Six months ago, Sandra spent her nights sleeping on a pew at First United Church and her days doing anything she could to score drugs.
"I was homeless and I had nothing," says the 43-year-old from the Saddle Lake Cree nation, a tribe in Central Alberta. "I was using everyday, 24 hours a day, as long as I could keep going."
It's a far cry from her upbringing. Sandra grew up in an affluent Vancouver neighborhood and, until five years ago, led a relatively quiet life. She was going to school at the Native Education College, training to become an alcohol and drug counselor.
"I used to be the person driving down Hastings and feeling sorry for those people," she recalls. "If someone would have asked me five years ago if I'd ever live at [a Single Room Occupancy hotel] I would have shaken my head at the thought."
It was only when Sandra was forced to confront her own demons that her life began to spiral out of control.
"I had a rough childhood," she says. "I was abused. I started drinking at age six."
During her training to become a counselor, Sandra had to delve into her own troubled past -- something that proved too painful to relive. "I took a two-week leave of absence [from class] when we started getting into my past. I lost it. It was all too much for me. That's when I started drinking more and more and more. That was four years ago."
Sandra spent the following years on and off the streets until she was approached last spring by Les Merson and Gloria Wilson, co-producers of "Street Sisters" -- a documentary that follows nine aboriginal women as they struggle to break away from poverty, addiction and homelessness.
Wilson, who met Sandra back when she too was homeless and addicted to drugs, asked her to participate in the project. Now, Sandra is off the streets and in housing (though she's "not thrilled" with her place). She has reconnected with her son -- who she lost 11 years ago to the foster care system -- is going back to school, and is on a waiting list for drug and alcohol treatment.
It's the purpose of Street Sisters: to meet the women where they are and provide them with the tools to accomplish their individual goals. The documentary, which began shooting in April, follows the sisters in their day-to-day activities over a 12-month period -- whether they're scoring drugs, visiting their kids, or trying to secure housing, but also as they participate in an aboriginal women's support group.
"This film is about what can happen when a group of women come together in a supportive environment, when resources are put to bear that can allow these women to make changes in their lives," explains Merson, who is also the film's director. "It's about what can happen."
Merson first met his co-producer, Wilson, when he interviewed her for his award-winning 2008 documentary about homelessness, "Something to Eat, a Place to Sleep & Someone Who Gives a Damn."
With the help of Merson and the film's crew, Wilson secured housing and kicked her addictions. Today she's progressing in a methadone maintenance program. Wilson's now able to pay it forward: all nine women featured in Street Sisters are friends of hers who face circumstances similar to Wilson's.
As for Merson, the filming experience has given him firsthand witness to the kind of institutional racism aboriginal people face each day.
"Aboriginals are our first people, and yet they're treated like second-class citizens," he says. "So this film hopes to change perceptions, particularly of aboriginal women."
The legacies of colonialism and the residential school system, the foster care system, poverty, childhood violence and sexual abuse, limited education, and drug and alcohol use are just some of the issues the sisters are battling.
The societal obstacles these women are confronted with are staggering. A 2006 report by Statistics Canada found that the average income of an aboriginal woman is $16,600 -- about two-thirds the average income of a non-aboriginal woman.
While Greater Vancouver has an aboriginal population of just 2 percent, the proportion of aboriginal people among the homeless population is closer to 30 percent. And women are more heavily represented among the aboriginal homeless population than in the non-aboriginal homeless population.
Poverty and intergenerational cycles of violence also mean that aboriginal women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence, with an intimate partner assault rate three times higher than that of non-aboriginal women.
"These women are not garbage," says Wilson. "They are my friends, my family. They deserve dignity, respect and understanding. They have been abandoned and forgotten for too long." Twice a week the sisters gather for a counseling session facilitated by the renowned author and addictions specialist Dr. Gabor Mat