Saskatchewan Aboriginal Track & Field, is confronting systemic barriers facing Indigenous youth, using sport as a vessel of safety and identity

In a modest office on Broadway Avenue—a late-autumn sun cutting across stacks of meet schedules and training binders—Saskatchewan Aboriginal Track & Field (SATF) is quietly shaping a movement. It’s a movement of youth, community, reclamation and running not away from something, but toward something better.

On a November evening, I sat down with Brett Lachance, who has been instrumental in helping turn founder Derek Rope’s idea of SATF into the thriving organization it is today, to learn how SATF and its athletics arm Running Wild are transforming lives and rewriting what Indigenous sport can look like in Saskatchewan.

What I expected was a conversation about track. Instead, what I got was a powerful story about healing, identity and the radical power of a safe place.

For Lachance, the journey into SATF didn’t begin in an office or board meeting; rather, it began on the track. Growing up between Big River First Nation and James Smith Cree Nation, he gravitated toward athletics early. “I competed in… everything,” he laughed. “but track and basketball were kind of [what] I was really kind of good at.” That path eventually led him to the North American Indigenous Games (NAIG), where he first met Rope, who was then the coordinator for the track and field team, in 2017.

He laughed as he recalled those early days. “I was an athlete just coming up.” Their connection strengthened when Lachance entered university and later reached out to Rope for summer employment. One job turned into a mentorship, then into a shared vision.

As Lachance tells it, SATF wasn’t born from a single incident. It was rather the culmination of years, decades even, of trying, stumbling, learning and trying again. “This has always been kind of one of Rope’s dreams,” he said, “to have… an organization… devoted to track and field and the overall growth and development of it.”

The dream began long before SATF had a name. Back in the early 2000s, a much younger Rope attempted to build a program out of White Buffalo Youth Lodge, under the name Running Wild, long before it took its current shape. “He ran into a lot of issues,” Lachance said. “He was trying to organize it for a class of 14-year-old girls, and it came as a bit of a rude awakening when he was talking about the program with one of his mentors. It was failing, and it was failing because Rope didn’t know what it was like to be a 14-year-old girl. He didn’t know what they were interested in, what they were going through developmentally.” 

That early attempt failed but the lessons stuck. Years later, around 2007–2011, a new group of young leaders came together, people like Giselle, Jordan, Jill and Holly, whom Lachance affectionately refers to as “the foremothers.” They formed the first real structure of SATF, eventually partnering with Saskatchewan Athletics to create a sister organization with a focus on Indigenous engagement.

SATF’s mission is not abstract. It’s painfully concrete. Lachance spoke openly about a statistic he cannot forget: according to 2016 data released by the Canadian government, Indigenous youth made up 92% of incarcerated boys and 98% of incarcerated girls in Saskatchewan.. “It’s really hard to… hear,” he said. “[It doesn’t mean] us as a people or anything are hurt or broken or shattered or anything.” It means the systems around us are broken.

He described how gangs can provide the structure many youth don’t receive at home like hierarchy, identity, organization, colours and belonging. “Because, you know, if you don’t know how to do something, how are you expected to teach somebody else to do that, right?” he said. “A lot of First Nations kids don’t have in their own home somebody to provide organization, somebody to provide safety, somebody to provide authority.”

SATF’s response is simple but poignant: If harmful systems are recruiting youth, then healthier systems must too. This is where track and field comes in.

Sport, Lachance repeated, is the “biggest safe space anyone can access.” He cited a famous Nelson Mandela quote, a guiding principle for the organization:

“Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does.”

This is the philosophy at the heart of SATF. Sport not only for performance, but as protection. Identity. Life.

“I never know what’s going on at kids’ houses,” Lachance said. “But I know that when they’re here, for this hour, they’re safe. They’re accepted. They can be loud. They can be kids.”

In Indigenous teachings, wellness is not simplistically constrained within the physical domain. It’s whole, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. This worldview guides SATF.

Physically, SATF offers age-grouped training streams ranging from the energetic Future Greats (ages 5–12, “full of piss and vinegar,” as Lachance put it) to Developmental athletes, high performance competitors aiming for provincial or NAIG success, and even Masters athletes. Every coach is trained through both SATF’s internal systems and mainstream coaching certifications, ensuring proper technique, safety and progression. 

“We don’t want kids looking through rose-coloured glasses,” Lachance said. Athletes are taught emotional regulation to build confidence while also processing setbacks without tying their entire self-worth to medals. 

Mentally, Lachance uses a metaphor: each day we have only 24 marbles, eight already spent on sleep, and the rest divided between school, family, social life and training. If athletes arrive overwhelmed, they are encouraged to sit, watch and simply exist in a safe space; track doesn’t always have to be about track. 

Spiritually, some teachings require cultural protocol, but Lachance shared one core idea: the Creator’s greatest gift is something already within us. SATF helps athletes search for that internal gift, their talent, confidence and sense of self, and learn to honour it. 

This holistic model extends beyond athletes to coaches as well. One of SATF’s most innovative contributions is its emphasis on localized coach development, training teachers, community volunteers and local leaders so that knowledge stays within communities. 

This ensures long-term stability. “If I go up to a First Nation to run a clinic, that’s great,” Lachance said. “But as soon as I leave, track and field leaves too.” He explained how he can travel to places like Whitecap, Carry the Kettle, Kakwistāhaw and other communities to deliver a session, but the moment he drives home, the momentum disappears. “As soon as I leave, how does sport, how does track and field maintain in that community?” he asked. “Well, it doesn’t. Because I leave. And so track and field leaves.”

That reality is exactly why SATF focuses so heavily on local coach development. By training teachers, community volunteers and local leaders right where they live, the sport becomes rooted in the community instead of temporarily imported from outside. Those coaches can call SATF anytime,  “Hey, I need help making a practice schedule,” Lachance said, and the support continues long after the clinic ends. In this model, track and field doesn’t vanish when Lachance steps off the reserve. It stays and evolves with the people who live there. By building coaches in the communities they serve, SATF creates true long-term stability and genuine, sustainable growth.

This approach directly answers Calls to Action 87–91 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, especially around Indigenous athlete development and culturally safe coaching.

The club is staffed by what Lachance lovingly calls “the four silverbacks”, legendary long-time Huskie coaches with nearly a century of combined experience. They mentor not just young athletes, but also the younger coaches stepping into leadership roles.

SATF’s connection to the Huskie track and field team has become one of the program’s greatest strengths. Many current Huskie athletes serve as mentor coaches, leading training in the same event groups they compete in, sprints, jumps, distance, throws and even pole vault. “These athletes teach in the same areas they compete in,” Lachance said. “That’s insanely valuable.” 

Mentorship is central and follows a clear pathway. As Future Greats athletes age up, they begin helping with younger groups. Developmental athletes support the Future Greats, gaining experience and confidence, while High Performance athletes are expected to model leadership. This layered system creates a perpetual cycle of growth, where athletes learn, teach and eventually lead. 

One of the most striking moments in our conversation came when Lachance described what it feels like for Indigenous athletes to walk into mainstream competitions. “We’re not less than,” he said. “We’re just a little bit more different, in the way we engage with everybody, in our perspectives and understandings.” For many athletes, especially those coming from places like Oskāyak High School, that difference becomes visible the moment they leave SATF-run spaces.

“When we go to our own meets, like Tony Cote or the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Track & Field Championships, we feel like we’re top dog,” Lachance said. “But when we enter a mainstream sport or a mainstream event, we’re now all of a sudden up here, and we get stuffed all the way down to the bottom.”

That shift is felt immediately, particularly by SATF’s “brown-faced athletes,” as Lachance described with honesty and care. In SATF environments, they feel seen. When Indigenous athletes enter spaces where few, or more often than not, none look like them, the difference can be felt immediately. Running Wild helps bridge that divide: the team is diverse, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, working shoulder-to-shoulder, learning from each other, building trust. “We don’t separate anybody,” Lachance said. “We don’t discriminate against creed, culture or code. Anyone involved with SATF and Running Wild belongs here.”

When asked directly how SATF contributes to reconciliation, Lachance didn’t hesitate: through representation, education and partnership. As facilitators of the Anti-Racism and Cultural Awareness (ACM) course, now mandatory for Saskatchewan teachers, SATF helps educate coaches, athletes, volunteers and partner organizations.

Their partnership with Saskatchewan Athletics is especially significant. “They handle mainstream track… Our energy and everything is engaging with First Nations people,” he said. But together, “we’ve come to grow and form a really close, tight-knit partnership” talking about how they grow the sport as a collective.

This partnership is an attempt to go beyond symbolic gesturing. Its aims are structural, it affects facilities, coaching pathways, competition access and community programming. SATF is reconciliation in motion.

When asked what impact he’s seen most clearly, Lachance immediately mentioned Oskāyak High School. “And what we do there is actually giving the [students their] first [opportunity to experience organized athletics]…having their first cross-country team, their first track and field team,” he said. “That’s a lot of firsts.”

Families are coming out to meets. Youth are traveling hours to train, sometimes an hour each way, because the space means that much to them. One young SATF athlete said in relation to the program, “some days I have a lot of just pent-up emotions, those emotions from, you know, school, drama, family, whatever, right? [SATF lets me] vent that out and express that in a helpful way.”

This growth is doing anything but slowing down. “We doubled in size from last year to this year,” Lachance said. With growth comes the need for structure, new policies, safer systems, more training and more capacity.

But despite the growth, the dream is the same as it was when Rope first tried it as a young adult: Create a safe place. Build identity. Give youth something healthy to belong to.

In the final moments of our interview, Lachance explained that understanding Indigenous track and field in Saskatchewan means first understanding the communities themselves and how different they truly are. 

“A lot of people can’t separate Big River from Big River,” he said, meaning most people don’t even know the difference between the town and Big River First Nation. That lack of awareness expands into a broader misunderstanding of northern life. Many people picture Saskatchewan as one giant flat prairie, the old joke where “my dog ran away last week and I can still see him running.” But Lachance pointed out that once you head north, “it’s a completely different landscape… a lot more rocks, a lot more trees, a lot more hills.” Geography shapes culture, and culture shapes the needs of each community. 

“Not one community is the same,” he said. “We all have different customs, different ways of knowing, different beliefs.”

That uniqueness is exactly what SATF works to uplift. Instead of pulling everyone into Saskatoon or forcing northern athletes into southern systems, SATF wants people to be able to train, compete and take pride in their own places. The goal is not to smooth all differences into a single story of “Indigenous sport,” but to honour each community’s identity on its own terms. 

SATF refuses to pan-Indigenize these experiences; it recognizes that every community carries its own histories, teachings and relationships to land. In celebrating those differences, not erasing them, SATF builds a track where every young person can run as who they are, not who someone else expects them to be.

With every practice held in a safe space, every coach trained in cultural awareness, every youth who feels “seen” for the first time, SATF is proving that track and field is more than just sport. It is a pathway toward connection and community.

It is, as Lachance said, the safest language youth can speak, loud, fast, joyful, healing. And as Saskatchewan’s Indigenous athletes keep running, one thing becomes clear:

They are not running alone anymore.