Ayoungman says that climbing has been beneficial for her mental health (Photo courtesy of Cassie Ayoungman)
On the importance of mentorship
When I first started, my mentor was a good friend of mine. You want someone that you trust — especially with climbing. I also run a women’s climbing page in Calgary. I found that women wanted to climb with other women, and so I created this group — that’s where I met most of my climbing partners. Through there, I wanted others to find climbing partners and build those new “belaytionships”.
So it’s finding those mentors — and I want to be that for my community because I think that if it’s someone coming from your own nation, you are going to be like: ”This is awesome, maybe this is something I want to pursue.” It’s having that extra push. Having that person, someone that’s willing to teach you, someone that has the experience … I feel that it’s pretty important, especially coming from a smaller community.
On bringing climbing back to Siksika
I was working with some people in Siksika [last year] to create an introduction to rock climbing. I was responsible for organizing the facility and being a mentor. I have a good friend who was able to find the funding. He worked on that side of things. We collaborated and agreed on getting a group together. So we have a few youth — we call them the N7 Siksika group. They are some of the role models in Siksika. We wanted to give them the opportunity to try out climbing.
We were only able to get the older youth in for an introductory class. They were stoked on it. At first some of them were saying they were afraid of heights. I told them I was when I first started. It seemed like they were really enjoying themselves. They said they really liked it and they were hoping to go again. That’s when our Covid cases went up and we had put that on hold. Hopefully when the cases go down in Siksika, we’re going to try to pick that right back up again. I would love to just set up a top rope and get the kids climbing outdoors as well.
On the importance of Indigenous representation in the outdoors
If you’re seeing someone of your own race or from your own Nation, I feel like it’s going to have that spark — “She’s done that; maybe I can try that out.” [But] I don’t think we’ve seen any First Nation people competing in climbing right now. I can’t speak for all First Nations across Canada, but I can speak from my experiences. We have a couple of role models in our Nation [in other sports] and we really look up to them.
If we’re pushing these programs, even if we’re changing one person’s life or even two: that’s change. It doesn’t have to be drastic. It starts with small little changes and then going from there. And that’s what we’re seeing through our nation. Seeing more people out in the outdoor community is going to motivate more people. There’s interest, it’s just pushing them out the door and going for it!
On what she hopes to see in the future
I would love to see everyone giving acknowledgement to the land they’re on. I’m seeing that more people are saying where they’re skiing, hiking, climbing, biking. I want people getting out there exploring the land, even if it’s just a nice little nature walk, understanding where our people roamed.