Camellia Brown of the All My Relations basketball team looks for an open teammate at a scrimmage against players in the Strathcona Basketball League.
Camellia Brown showed up promptly this week for shooting practice in Vancouver, despite nursing an injured ankle. Her teammates surprised her with a care package, including a new pair of basketball shoes, a small bag of Epsom salt and a jar of ointment made from devil’s club – a plant revered for its cultural, spiritual and medicinal significance in Indigenous communities across the Pacific Northwest.
After sustaining the injury on Sunday, Ms. Brown, with Nisga’a and Gitxsan heritage, now wears a bead with devil’s club on both of her sneakers, in hopes that her ancestors will watch over her in the coming All Native Basketball Tournament, or ANBT, in Prince Rupert, scheduled to run from Feb. 10 to Feb. 18.
Ms. Brown, 32, is a member of the All My Relations (AMR) basketball team, founded by three Indigenous women about two decades ago in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It comprises 14 athletes from various First Nations and backgrounds, with players ranging in age from 16 to 41. Many of them are single mothers and postsecondary students, and all are dedicated advocates for sports and healthy living.
Coach Adelia Paul talks strategy with the AMR players. The team regularly sets up practices with three intentions for the day.
For Ms. Brown and the rest of her team, AMR embodies family, sisterhood and community, allowing them to support each other in embracing their identities as Indigenous women.
Ms. Brown spent much of her childhood in foster care in Terrace, B.C., before she relocated to Vancouver during her teenage years. Prior to her move, she didn’t know her culture or her background and she said she felt ashamed to be Indigenous. Her involvement with AMR changed that.
“These ladies, some of them, and a lot of them now are indulged in their culture. And they talk about it so passionately, and they share the knowledge that they know, they learned and the things that they’re still learning,” said Ms. Brown, now a third-year apprentice electrician. “So, with the team, that has really helped grow my perspective, and how I feel about being an Indigenous woman, and that is very powerful.”
Marnie Scow grew up on a reserve in Port Hardy on Vancouver Island and was surrounded by Indigenous people, culture and ceremony. All that was noticeably absent after she relocated to Vancouver. Joining AMR in 2013 helped her regain it.
Ms. Scow, 36, from Tsakis Village and a member of Kwakiutl First Nation, is a first-generation residential school survivor. Having experienced much trauma during her childhood, Ms. Scow said she made some unhealthy decisions in her youth. But AMR has had a significant impact on her journey toward sobriety.
“They keep me accountable. If there was ever a day that I wanted to drink, they would be like, ‘Nope, not today,’” she said. “I am really not sure where I would be if I didn’t have sports and especially with Indigenous people. It’s just, it’s different.”
Ms. Scow is currently pursuing her master’s in public health at the University of British Columbia.
AMR, founded by Indigenous women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, has players ranging from ages 16 to 41, from an assortment of nations.
The team is getting ready for the All Native Basketball Tournament later this month in Prince Rupert, B.C. Two years ago, it was the first Vancouver team to win ANBT.
The ANBT, originally called Northern British Columbia Coast Indian Championship Tournament, was established in 1947, before the lifting of the potlatch ban, which made much Indigenous ceremony and cultural practice illegal and drove it underground from 1885 to 1951. Basketball was untouched, and the contest was used as an opportunity for connection.
In 2022, AMR, one of the few teams at the ANBT with players from different nations and backgrounds, became the first Vancouver group to win a championship at the tournament, which has now grown into one of the biggest of its kind in North America.
With the absence of some of AMR’s stars, who are currently playing at the college level, team manager Joleen Mitton emphasized the importance of the remaining players stepping up. Ms. Mitton, 40, has spent half of her life playing for AMR. She said the team has come a long way from its inception. “When we first started … we were a bunch of bad kids on a basketball team,” she said. “This is something that we could have used all our frustration and all our energy to do something slightly more positive than getting into trouble.”
Ms. Mitton pushed for transformation of the team – introducing more structure to AMR, which included recruiting higher-calibre players. She also changed the team’s name from Storm to All My Relations, a phrase often said in prayer and ceremony, and in Ms. Mitton’s opinion, a reflection of the diverse backgrounds of AMR members.
Ms. Mitton, who’s Cree and Dunne-za, was born and raised in East Vancouver. She was gifted the name “Mountain Mover.”
“I think it means I’m moving things.”
Joleen Mitton, right, high-fives Ms. Lewis while doing situps together.
Besides promoting Indigenous representation in basketball, Ms. Mitton created Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week in 2017 to reclaim space for Indigenous designers, and she co-founded Supernaturals, the world’s first all-Indigenous modelling agency, to pave the way for authentic representation and fair treatment.
Amid her busy schedule, she always finds joy in returning to the basketball courts, where she plays, connects with her teammates, and coaches or mentors young athletes – a goal that AMR is committed to achieving. Among her mentees, Laura Lewis, 29, is blossoming into a natural leader.
The Prince Rupert-born player, from the Nisga’a, Tsimshian, Tahltan and Tlingit Nations, unearthed a passion for basketball at the age of 13. Later on, she discovered that numerous family members had participated in the ANBT. Her late grandfather, Samuel Doolan, clinched victory in the inaugural tournament.
Ms. Lewis refers to AMR as “the diamonds of the Downtown Eastside” because “we’re always under pressure; we’re always on the run; we’re always on the go. And the one thing that this tournament gives us is that moment to shine, because we never get that opportunity anywhere else.”
'We’re always on the run, we're always on the go,’ says Ms. Lewis, shown defending the ball.