By Nora O’Malley, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Ha-Shilth-Sa Vancouver, BC – Across the street from Pigeon Park in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), a large orange feather pops into view from a storefront window. As one gets closer, the deep sound of traditional drumming bellows out the open door, inviting the country’s most marginalized in for a cup of coffee, a sandwich and a safe place for people to just sit and be. Welcome to Culture Saves Lives, a movement founded by Patrick Smith in response to the tragic death of a young Indigenous woman named Paige. Paige died in April 2013 of a drug overdose in a communal washroom adjacent to Oppenheimer Park in the DTES. She was just 19-years-old. A report entitled “Paige’s Story: Abuse, Indifference and a Young…
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