As a blocker for Team Indigenous, Faye Tality takes pride in demoralizing roller derby jammers.
That takes physicality, whether it's sticking an elbow into the solar plexus of an opponent or linking limbs with a teammate to form an impenetrable wall of flesh and bone. Faye thrives on being aggressive and strong on her feet - whatever it takes to keep those jammers at bay and prevent them from racking up passing points.
Faye's junkyard dog toughness as a skater took years to develop and that foundation was laid when she was a kid in Prince George who answered to the name Melissa Masin (now Masin-Robinson). Years of practice on the ice as a competitive athlete with the Spruce City Skating Club elevated her pain threshold to world-class levels while she tried to land difficult jumps.
That willingness to deal with the pain that's now comes mostly from her wounded knees is serving Masin-Robinson well on the flat track as she prepares to bring some Prince George flavour to the 2018 Roller Derby World Cup.
Faye Tality will join forces with Smoka Hontas, Victoria Deckem and Siouxpernova on the 20-member, all-female Team Indigenous for the World Cup event, Feb. 1-4 in Manchester, England. For the 35-year-old mother of three, the 38-team tournament will be her first chance to brush shoulders with the world's best players.
"I'm going to be in the same room as so many of the derby people I watch on (webcasts) all the time and I get to play against them, I'm so excited," she said.
Masin-Robinson has Metis-Cree ancestry on her mother's side and her aboriginal roots lie in the Red River settlement in Manitoba. Her coach in Prince George saw an ad for the team trying to recruit players. She was required to submit a video to demonstrate her roller derby skills as well as game footage and learned in August she's been chosen, one of six Canadians on the team that also includes players from Argentina, New Zealand and the United States.
"We started to research our family history when I was 18 and my grandma always knew that her grandma and her mom were native, but it wasn't ever discussed at all," said Masin-Robinson. "They were told they were white and had to act white.
"My grandma and her sisters found out we are Metis and their grandma was Cree and we kept going back and the further we went back the more we realized there was more indigenous heritage in our family. It was neat to connect with all these women who know a lot about their family heritage. I'm just finding out about it and they've grown up celebrating it their whole life."
Sasheen Wesley, 33, a member of the Tsimshian Nation who lives in Gitaus, near Terrace, also made Team Indigenous. The mother of eight skates under the derby name Bash-Full.
All five continents will be represented in the tournament and Team Indigenous will be competing with the likes of Canada, United States, Mexico, Iran, Italy, Japan, Philippines, New Zealand and South Africa for the World Cup title.
This will be the third Roller Derby World Cup. The U.S. won the 14-team inaugural event in 2011 in Toronto and defended its title in 2014, defeating England 219-114 in the final of the 30-team event in Dallas, Texas.
"This is the first World Cup for Team Indigenous, the first all-woman team on a world stage in any sport," said Masin-Robinson, now in her fifth year of competing in roller derby.
She moved to Fernie in 2012 and her first weekend there she and her daughters went to watch the Avalanche City Roller Girls in action. They moved back to Prince George two years ago and Masin-Robinson joined up with the Rated PG North Stars. Masin-Robinson also trains with the three Prince George-based members of the Vancouver Murder men's roller derby team. She was a competitive figure skater until she was 19, when a car accident damaged both knees.
"They told me I would never skate, I'd never run, and I'd never be able to stand for more than four hours, but I didn't want to be the statistic they said I would be," Masin-Robinson said. "It bothers me but I have a knee brace and I kind of push through the pain but I just love it so much that I keep going. I like the competitiveness, I like how physical it is and I like that I get to be super strong and powerful and almost intimidating."
Her skating background eased the transition from blades to four-wheel skates but her derby days are not without painful mishaps. She broke her sacrum (lower back bone) in a hard landing a few years ago, has broken two ribs, suffered a separated shoulder and torn bicep, and has dislocated her knees and toes several times.
"The good thing about me growing up figure skating is my feet do what they're supposed to and I don't have to think about that, so I can think about strategies, where other people who had to learn (to skate) as adults have all those other things as well as having to think about their feet," she said.
Masin-Robinson's twin 14-year-olds, Tyya and Taylor, also play roller derby, practicing at the Roll-A-Dome with the Spruce City Roller Brats, but 11-year-old Hannah is not into that.
Roller derby season is just getting into full swing locally and North Stars are hosting a six-team Northern Exposure international tournament, April 21-23 at the Roll-A-Dome, the first Prince George event sanctioned by the Women's Flat Track Roller Derby Association. The North Stars are also heading to Hawaii for a tournament in June.
Team Indigenous opens the Word Cup with games Feb. 1 against Italy and Iceland. Teams will be ranked after the first day based on the point spread and will be pooled accordingly for the tournament round. In place of a national anthem before each game, Team Indigenous will have a minute of silence to honour murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls.
