New video show dangers of working the streets

Page 6

The File Hills Qu'Appelle Tribal Council has a new weapon to battle the child sex trade.

At a release party Dec. 8 in Regina, the tribal council and Birdsong Productions, a Regina-based film and video production company, introduced Lives Worth Living, a video designed to be shown to school children to warn them about the dangers of becoming prostitutes, and to give them help and support to get out of the illegal trade.

The 18-minute long video tells the story of a former child prostitute and the sad and ugly world of unsafe sex, drug, illness and suicide that robs children working as prostitutes of their dignity, their sense of worth, and, often, their lives, said the council's director of justice, Bev Poitras.

Filming took place in Regina, and wasn't without its difficulties. When they filmed to dramatize the "stroll" where child prostitutes work, "soon we had a bunch of cars driving in the neighborhood," said Regina city councilor Fred Clipsham, who helped write the movie's script.

"The men in those cars were looking for child prostitutes, and thought the girls who were acting the scenes for the movie were actually children on the stroll."

The child sex trade is a concern to many First Nations people in the Fort Qu'Appelle district, Poitras said.

"In Fort Qu'Appelle - a community that's about 45 minutes away from the city of Regina - there are a lot of transient kids. We're finding that these kids are coming to the streets of Regina, and they're being recruited in Fort Qu'Appelle to work the streets of Regina," said Poitras.

"Once we started doing the research, we found that life on the street is becoming inter-generational. There's second and third generations of people living on the street."

More than half of the tribal council community members live in Regina, and many children who are from the reserves, or who are a generation removed from life on the reserve, end up as part of the more than 100 child prostitutes who work in Regina's inner city, said Poitras.

Many children end up on the streets after being pimped by relatives - in some cases by their parents - in order to get money to feed their addictions, or the addictions of relatives.

The best way to fight the child sex trade is to heal the child, and the family, said Poitras. The video includes testimonials from Elders and First Nations' street workers who help children at risk learn more about their own spirituality and less about life on the stroll.

"Lots of people who are living in the cities have lost contact with the spiritual balance of First Nations' life. They have to re-connect with that, and get back into balance," she said.

"The video shows the children that they can contact people to bring back that spirituality, and the respect they should have for themselves, their families, and each other."