. And myself and the kids, we started building a trail off that loop road into the woods. And one day we saw Herbie walking past, and the kids called out to him. They're like, Herbie, come join us. Like they were sirens in the trees. And I remember he looked kind of in at us in the murky trees where we were we were building, and he couldn't come join us because there was a little ditch just at the side of the road, and then kind of a sharp little hill up to the edge of the forest, and it was just too much for him. So without me saying anything, the kids went back and they're like, We're gonna read, we're gonna fix this for him. And I showed him, okay, well, we can build a little bridge here, and then we'll build a little cut bank along the along the slope so he can get up to the trees a little bit easier, and maybe that'll make it a bit easier for him. And the next day, Herbie showed up on his walk and he stopped. Kids called out to him, Herbie, come join us. And he was able to walk across that little bridge, up the little cut bank to the edge of the trees, but then he had to stop because there was some like difficult routes and another steep section ahead of him, and he just couldn't quite make it at that point. And again, the kids went back and they wanted like we want to fix this trail, and that's all they cared about. Um, so over the next couple of months, I worked with these kids, and every part of the trail, every day, we were building the trail just so that Herbie could make it further along the trail to join us. And over the summer, they built this trail exclusively for Herbie. And every day we called it the Herbie Stand because we'd be like, Can Herbie make it up this little hill? Can Herbie make it over this route? Maybe Herbie needs a bench here where he can rest. So over the summer, if we built a three-kilometer

Trail Building As Landscape Art

SPEAKER_00 14:36

long trail that led out to a bay, to a little viewpoint, overlooked the bay. And Herbie told us like he actually lived at that bay at one point with his mom in a house that they used to have there. And he finally made it out to the bay. And over the course of that summer, and a year later, I went back to the community and we were planning the next phase of the trail. And I was walking up the trail, and all of a sudden I noticed this man coming down the trail towards me, a rather slim-looking guy. And he had this bright red fleece jacket on that was kind of waving behind him like a cape, and these giant white sneakers and these poles. He was just charging down the trail. And I realized it was Herbie. And he comes storming down. He's like, I got my new knees. And I had to jump out of his way because he was walking past me. And he just trundled on down the trail. And so over the year, those kids they built the platform that he was using to regain sovereignty over his body. And the kids, they were so proud of that. I remember the day when he finally reached the platform, they're all high-fiving him and high-fiving each other and giving each other hugs. That's the kind of stuff that we see in the community that keeps us going every year.

Peter Ladner 15:43

I think we're gonna have to rename the all ages and accessibility standard as the Herbie standard. Yeah, because that's basically what you've just described. Yeah, so if if these trails are providing a great benefit within the communities, how you've described these trails as part of reconciliation. And how does the outside culture and the cross-cultural uh forces come into play there?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Well, in terms of reconciliation, I mean, there's a there's a number of different fronts where that can work. So the first space where I see that working is clubs often come to me because they want to ensure that trails that they're building on indigenous lands and territories are being done in a way that's respectful and doesn't perpetuate the harm that comes from colonialism and recreation. Because those two things have always been explicitly linked, right? We've cleared the land to make way for recreation, and sometimes we've undermined indigenous rights entitled to do that. Um, so we need to repair those relationships and ensure that if we are building trails or we're, you know, we're playing out on the land that we're doing in a way that is respectful and done in a good way. So clubs will often come to me and we'll talk about that. Uh and there's some really good examples. I think one of the best is the Squamish Off-Road Cycling Association. They for years worked to develop a relationship with the Squamish First Nation. And recently, I think in the last couple of years, they signed a partnership agreement with the Squamish First Nation to manage and guide how they would uh build and maintain trails on their land, like their specific lands that uh they got a bunch of lands back through a land transfer agreement that had to do with LNG. And the lands that they got back, the Squamish Nation got back from the government as a as part of those negotiations, had very popular trails and recreation sites on them, including climbing. Uh, the the petrifying wall was part of that. So the club had for years been working to develop that relationship. They supported youth indigenous youth to get a riding, they provided employment opportunities for indigenous youth to be a part of the trail building. So they had worked for years to develop that kind of a relationship. And I think that's a really good example of reconciliation and action. And that is something I really encourage clubs to do. Um so when they come to me, they ask, you know, what can we do? I often say don't like a lot of when you want to build a trail in BC, you're supposed to go through uh rec sites and trails. And I say supposed to, you have to do that. It's a legal requirement, and we encourage everybody to do it. However, I always say go to the First Nation first. That's your first point of contact. Work with them, build that relationship, get their consent on where you want to build your trails, and then you go and you do the permits and everything you have to do with uh rec sites and trails BC because it is their land. The Royal Proclamation and recent court decisions, including the Williams decision in 2014, have clearly stated that the majority of land in BC is unceded, wasn't uh negotiated through treaties, and remains indigenous.

Peter Ladner 19:22

I want to go back to the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program. And you mentioned that you had trained uh was it 500 certified trail builders or something? Have the indigenous communities themselves taken ownership of this program? Do you have cases where you're not involved, but the program happens because Indigenous leaders step up?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Um, quite a few of the communities we've worked with started with us. We would train their youth, we would help them plan out a series of trails, and then the community would continue on with building those trails. So there's quite a few. So groups like, say, the Simp First Nation, uh, they're a Shakatma community located in the North Thompson River Valley. And they were building trails before we even showed up. And we partnered with them because they wanted to enhance

The Herbie Standard Story

SPEAKER_00 20:10

their trail building skills. They wanted, they wanted to work with some some of the folks that that they admired as trail builders, including Thomas Schoen, uh, my friend and colleague. So we worked with them to enhance their trail building skills and enhance the knowledge that they already had. They were really interested in learning how to build even better trails than they were already. And then, even though we worked with them for about five years in total, and we still work with them, but they developed their own trail building crew, their own trail building business, that they went on not only building trails around their community in Chuchua, which is just north of Barrier, where they built, I think around 20 kilometers of trail, but they also ended up working on trails throughout their traditional territories, which extends all the way up to Jasper. Uh, so they worked with the community of Blue River to build trails, they worked with the community of Clearwater to build trails, and they've been working with uh the town of Ailmount, where they've been building trails as well. So they used trails to assert their presence and their rights and title, as well as employment opportunities for the community and to support over the overall recreation industry throughout their territories. So that's a really good example. Uh, we've worked with the Heltsick First Nation in Bella Bella. We first trained their crew back in 2020 during the pandemic, and then they continued on and they've been building trails for years. And every once in a while, they'll invite us back to help them with a particular problem that they have. So they needed some bridges built. Uh so they're like, okay, we need help. We've been working the program that you taught us. Now we need you to come back and help us take it up to the next level. And so we'll have like this ongoing relationship with those communities over the years.

Peter Ladner 21:50

Right. At the beginning, you mentioned that uh the impetus for this came from a particular group of youth in a particular community. Are the kids outriding their bikes on these? Trails too still.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Yeah, absolutely. Boothroy, the specific community that I mentioned, uh it's a bit different story. The kids that we built the bike park with then have all grown up and they're all uh you know out in their 20s now. That's how long we've been doing this. Uh and I think a few of them still ride, but they've all moved on. Um, and that bike park has since been built over. They had to develop some new uh community facilities. But a lot of the community we work with, absolutely the kids are out riding and still building. And some of those kids we started with, you know, they were in their teens, so they they started building with us, then they left, right? Like they got more interested in girls and cars, and now some of them are in their early 20s and are returning to the community and getting back into riding and building. Uh, and Tom Eustache, who's our partner in Simp, he's telling me about how, yeah, some of these kids are coming back now, and now they're helping younger kids in the community ride. And we're we're seeing that generational change, which has been really exciting.

Peter Ladner 23:03

These are great stories. I wonder about data. Do you have do you measure success by any quantifiable measures?

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yeah, absolutely. Like we keep track of all the communities that we work with. We do our best to uh keep track of the trails that are being built, the number of kids that are working with us. Uh, some of the communities we do have trail trackers in place, sometimes trail cameras. So whenever we can, we collect that data from the nations. So that's how I'm able to state with fair confidence that we built over 200,000 meters of trail. Like I have an Excel sheet that shows each trail, each community, the trails that they've built, the number of kids that we trained. And if it's available and they track it, we know like how many people are using the trails and how often and for what uses. We track that. That's harder to track, but we do try to track that information as best we can. And we use that when we're helping the communities to access more funding, to show the results to the funders that we've already worked with, uh, and to try and give the provincial government an understanding of how important these trails are and how important that funding can be, and how important it is to invest in these types of amenities and infrastructure for rural and remote communities.

Peter Ladner 24:21

Just before we go, tell us a bit about the funding. Who who's paying for all this and uh and and where does the money come from?

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Well, over the years, I think one of the biggest sources of funding has been the provincial government. Uh, in the past, uh, they had the rural development fund, it was an absolutely brilliant source of funding. Sometimes it's the regional uh development trusts, like the Northern Development Initiative Trust across Northern BC has one has been one of the biggest supporters of trails. The New Relationship Trust uh funded a lot of the early planning. That's uh an Indigenous-led fund for community development. And some corporate sponsorships, so groups like Mountain Equipment Co-op, the Pay Dirt Fund, which is run by Santa Cruz bikes, uh, and other corporations have funded us over the years, like One Up Components in Squamish. Uh Seven Mesh Apparel out of Squamish has been one of our big funders and supporters over the years. Uh Fox Manufacturing has been a big supporter over the years. They have the Trail Trust, which is uh a big funder that supports trails around North America. Uh yeah, so there's been quite a few sponsors over the years. Every year is a struggle. You know, every year we're like, okay, what are we gonna do this year? Are we gonna be able to find funding? Sadly, I think the provincial government is not investing as much as they have in the past. Uh and the few chances I get to speak to someone, a political representative from the government, I really encourage them to start investing again in rural economic infrastructure development. I think that's one of the crucial pieces we can to really support sustainable rural communities. Trails are a critical element of what I call amenity uh migration. Trails are really important for attracting people to communities and keeping them there. That's how we get doctors and nurses and teachers and dentists to stay in rural, remote communities, is by providing the lifestyle choices that they need to help them stay there.

Reconciliation Through Trail Partnerships

SPEAKER_00 26:24

And that's something we need to continue investing in. Trails have been an important part of the climate change response. You know, when Williams Lake experienced the massive wildfires that they had, we learned afterwards that it was trails that brought back a lot of people who wanted that lifestyle choice. That's what brought people back to those communities after those wildfires. We found with the First Nation communities that we worked with that trails were an integral part of helping them not only prepare, but to respond to the crisis. And because the trails made their people healthier and more resilient, they were able to get through that crisis and to come back together afterwards. So trails are a critical element of healthy, resilient, and adaptive communities, and we need to be investing in that.

Peter Ladner 27:10

You mentioned before we started that you've done a number of podcasts on this program. And I know you've already, there's also a film called Dirt Relations that was at the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival. How can people see that film?

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Well, the the Dirt Relations, so that's the story of the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program. And it follows myself and my two best friends, Tom uh Eustache from the Simp First Nation and Thomas Schoen, who's a master trail builder from Williams Lake, and how we came together to develop the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program. And that's on YouTube through uh Free Hub Magazine. Uh so you can see it on their pipeline series. Base go to YouTube, type in Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program, Dir Relations, and it'll come up. Uh, and it's also you can access it through our website, imbp.ca. We're really proud of that film. And we did it because so many people approach us. And they like I get calls every other week from mountain bike clubs and and outdoor recreation groups and cycling groups, such as yourself, who want to know like what are you doing? How are you engaging in this process? Because they know they need to work with First Nations on whose land they're playing and they want to do things in a good way. And I think storytelling is one of the most important and effective tools we have to move reconciliation forward.

Peter Ladner 28:28

What's next for you?

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Uh well, we've got a couple uh trail projects that are happening this year. In fact, on uh Monday, I'm flying up to uh Nishka territory working with the village of Gingolf to develop a trail that's been on our radar for probably eight years. Uh, this lookout trail that goes on the cliffs above the village and provides amazing views of the NASA and the sound there. And you can see across the Alaskan panhandle. So we're gonna be up there next week planning that out and getting ready to work with the youth this summer to do that. We'll be back in uh Wagalisla, also known as Bella Bella with the Hellsick First Nation. Uh so yeah, we got some exciting projects coming up this year. And always working, as I said, storytelling is a critical part of what I do. So trying to bring together some new film projects and keep stories around reconciliation and outdoor adventure uh moving forward.

Peter Ladner 29:23

Patrick, it's a great story, and I'm glad that we've had the opportunity to share it with our listeners and wish you all the best, and uh, we'll keep track of what you're doing. Thanks so much. You've been listening to Bike Sense, an original podcast from the BC Cycling Coalition. If you like the podcast, we'd be grateful if you could leave us a rating of whatever platform you use. You can also subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If you have comments or suggestions for future episodes, email me at peter.ladner at bccycling.ca. You can help us amplify BC Cycling Coalition's voice by simply becoming a free member at bccycling.ca.