Dirt Relations Connecting Indigenous Youth to the Land Through Mountain Biking

With the support of two new friends: Thomas Schoen, a trail builder, and Tom Eustache, an Indigenous leader and mountain biker, Patrick launched the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program. Scratching and carving lines through ancient rainforests, they trained hundreds of youth to build and ride gnarly mountain bike trails. Together, they learned what it means to be allies, to become dirt relations.  

Patrick Lucas stumbled into the world of trail building when an Nlaka'pamux elder asked him to help his youth build a mountain bike trail. After hundreds of years of colonialism, Indigenous Peoples of British Columbia, Canada, were winning back their land rights and seeking to reconnect with their ancient territories.