Ninth annual Aboriginal Day Live promises bigger, better show from Edmonton’s river valley – Edmonton Journal

June 18, 2015

It took 14 years for Shane Ghostkeeper to think of himself as a minority.

In the northwestern Alberta town where he grew up, hotels are named after Vegas hot spots, summer nights never really get dark, and Métis, Mennonite and miscellaneous mingle in the playground.

But when Ghostkeeper moved from High Level to Edmonton to pursue his competitive hockey dream, he suddenly became the only aboriginal kid in school.

“The culture shock was a lot for me … I ended up being in five different high schools, moving around for hockey,” said Ghostkeeper, a Métis of Cree descent. “It took a toll on my self-confidence. The distance from Edmonton to High Level is vast. And I really felt that.”

Ghostkeeper struggled on, painfully shy and reclusive. When he was 16, his dad bought him a pawnshop guitar and a trainer amp as a way of drawing him out. The NHL dream petered out, but the determination Ghostkeeper learned on the ice didn’t. And at the Federation Cup, a Métis hockey tournament in Edmonton, he met Sarah Houle, a painter and writer originally from the Paddle Prairie Métis settlement, not far from High Level.

Read More: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Ninth+annual+Aboriginal+Live+promises+bigger+better+show+from+Edmonton+river+valley/11144361/story.html