Snowboarding is both a heart-pumping and a calming experience for Virginia Johnston. When she's out in the mountains, the 24-year-old Squamish and Ojibwa First Nations rider says, the adrenaline rush from speeding downhill and going off on towering jumps gives her the ultimate high. She also lives for the tranquillity she feels in places she discovers when she's off on leisurely rides away from the pack.

"It's so beautiful out there," Johnston told the Georgia Straight. "You can find places that are quiet and serene, and it's up to you how you want to ride."

According to Johnston, snowboarding is more than just a hobby for her. "It's my escape-from-reality kind of thing ever since I was young," she said. "I did have a hard childhood, and this is the one thing I could do for myself. It changed my life entirely."

Were it not for the sport, Johnston said, she "would have probably turned to the bad stuff". Now a competitive high-performance athlete and snowboard instructor, she is also the senior administrator of the First Nations Snowboard Team.

Formed in 2004 starting with 10 Squamish and Lil'wat First Nations youths, the FNST is the only snowboard body for and run entirely by Native peoples. It has grown to at least 140 snowboarders aged five years to 25, according to its founder and operations manager, Aaron Marchant.

A member of the Squamish First Nation and a snowboarder himself, the 30-year-old Marchant told the Straight that the group started with the concept of training First Nations youths to get them certified to instruct other Natives. It is funded through the Aboriginal Youth Sports Legacy Fund created in November 2002 as part of an agreement between the Squamish and Lil'wat First Nations, the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation, and the Province of British Columbia. Marchant also said that the group receives a lot of in-kind support from mountain resorts.

According to Marchant, two FNST athletes, Jonathan Redman and Chelsea Mitchell, have qualified for the B.C. provincial team. He said that Redman has been training to make it to the national team, with the hope of eventually getting a slot in the Canadian Olympic team that will compete in the 2010 Winter Games.

"It's a great opportunity to get the youth involved in something positive," Marchant said. "It's a place you can go where there's really no borders. There is no politics; the colour of someone's skin doesn't matter. It's all about the snow."

Snowboarding can be an expensive sport, but through membership in the FNST, Native youths receive free training, equipment, and passes to various mountain resorts. Marchant explained that the kids have to commit to a drug- and alcohol-free lifestyle to be accepted into the FNST program. In addition to this requirement, the young athletes must maintain a C+ grade average in school and be willing to complete 90 percent of the training schedule. He said that these commitments instill discipline that can serve young people throughout their lives.

Marchant recalls one young man who was involved in gangs until he joined the FNST. "After being in our program for two years, he left the program for a full-time job," he said. "We'd like to be able to bring youth in our program when they're at that stage of making choices in their lives."

Johnston said that FNST athletes are expected to act as role models for other young people, especially for those who are just starting out in the sport.

"They see that their instructors live a healthy lifestyle and are active in sports and they want to be just like us," she said. "Within my community, everybody knows that I'm on the team, and they respect that I'm drug- and alcohol-free. There's a lot of change within the communities, because they want to make sure that if you register for the team, you need to abide by the rules."

In addition to snowboarding lessons, Johnston said that FNST members also undergo "cultural training, because we're not just like any team". She said that they also have to learn what First Nations peoples have gone through in their history so they can become leaders in the future.

Link: First Nations Snowboard Team