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Adam George first tried skateboarding when he was three years old in St. Catharine’s, Ont. He’s now one of the pros who will be skating this weekend at 7 Gen Skate Festival’s skateboarding contest in Vancouver.
“We lived in sort of these project areas and I saw these older kids skating around and I had my Walmart Spider-Man skateboard with plastic trucks and I just kind of followed them around and they let me tag along,” said George, who is a member of Oneida Nation of the Thames, Wolf Clan and a descendent of the Joseph Brant family.
“And that’s where I learned how to ollie — I practised for an entire year and then by the end of the year, I could comfortably ollie and I was pretty proud.”
After that, George and his family moved and he found himself navigating adolescence, trying to figure out who he was and skateboarding was always there. Eventually he got his first pro skateboard from West 49 — a Speed Demon.
This year’s 7 Gen Skate Festival will see a lot of ollies and some harder tricks like backside tailslides and dragon flips. The event is slated to take place Nov. 11 and 12 at the PNE and will include both a pro and am contest as well as Indigenous culture-sharing.
Brenda Knights, the Indigenous capacity builder for 7 Gen and a member of Kwantlen First Nation, hA been involved in the festival since the beginning.
“My fiancé was often with his friends, reminiscing and talking about the old Slam City Jam and how disappointed they were that it left Vancouver,” Knights said.
“And I had done different event planning with the Township of Langley before and so I said, well, let’s let’s just do it.”
Last year, the event was held in Langley and the municipality provided a venue — where the Vancouver Giants play. This year they had to move to the PNE because of the hockey schedule.
That’s where Slam City Jam took place, so trying to bring a skateboarding contest back to Vancouver in the same place just feels right.
“We wanted to introduce Vancouver to skateboarding again. It all sort of fell into place,” she said.
In addition to the contest, 7 Gen Skate Festival also plans on immersing spectators and competitors in Indigenous culture.
“We wanted to take it a step further and not just do a welcoming ceremony but do things behind the scenes too,” Knights said. “Last year we had a youth work up in the lighting area that’s looking to go to post-secondary in that field; we hired an Indigenous marketing company to help us with the website.
“Our goal is to get the money we did raise in the hands of as many Indigenous people and businesses as possible.”
Not only are they doing work behind the scenes but they’ll also have a section for vendors, where George and his partner will have a beadwork booth; an opening ceremony with powwow dancers; a 50/50 to support B.C. Indigenous Housing Society and a canoe that was a integral part of last year’s course.
“The canoes coming back, we had an artist from Seabird Island Band that made the canoe and donated his time to put it canoe together for us,” Knights said.
And the money from the 50/50 is going toward cultural programming for residents across various B.C. Indigenous Housing Society buildings.
“Wherever we can, we’re trying to make it more meaningful,” Knights said. “The event really feels like a way of bringing cultures together.”
Last year one of the vendors shared with Knights that the event did a lot for her and her grandson.
“She said, ‘Now I’m the cool grandma because here I am, I’m a vendor at a skateboarding event,'” Knights said. “It allowed her that opportunity to come and see that this is a real sport and what her grandson is working on, it could lead to something.”
And for people like George, it has led to something and meant a lot to him on and off the course.
“It was a way to get out of the house, listen to music, just push down the road and basically go anywhere I wanted to,” he said. “It helps me deal with some of the stuff that was kind of going on at home so I was an expressive outlet.”
After competing in last year’s contest, George is looking forward to hitting the course again.
“Last year’s was awesome, I liked the Native designs that were incorporated, using the canoe shape as an obstacle to skate,” he said. “I’m also really looking forward to the vendors, which will give Indigenous entrepreneurs a chance to promote their businesses.”
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