Tragedy or Triumph: Canadian Public Policy

Transcription

Atkinson Fdn Report 2006:Atkinson Fdn. Report 2006#A48F6
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The 2005 Atkinson Fellowship
in Public Policy
A Special Report
by Marie Wadden
Where tragedy falls
off Canada’s map
Along with
poverty, addiction,
despair, Aboriginal
communities
battle myths
Aboriginal communities are
out of sight from most
Canadians. Our family spent two
weeks one summer on
Vancouver Island. My children
were hoping to see the people
who made the wonderful totem
poles of Stanley Park. We didn’t
see a single Aboriginal person in
our travels.
I understand better now,
after a frustrating drive back and
forth on the same highway this
summer looking for the Nanoose
Band Reserve near Lantzville,
B.C. There aren’t many off ramps
for reserves.
Few of the communities I
visited this year, as part of my
research on addiction among
Aboriginal people, are marked on
road maps, or sign posted on
provincial highways. Not even
the largest reserve in Manitoba
— Sagkeeng, population 3,000.
To get there I drove a couple
of hours from Winnipeg to the
Pine Falls turnoff. A gas station
attendant pointed me towards
town and said “drive that way.” I
drove past prosperous middleclass homes. The source of
wealth — a large paper mill.
Alongside it are railway tracks.
On the other side of the tracks is
a long line of cookie-cutter
CMHC bungalows stretching as
far as the eye can see.
I knew I was on the reserve
because I’d also run out of
pavement. This was the pattern
MARIE WADDEN PHOTOS
Kangirsuk, an Inuit village in northern Quebec, looks peaceful, but communities in the region have been plagued with violent crime. The Inuit also complain no
agency is tracking suicides in their communities.
wherever I travelled and I began
to see the lack of pavement as a
metaphor for neglect.
Neighbours to reserves have told
me over the years, “pavement
isn’t a priority for them.” Or, “I
guess they’ve got other
priorities.” The assumption is,
Aboriginal people choose bad
roads.
The Aboriginal community
has been fighting assumptions
for more than a century, most of
them about the money — “our
money,” as one friend pointed
out — being spent on their
welfare and problems. This year,
it is about $9 billion, out of
Canada’s total budget of $227
billion.
Sometimes the money
doesn’t make it to them. In 2005,
$700 million was allocated for
Aboriginal health care, but the
money never left Ottawa. The bill
to free up this money was not
passed before the Liberal
government fell. Yet that same
year, $2.6 billion was fasttracked for Newfoundland after
Premier Danny Williams insisted
on getting a fair share of offshore
About the winner
Marie Wadden is a journalist who
has been concerned about the
problems of addiction in Canadian
Aboriginal communities since first
visiting Davis Inlet in 1978.
Her passion for the subject earned Marie Wadden
Atkinson Fellowship
her the 2005 Atkinson Fellowship in
Public Policy and led her to a year-long, cross-country trek to
look at the causes, effects and potential solutions to the
addiction crisis among Aboriginals.
Her series of stories — Tragedy or Triumph; Canadian Public
Policy and Aboriginal Addictions — is appearing in the Star and
online at thestar.com/atkinson.
Wadden began her career at CBC television in
Newfoundland 27 years ago and has won numerous journalism
awards. The St. John’s resident is the 17th winner of the
Atkinson Fellowship and the first from east of Québec.
The Fellowship, sponsored by The Atkinson Charitable
Foundation, the Toronto Star and the Honderich Family, aims
to further liberal journalism in the tradition of Joseph E.
Atkinson, the Star’s founder.
oil and gas revenues. The
message: There are twice as
many Aboriginal people in this
country as there are
Newfoundlanders, but they don’t
count as much.
Through the writing of this
series I found a daunting list of
Aboriginal problems — poverty,
alcohol addiction, suicide — and
the path to solutions isn’t an easy
one.
When I applied for the
Atkinson Fellowship, my topic
was The Money Pit. Why
Throwing Money at Aboriginal
Addictions Doesn’t Work. I
changed the title to Tragedy or
Triumph? Canadian Public
Policy and Aboriginal Addictions
to gain acceptance into
Aboriginal communities.
Now I know it’s neither a
money pit nor a triumph. It is a
tragedy, and not one of
Aboriginal making.
There are about 391,000
Aboriginal people living on
reserves in Canada, and more
than a million others in towns
and cities across the country,
including 40,000 Inuit in the Far
North.
The United Nations Human
Development Index equates the
Aboriginal standard of living in
this country with that of Brazil,
well below the Canadian norm.
In 1978, I was in the Labrador
community of Davis Inlet, where
the people lived in shacks.
“Indians don’t know how to live
in houses,” I was told. Inside I
found walls built without struts,
sheets of drywall installed
without proper framing, a single
lightbulb to light a threebedroom house. The “Indians”
didn’t build these houses; some
southern contractor profited
from the construction.
This year, I met Phyllis and
Andy Chelsea, a Shuswap couple
in B.C. whose house is rotting
with mould. Statistics Canada
says 50 per cent of reserve
housing is like this.
Sign at an Inuit workshop in Ottawa meditates on the causes of suicide and
addiction.
Children play in the Labrador Innu community of Natuashish. Indian Affairs
Minister Jim Prentice says the solutions to Aboriginal poverty will come
through better education and he estimates it will take two generations to
make a difference.
I was so wrapped up in
writing their story, I missed an
event at my child’s school. Later,
when a parent asked where I’d
been, I told her about the
Chelseas’ predicament. Her
husband works for the Canada
Mortgage and Housing
Corporation and has told her the
houses on reserves are mouldy
because “they leave their water
running.”
I lived with the Chelseas for a
couple of days at Alkali Lake and
their water wasn’t running.
Neither was the electricity. Huge
trucks piled high with timber
routinely knock out the power
lines. To add insult to injury, the
truck drivers are not Aboriginal.
And the timber is going off the
reserve, to enrich someone else’s
life.
Contrary to some taxpayers’
perceptions, Aboriginal people
don’t get their housing free. It is
provided through loans to band
councils that are repaid by
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Path to hope isn’t easy
charging rent. In B.C., I heard
many stories of people being
evicted by band councils because
they couldn’t afford to pay their
rents. Taxes? Only goods
purchased on reserves are taxfree — most reserves have little
to sell. The Inuit pay all the same
taxes we do and more because of
the higher costs of goods shipped
north.
Aboriginal people have
another way of looking at the
issue of “our” money. They
believe “our” money is being
made off their land. Some
Canadian judges have agreed.
their own.
I did find stories of triumph,
where Aboriginal solutions to
their own problems are making a
difference. In June, I attended a
banquet to celebrate the 25th
birthday of the National Native
Alcohol and Drug Addiction
Program, a great source of
success stories. This past August,
I was in Edmonton, where 3,000
delegates from as far away as
New Zealand gathered as part of
an inspiring addiction healing
movement driven by Aboriginal
Canadians. Later, in the
Aboriginal community of
Sagamok, near
Sudbury, I saw
plans to make its
people less
dependent on
welfare.
While
addictions are my
Man.
focus, it was
impossible to visit
Aboriginal communities this
year without hearing about the
epidemic of suicide.
In 2000, the Canadian
Institute of Child Health
reported 126 out of every
100,000 First Nations people has
committed suicide, compared
with 24 per 100,000 in the rest of
the country. This is the most
recent record we have of this
unfolding tragedy. The Inuit
complain no central agency
tracks suicides in their
communities, so how can they
know if the situation is getting
better or worse?
It certainly feels worse, as a
weekend in Manitoba and
northern Ontario taught me. On
’You can either be on the
side of helping us or you can
decide to make the struggle
that much harder’
Berma Bushie, of Hollow Water,
Jim Prentice, federal
minister of Indian and northern
affairs, says the solutions to
Aboriginal poverty are through
better education for their youth
and he estimates it will take two
generations to make a difference.
He sees promise in a bill under
study by the Senate that would
fast-track Aboriginal selfgovernment. How long is that
going to take? And if this
minority government falls, any
progress Prentice may have
made goes to waste, like the
Kelowna accord the Liberals
negotiated before their defeat.
Aboriginal people have little faith
in our political solutions. That’s
why they’re doing so much on
a Saturday morning, I was on the
Hollow Water (Wanipigow) First
Nation reserve not far from
Winnipeg. I was driving a teen to
the store. He was from a
neighbouring reserve and was
staying with relatives because he
was having nightmares at home.
His sister’s boyfriend had hanged
himself and this young man had
found the body.
On the way to the store, he
pointed to a house and said,
“there’s a suicide watch on a 15year-old girl.” That same day I
met a couple of teenage boys my
own children would think were
“very cool” because of the way
they were dressed. When they
agreed to pose for a photo, I
nearly dropped the camera when
I noticed rope burn marks on the
neck of one of the boys from a
suicide attempt.
Later the same day, Marcel
Hardisty, a community leader in
Hollow Water, told me he and his
wife are raising a child orphaned
by parents who committed
suicide.
On Sunday, I drove to Kenora
to meet Tania Cameron, the
program manager of Aboriginal
Wellness and Healing for the
Kenora chief’s advisory council.
She was to take me to the
Wabaseemoong Reserve the next
day. A suicide there cancelled
that visit. I was reeling from this
when I checked my emails before
going to bed to find this, from
Allan Saulis of the Maliseet
Reserve in New Brunswick:
“There was another suicide
this weekend in our community.
... This will be the third. ... How
many more will it take for the
authorities, governments, and
the media to take affirmative
action once and for all?”
When I called Tania a few
weeks ago, she told me 24-yearold Travis James Henry, whom I
heard sing at the spring feast in
Kenora, killed himself in
September and a few days later
she attended her brother-inlaw’s funeral. He also died by his
own hand.
Aboriginal people appeared
before the Senate committee on
mental health and addictions a
year ago to express their
profound concern about the high
rate of suicide. The senators
were moved, but
recommendations addressing
Aboriginal concerns buried
within the report have not been
acted on.
It wouldn’t be fair to say
nothing is being done. The
federal government has launched
a national strategy on youth
suicides in Aboriginal
communities. But I fear it will
take much more than a federal
program to restore hope to
Aboriginal youth.
After spending a year going in
and out of Aboriginal
communities, after reading
dozens of books and countless
reports, I’ve come to believe we
have driven the original
inhabitants of this country into a
place where their survival is at
risk.
Inuit women have raised the
alarm about violence in their
communities. Experts on fetal
alcohol spectrum disorder warn
of an impending social disaster if
alcohol abuse is not curtailed in
Sober people on reserves are
begging for mental health and
addiction training, and income
parity for professionals to work
in their communities. First
Nations and Inuit leaders are
asking for relief from a severe
housing shortage and want a
national health budget that
reflects their population’s needs.
Aboriginal people are not
asking to be saved. They are
asking for support.
Berma Bushie of Hollow
Water, Man., was tired, afraid
and discouraged when we spoke,
but resolute. “You can either be
on the side of helping us or you
can decide to make the struggle
that much harder,” she told me.
“I would like to believe there are
good people out there, regardless
of what positions they hold in
government. I believe that
goodness, that’s what’s going to
triumph. I truly appreciate all
the help that we’ve gotten from
government up to now and I
would hope that the help
continues. That’s all I ask for.
The rest of the work that needs
to be done is definitely on the
part of Aboriginal people.”
It has been my great privilege
to meet people like Berma
Bushie this year. Whenever I
have felt sad I’ve pushed myself
to work a little harder, read
more, write more. Sad is passive.
I wouldn’t stand beside a lake
where people are drowning and
say “how sad.”
I’d jump in to lend a hand and
I know most other Canadians
would do the same.
Helping the Innu help themselves
Alcohol abuse, kids sniffing gasoline prompted a government healing strategy for the Labrador Innu
But there is a growing gulf between the healers and the people to be healed
In Natuashish, an Innu
community in Newfoundland
and Labrador, 8-month-old
Thomas James Rich is just
starting to make sense of the
world around him. He gets
excited and kicks his tiny feet
whenever his 20-year-old
mother, Victoria, picks him up.
Thomas is one of the new
generation of Innu, growing up
under the care of an
unprecedented government
campaign designed to give him a
better life.
But 400 kilometres away in
Goose Bay, Nympha Byrne, a
Natuashish native who works for
Health Canada, feels slapped in
the face by people who are part
of the same campaign.
Such is the contradiction and
the missteps that haunt the
Labrador Innu Comprehensive
Healing Strategy, a federal
program designed to heal the
social, health, drug addiction,
alcoholism and safety problems
of 3,000 people in the Innu
communities of Natuashish and
Sheshatshiu.
Despite lofty intentions and
even some victories, the
program’s worst enemies are the
people who run it and who have
shut the Innu out of the
decision-making process. It has
created an ever-widening gulf
between the healers and the
fetal alcohol spectrum disorder,
just got out of jail and is back to
inhaling gasoline. Thomas’s 19year-old uncle committed
suicide in April. His mother,
sober now, dropped out of school
at 12 and spent her teenage years
inhaling gasoline fumes. In this
baby’s community, suicide and
alcohol abuse are the main
causes of death.
The Healing
Strategy, initiated
in 2001, is halfway
through its 10year mandate.
Two consultants’
Nympha Byrne, an Innu who works for
reports —
Health Canada
completed in 2003
people to be healed.
but whose contents were just
recently made public — have
At stake are the youth, who
been critical of its progress.
are dying at an alarming rate
The reports — one by the
from suicide and addiction, and
babies like Thomas, whose future Health Research Unit at
Memorial University in St.
depends on stopping the cycle of
John’s, the other by IER
tragedy in the communities.
Planning and the Aboriginal
Thomas’s 20-year-old father,
Research Institute of Ottawa —
diagnosed five years ago with
’I see kids on the road
sniffing gas, and I’m not
allowed to counsel them’
say bureaucrats got off to a bad
start by making decisions
without Innu input, and showed
a lot of insensitivity toward the
people they’re supposed to be
helping.
“The federal government and
the province of Newfoundland
and Labrador have not shared
sufficient information with the
Innu regarding the Healing
Strategy,” says the IER report.
“This must change. The
Labrador Innu need to be
brought into the loop of
information.”
Both studies make
recommendations to strengthen
the plan, but the Innu have seen
little improvement.
“The Healing Strategy is
unknown to people in the
community,” a Natuashish leader
told the Memorial University
evaluators. “A presentation has
never been made within the
community.”
Not enough has been done to
train Innu in the field of social
work, addictions and mental
health, the evaluators say, yet
these skills are necessary since
it’s difficult to attract qualified
outsiders to these communities.
“I’d love to be trained as a
therapist,” says Rose Gregoire,
who spends her days pushing
paper as case manager for the
alcohol treatment program in
Sheshatshiu. Gregoire is well
suited for therapy because she is
highly respected and worked for
years in her community helping
social workers who didn’t speak
the language or know Innu
families.
Sarah Archer, Health
Canada’s regional director in
Atlantic Canada, says there’s an
assessment underway to find out
what training Innu health
workers need. The Innu say this
has taken so long there’ll be few
graduates by the time the
Healing Strategy ends.
The evaluators agree it’s
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Tragedy or Triumph
taking a long time to make
decisions.
“The Healing Strategy has a
significant number of
committees, tables and working
groups,” the IER report notes.
“However, there does not seem
to be a clear decision-making
relationship. This is
demonstrated by a high level of
uncertainty — certainly among
the Innu — about how decisions
are being made and who is
making them.”
This disconnect was very real
to Byrne, the only Innu working
for the Labrador Health
Secretariat, a branch of Health
Canada based now in Goose Bay
but first established in Halifax,
thousands of kilometres away
from the people it was created to
help. In July, an internal draft
memo titled Safety and Security:
Travelling to Natuashish was
placed on her desk.
“The well-being of staff is of
utmost importance when
travelling,” the memo read. “It is
preferred that staff travel in pairs
when going to Natuashish.”
The people Byrne loves most
in the world live in Natuashish.
It’s her hometown. She doesn’t
think it’s a dangerous place, but
her boss and colleagues do. She
was humiliated and insulted by
the memo.
“I couldn’t face the staff
meeting, I just went home,” she
says. Byrne received an apology
from her boss, but it hasn’t made
her feel any better. She can’t
understand why the warning was
necessary since no Health
Canada employee has ever been
hurt in Natuashish.
“I don’t think that’s fair to
our people,” she says.
The memo has also offended
the chief of Sheshatshiu.
“Why are Health Canada staff
talking about their own safety
when we have children who are
not safe in our communities?”
asks Anastasia Qupee. “We still
have children walking around
late at night, there are lots of
drugs in the communities, a lot of
children in temporary care.
They’re supposed to be helping
us. What are they doing? It may
have ended our only hope of
being able to work together.”
Archer says problems like
this are not unusual. “The
process of relationship-building
takes much longer with
Aboriginal people than it does
with other communities,” she
says. The secretariat was based
first in Halifax, she says, because
it was hard to attract staff to
Labrador.
The evaluators would like to
see more money spent on Innu
initiatives that take troubled
families to remote camps for
spiritual and traditional
treatment.
When the Labrador Innu
Comprehensive Healing Strategy
was created, the federal
government committed $81
million over three years, with
$59 million going to Indian and
Northern Affairs (to relocate
Davis Inlet residents to
Natuashish), $20 million to
Health Canada and $2 million to
the former solicitor general’s
ministry.
JENNIFER NOSEWORTHY FOR THE TORONTO STAR
MARIE WADDEN PHOTOS
Victoria Rich, top photo, hopes her 8-month-old baby, Thomas, will have a better life
than she had as a child in the old Innu community of Davis Inlet. Rich, 20, was
sniffing gasoline as a teenager. Now, she and her mother live in the new community
of Natuashish and work at the health clinic, where sobriety is a condition of
employment. Rose Gregoire, right, lives in Sheshatshiu, where she is a case manager
for an alcohol treatment program. She’d like to be trained to work as a therapist.
Bureaucrats from all three
departments, plus the province
of Newfoundland and Labrador,
were asked to design the strategy.
Unbelievably, Innu
representatives were not invited
to these meetings.
Today, the Innu are invited to
frequent meetings chaired by a
federal negotiator, but remain
frustrated. They see what’s
happening now as a repeat of
past federal government policies.
Little Thomas Rich’s future
was compromised 40 years ago.
“In the 1960s, the selfsufficient lifestyle of the
Labrador Innu came to an abrupt
end with the settling of the two
communities of Davis Inlet and
Sheshatshiu by the federal
government,” the IER evaluators
write. “Signs of addictive
behaviour and social/family
dysfunction became apparent.
Widespread alcohol use was
prevalent by 1970.”
Alcohol abuse was certainly
prevalent when Thomas’s
mother, Victoria, was born in
1986 to parents who were both
alcoholics.
Her birthplace, Davis Inlet, on
the Labrador coast, was an
isolated “fly-in” community with
some boat transportation during
the summer. It was a bad place to
relocate a hunting society since
for most of the year, the 600
Innu had no way to get off the
small island that also lacked
adequate fresh water for a
growing population.
Despite the isolation, it made
international headlines a
number of times during
Victoria’s childhood. When she
was 5, a fire killed six preschool
children who had been left alone
while their parents were out
drinking.
A few months later, a native
constable took video that was
broadcast around the world,
showing teens in Davis Inlet,
high on gasoline, threatening to
kill themselves.
The publicity didn’t change
the living conditions. By the time
Victoria was a teen, she was
inhaling gas fumes, too.
“I seen everything I didn’t see
before,” she says about her fumeinduced hallucinations. “Boys.
They were small. Tiny-like. They
are on my eyes. But everybody
told me there’s nothing in my
eye. I told them I saw the
Backstreet Boys, but they said it
was nothing. I was seeing it
because I was sniffing gas.”
In the 1990s, the band
council hired a psychologist, Dr.
Wayne Hammond, who had
helped troubled native children
in Western Canada kick solvent
abuse.
“Our plan was to build a
stabilization home where kids
who were really out of control
could be brought and where we
would work with the family as a
whole,” Hammond says.
“We also planned to develop
alternate activities for kids in
town so they’d have something
else to do instead of hanging out
at night. We were looking at a
kind of caregiver model where
we would train people within the
community to work with kids
and families.”
Hammond says a lot of public
money might have been saved
had the bureaucrats respected
the Innu plan. Instead, the
problems reached a crisis point
in December 2000, and Victoria
and 39 other children had to be
evacuated for their own safety.
“They took us to St. John’s,”
she remembers, “and they locked
us in a room for two or three
hours. The gas sniffers, they
break all the stuff. They break
the toilet and the wall and they
steal. They wanted to get out. I
felt scared.”
The children were kept in a
decommissioned hospital for
four months, then sent to
treatment centres and foster
homes across Canada — but not
cured.
“I think we delayed the
healing of the community by 10
or 15 years,” Hammond says,
“because Health Canada and
Indian and Northern Affairs
didn’t have the courage to step
out of the box.”
Victoria doesn’t inhale
gasoline now, or drink alcohol.
What has helped her most, she
says, is her parents’ sobriety.
“My mother and my father,
they stopped drinking almost
two years now, and I’m happy for
them and I’m trying to get along
with them,” she says.
Her parents’ sobriety is one
of the Healing Strategy’s success
stories. The relocation of Davis
Inlet residents to Natuashish has
given people a reason to stop
drinking. A treatment program
designed and administered by
Aboriginals in Western Canada is
doing the rest.
In Natuashish, there’s clean
drinking water, a state-of-the-art
septic system, beautiful homes, a
large, light-filled school, an
arena, band council building and,
coming soon, a healing lodge and
shelter for victims of family
violence.
“Physical construction and
relocation is a qualified success,
but social reconstruction is
lacking,” the IER report noted in
2003.
Victoria and her mother,
Mary Agathe, are part of the
Innu-run Natuashish Health
Clinic where sobriety is a
condition of employment.
Much of the sobriety is
thanks to Nechi (the Cree word
for “friend”), an educational,
research and health promotions
centre created by natives in
Alberta 35 years ago, specializing
in addiction recovery.
The Innu want the Labrador
Health Secretariat disbanded so
they can use its funding to
administer the remaining years
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of the Healing Strategy
themselves.
This is not likely to fly with
the civil servants who administer
the program at Health Canada’s
First Nations and Inuit Health
Branch (FNIB), says Dr. Valerie
Gideon.
Gideon, the senior director of
Health and Social Policy at the
Assembly of First Nations, says
federal government departments
will always support their own
staff at the expense of
communities.
“For pandemic planning,
FNIB has set up a major office of
community medicine in Ottawa
and hired 40 people,” Gideon
says. “They have not replicated
that investment in First Nations
communities or in First Nations
organizations, so that is a perfect
example.”
Part of the solution rests with
Sharon Clarke’s National Native
Addictions Partnership
Foundation, which is creating a
cross-cultural course that will be
available to bureaucrats and
others working in Aboriginal
communities. Clarke hopes it
will make them less fearful of
their clients by teaching about
language, traditions and the
historical context of social
problems.
“So that anybody who wants
to work in Aboriginal
communities has to have that
module before they go in,” she
says.
For Nympha Byrne, the
solution lies in helping the Innu
heal Innu.
“Sometimes, I’m ashamed to
say that I’m a Health Canada
worker,” says Byrne, who was
hired as an addictions therapist
but is not doing that job. “I see
kids on the road sniffing gas, and
I’m not allowed to counsel them.
I’m only allowed to do
presentations. I find that really
painful.”
Byrne, the only secretariat
employee who speaks the Innu
language, believes she’d be more
useful working in her home
community rather than from an
office in Goose Bay.
“I don’t think they trust me
to work out of their sight,” she
says.
“They’re supposed to be
providing expertise,” says Mary
May Osmonde, director of social
health in Sheshatshiu. “But we
rarely see them in our
communities. We don’t know
what they are doing in their
offices.
“I’m very disappointed.
Maybe the government wants us
to fail. If we succeed and our
people are healed, many
bureaucrats will lose their jobs.”
But Archer says Byrne and
the rest of the secretariat staff
are not supposed to provide
direct services like counselling;
their job is to provide advice and
help manage the money that is
being spent.
In spite of the gulf that exists,
there is one fundamental that
everyone involved in the Healing
Strategy agrees on: Thomas
James Rich and children like him
deserve a better life.
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Troubled before they were born
Mothers’ alcohol abuse leaves scars Aboriginal kids face consequences
MARIE WADDEN PHOTO
A woman walks past the gravesite of J.B. Rich and his brother Charlie. J.B. hanged himself when he was 17 and was followed by his brother a few weeks later. Both suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
An impish Innu boy named
J.B. Rich from an impoverished
Labrador community might not
appear to have much in common
with the son of a former
Canadian prime minister.
What Rich and Michel
Chrétien share is the tragedy
that befell them before they were
born, ultimately leading to the
destruction of one and the
survival of the other.
Both came into the world —
Michel in 1968 and Rich in 1989
— with a preventable brain
disorder that has left a swath of
destruction in its wake,
particularly in the Aboriginal
community. It occurred when
alcohol their mothers drank
seeped into the placenta and was
absorbed by their developing
brains, causing them to develop
fetal alcohol spectrum disorder,
or FASD.
The Canadian Pediatric
Society says individuals with
FASD have poor organizational
skills, make poor choices and are
unable to foresee the
consequences of their actions.
They are also impulsive, show
inappropriate behaviour because
they can’t read social cues, are
excessively friendly and lack
inhibition. This makes them very
difficult to parent.
Rich’s brain damage caused
him to repeatedly get in trouble
with the law until he ended his
own life. Michel Chrétien also
got into a lot of trouble, but he
sobered up, thanks to
considerable financial and
emotional support from his
parents.
People with FASD have
precarious lives that could turn
from bad to worse on a dime. It’s
estimated that nine in 1,000
babies in Canada have FASD; it is
believed to be much higher in
many Aboriginal areas.
The extent of the problem
has prompted some experts to
fear for the cultural survival of
some Aboriginal communities.
“If we don’t act now we will
end up with a lot of very
dysfunctional individuals making
decisions for their community,
and because they are the
majority, then things will really
become very bleak for the
community itself,” says Dr. Ted
Rosales, a pediatric geneticist
who was one of the first
Canadian specialists to take on
the FASD challenge.
He first saw FASD in a nonAboriginal community in
Newfoundland 27 years ago. “I
went into a delivery room in
Grand Falls,” he recalls, “and the
smell of alcohol was so powerful
you’d think it was a brewery. The
baby had been soaking in alcohol
throughout the pregnancy.”
By the time that child and
several of his brothers were
teenagers they wound up in jail.
Rosales learned a lot more about
the condition, but his message of
alcohol abstinence during
pregnancy was rarely taken
seriously.
Not very much was known
about FASD in 1971 when Aline
and Jean Chrétien adopted their
son Michel from an orphanage in
the Northwest Territories.
In fact, the term “fetal
alcohol syndrome” was only
coined two years later by
researchers in Seattle who wrote
up their findings in the medical
journal, Lancet.
The antics of a 20-monthold-boy, playing in an Inuvik
orphanage crib, caught the
attention of Aline and her
husband, who was then minister
of Indian and Northern Affairs.
They adopted the lively toddler
who grew up beside their
daughter France and son Hubert.
“Michel was beautiful,” Aline
Chrétien recalled as she spoke to
me at an Ottawa reception in
April. “We fell in love with him.”
Michel Chrétien’s birth
mother, a Tetlit Gwich’in woman
from Fort MacPherson, grew up
in extreme poverty with 12
siblings. She was unaware of the
consequences of drinking alcohol
during pregnancy.
A recent study of Aboriginal
health in Quebec suggests the
awareness level is still low for
young Aboriginal women.
Aboriginal girls in that province,
between the ages of 15-17, drink
significantly more than boys of
the same age and 62 per cent are
sexually active.
There is little or no
information in many Aboriginal
high schools on birth control and
FASD. Posters about the problem
are usually in English, the second
language of many First Nations
and Inuit people.
Rosales saw first-hand the
extent of the FASD problem in
Aboriginal communities in 2001.
supervised for four months in
the Grace Hospital, which
became a laboratory for one of
the most heart-rending
experiments in Canadian history.
“We did the best ever in
terms of laboratory evaluation.
We did all kinds of blood works,
chromosome studies and cranial
ultrasound, even MRI on some of
them,” Rosales says. “We
concluded that 29 of these 40
children have FASD.”
The children called the kindly
doctor, who is a native of the
Philippines, “Dr. Miyagi” (after a
character in the Karate Kid
movies) as he made his daily
rounds in the locked-down
facility. The situation was chaotic
because, Rosales says, it’s not a
good idea to confine so many
children with FASD in a single
space.
Rosales says the ringleader of
widespread
mischief at the
hospital was J.B.
Rich, then 12 years
old.
Jean Chrétien, former prime minister
“He was the
That’s when 40 Labrador
first one brave enough to call me
Innu children were evacuated to
Dr. Miyagi to my face,” Rosales
St. John’s, NL., for routinely
remembers with a smile. “You
inhaling gas fumes from plastic
know, whatever came to his
bags. Rosales was asked to
mind, he’d say. And if he thought
examine them. They were closely of doing something, he went
’Aline and I have suffered
when our son has suffered’
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Page 5
Tragedy or Triumph
ahead and did it. He was always
in the middle of trouble.”
Michel Chrétien got into a lot
of trouble too. He was convicted
of impaired driving in Banff,
Alta., in 1988 when he was 19.
“Poor Michel,” his mother
says. “He has an uncle who died
from the disease of alcoholism.
It’s a real problem for him.”
Two years later, he was
charged with sexually assaulting
a young woman in Montreal. His
biological mother attended the
trial with the Chrétiens.
Michel Chrétien spent two
years in a maximum-security
prison in Quebec and one year at
a minimum-security prison in
the Northwest Territories. When
he was released, he rented a
room in his birth mother’s
apartment in Yellowknife. After
three years, that situation
deteriorated and his birth
mother accused the Chrétiens of
being too indulgent with their
adopted son.
Michel lived for a time in
Regina where he was put on
probation for throwing
something at a child who upset
him.
Bonnie Buxton, author of
Damaged Angels: A Mother
Discovers the Terrible Cost of
Alcohol in Pregnancy, says
addiction affects a majority of
individuals with FASD. Nearly 60
per cent have trouble with the
law; 80 per cent have trouble
finding work and living
independently while 95 per cent
suffer a mental-health disorder.
In 2002, Michel Chrétien was
exonerated on another sexual
assault charge, but acknowledged
his problems with drugs and
alcohol in court. His father made
a public statement.
“Aline and I have suffered
when our son has suffered and
have been deeply concerned by
any harm that may have come to
others as a result of his conduct.
We are deeply discouraged by his
apparent relapse. We have
offered all of our care and
support to him in good times and
bad, and we will continue to
stand with him.”
In April, when I spoke to
Aline Chrétien, Michel was living
in a supportive Aboriginal
community in Minnesota where
he seems to have found the
stability he needs to cope with
his life-long disability.
“Jean, he loves that boy and
says if we hadn’t adopted him
he’d probably be dead by now,”
his mother says. “Michel has
been sober for six months and we
are just hoping it will last.”
J.B. Rich has not been as
lucky.
After examining the Innu
children, Rosales wrote a report
recommending continuing care
for those affected by FASD.
Instead, he says, they were sent
home after some counselling and
solvent-abuse therapy.
Rosales next saw J.B. Rich
four years later in a courtroom in
Goose Bay, Labrador. The doctor
sat there and listened to the
litany of petty crimes the boy
committed throughout his teens.
He learned that Rich was in and
out of the Goose Bay
page 5
DR. TED ROSALES PHOTO
Dr. Ted Rosales, a pediatric geneticist, was one of the first Canadian specialists to tackle challenge of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Correctional Centre, that his life
was going nowhere. When it
came time to take the witness
stand in Rich’s defence, Rosales
lashed out at the officials who let
this happen.
“If they had done what I had
suggested, if he’d been given the
community resources I said he’d
need, this wouldn’t have
happened. I spelled it out.
But my report never got any
attention from the provincial,
federal governments and local
community. It (the treatment
and testing) cost $6.5 million to
do this and it was shelved.”
`My recommendation was
that all these children need
ongoing lifelong resources and
support.’
It’s not the waste of money
that concerns Rosales. It’s the
waste of lives.
After testifying that day,
Rosales spent some time with
Rich.
“I asked how he was and
whether he had a girlfriend and
so forth,” Rosales remembers.
“He wasn’t the same, not
talkative at all. He was so
changed. And I was really
puzzled by that. Looking back, I
think that it was dawning on
him. Everything that was going
wrong, and why.”
The judge sentenced Rich to
40 days of community service.
Several weeks after the trial, J.B.
hanged himself. He was 17.
“A few weeks later his brother
Charlie did the same,” Rosales
says. “Charlie also had FASD. I
should have done more.”
Both young men are buried
now beside one another at the
graveyard in Natuashish with
identical wooden crosses
decorated with plastic flowers,
rosary beads and their baseball
caps.
“I almost gave up doing
diagnosis for the courts,” the
doctor says. “What’s the point of
having people like J.B. hear they
have FASD if they are not going
to get services to help them? But
I have to keep diagnosing and
talking about it because I want
the children with FASD helped
and I want mothers helped so
they will stop drinking.”
He thinks the best way to halt
the spread of this condition is to
Rosales spends some of his
free time poring over portraits of
Aboriginal people in museums
and history books, looking for
evidence of FASD in their past.
He can’t find it.
He looks closely at the space
between the eyes; the upper lip
and nose. People brain-damaged
by intrauterine exposure to
alcohol have characteristic facial
conditions that Rosales can’t find
in the pictures he has examined.
He has concluded that prior
to the 1950s the condition, if it
existed, was indiscernible in
Aboriginal societies.
“I’ve never seen an FASD face
in the old pictures,” he says of his
informal historical research. “I’m
certain it wasn’t a
problem for
Aboriginal people
in the past.”
Rosales fears
the very survival of
Aboriginal
cultures is
threatened if the
Dr. Ted Rosales, a pediatric geneticist
condition is not
raise the standard of living in
prevented. “If alcohol use during
Aboriginal communities and
pregnancy is not stopped, the
launch a public health campaign
next generation will not have the
promoting alcohol abstinence on brain capacity to appreciate their
the scale of tobacco cessation
own culture as something they
programs in the south.
should be proud of,” he says.
“From a public health point
What’s needed for those with
of view, that’s the only program I FASD now, Rosales says, are
know that will work,” Rosales
individuals who can act as
says. “Unless things are changed
“second brains,” helping loved
now, I think their very existence
ones and friends make better
as a culture, as a very unique
decisions.
group of individuals, is really at
In Sheshatshiu, an Innu
stake.”
nurse named Mary Pia Benuen
does that for children affected
’My recommendation was
that all these children need
ongoing lifelong resources
and support’
with the condition. She keeps
track of their progress in school,
advocates for services and runs
prevention programs. There isn’t
enough money in Aboriginal
health budgets to ensure the
same services are available
everywhere they’re needed.
Aline Chrétien is one of her
son’s “second brains.”
“I bought Michel a computer
recently,” she says, “because he
needed one. But I won’t give him
money in case he doesn’t use it
wisely. Jean and I talk to him a
lot on the telephone. We love
him very much.”
Rosales has been so deeply
affected by his work in Labrador
he has postponed his retirement.
In one community, he estimates
as many as 35 per cent of the
people have FASD — close to
what he sees as a tipping point
for cultural destruction in
another generation or two.
Michael Miltenberger, the
minister of health for the
Northwest Territories, says he
believes FASD is just as
widespread in Aboriginal
communities there as well.
“You see how they have
existed for a thousand and some
years and then in a short period
of time, 50 to 60 years, their
whole culture and unique ways
of life might go down the drain if
this is not stopped,” warns
Rosales.
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Tragedy or Triumph
page 6
MD tackles fetal alcohol challenge
Leads crusade to find solution Studied disorder for 31 years
Before the world even heard
of fetal alcohol syndrome, Dr.
Sterling Clarren was studying its
devastating effects in his lab at
the University of Washington in
Seattle.
His dedication to the task has
not wavered in 31 years and
today his world-leading research
has drawn him north of the
border, where Fetal Alcohol
Spectrum Disorder has become
an all too familiar phrase in
many Aboriginal communities.
“Something happened here, a
tipping point,” Clarren says,
“because the amount of FASD
work going on in Canada is
unique in the world.”
Three years ago, the CanadaNorthwest FASD Research
Network was created by the
health ministers of the western
provinces and northern
territories. There is nothing
similar for Ontario, Quebec or
the Atlantic provinces.
In the fall of 2004, the
network hired Clarren, one of
the world’s leading experts in the
disorder, as CEO and scientific
director. He is based at
Vancouver’s Centre for
Community Child Health
Research.
Clarren’s mission is to make
sure the work is focused to
produce practical solutions.
There are 170 governmentfunded fetal alcohol-related
projects in northwest Canada
alone. Clarren says all this work
should be better co-ordinated so
what is learned can be shared
with everyone involved.
Clarren discovered that
17,000 pamphlets, brochures and
videos have been produced in the
northwest. “But it’s not being
done in an organized way,” he
says. “What’s effective? If we
want to be serious about
prevention, we need to put our
energies together to be
thoughtful about how we do it.”
Clarren began studying the
disorder in 1975 at the University
of Washington where his
commitment became so widely
known that the author of a
famous memoir on FASD sent
Clarren his deceased son’s brain
to study.
Michael Dorris’s book, The
Broken Cord (1989), first
brought world attention to the
disorder. It describes what
Dorris learned about the
condition from his adopted son
Abel. Abel’s intellectual and
reasoning capacity was so
seriously damaged he could not
learn from experience and was
unable to work without help. He
was killed by a hit-and-run driver
shortly after the book was
published.
As a result of public interest
generated by Dorris’s book,
Clarren and his colleagues
founded the Fetal Alcohol
Syndrome Information Service
at the university. It warned
pregnant women that alcohol
consumed during the first
trimester interferes with the
organization of brain cells, and in
later months, with memory,
emotion and learning.
Clarren is developing a health
policy model on treatment and
prevention of the syndrome that
he hopes will be applied
nationally.
“The other provinces could
join us or the federal government
could take control,” he says. “In
the end, I think this field needs a
maximum of collaboration and
co-operation and minimum of
competition because there is just
so much work to do, so few
resources and so little time to
waste.”
About 1,100 children a year in
northwest Canada are tested for
the disorder, but Clarren says
this is not enough to determine
the full extent of the problem.
Michael Miltenberger, the
Northwest Territories minister
of health, says he believes 25 to
30 per cent of the territories’
42,000 inhabitants are affected
by the condition.
“If we had alcohol stopped
tomorrow, it would take the next
80 to 90 years for the system to
clear itself of the troubles
created by everyone who’s
damaged by alcohol,”
Miltenberger says. “Even if we
were to do wonders tomorrow in
terms of alcohol abuse, we have
that segment of the population
right from birth to age 80 that
are damaged.”
Clarren doesn’t want
Aboriginal societies to be
stigmatized by fetal alcohol
disorder and has a general
warning for everyone: “Any
society that drinks a lot puts
their unborn at high risk.”
Clarren is confident most
JEFF VINNICK FOR THE TORONTO STAR
Dr. Sterling Clarren, an expert on fetal alcohol disorder, works from
Vancouver’s Centre for Community Child Health Research.
people know the harm of mixing
pregnancy and alcohol, so efforts
now need to be aimed at
eradicating conditions that cause
women to drink. He says he
learned something valuable from
such mothers in the U.S.
“They have a universal
experience with serious (physical
or sexual) abuse,” he told a
Yukon audience. “They have
mental health disorders. They
have limited social supports and
half of them are brain-damaged
themselves. I have never met a
woman who drank through her
pregnancy to hurt her baby. I
don’t think she exists.”
The lost generations
Two Aboriginal doctors prescribe ways to heal their communities
Long before the barricades
went up at the Six Nations
reserve in Caledonia last
February, Dr. Cornelia Wieman
was treating the community’s
hidden wounds.
“Nel” Wieman is Canada’s
only female First Nation
psychiatrist and at 41 is a
dynamo, driven by unseen
wounds of her own to make a
difference. It’s people like her,
and another Aboriginal doctor in
Toronto, Peter Menzies, who
hold out the most hope for
happier Aboriginal lives in
Canada.
They are on the frontlines of
the battle against a psychological
condition that has only recently
been diagnosed. It’s called
“intergenerational trauma.”
The term, first coined in the
mid-1980s by U.S. scholar Dr.
Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart,
is defined as what happens when
an ethnic group is traumatized
over an extended period of time.
What happened to the
Aboriginals over the past 100
years has resulted in the highest
levels of alcohol addiction and
suicide in Canada.
“Forced assimilation and
cumulative losses across
generations involving language,
culture and spirituality
contribute to the breakdown of
the family kinship networks and
social structures,” Dr. Brave
Heart writes. “The historical
legacy and the current
psychosocial conditions
contribute to ongoing
intergenerational traumas.”
Wieman’s students at the
University of Toronto’s faculty of
medicine might have trouble
picturing their chic teacher
behind the wheel of the truck she
uses to get around the bumpy
roads at Six Nations. At the
University of Toronto, she’s
known as Dr. Wieman, codirector of the Indigenous
Health Research program, a fit
woman who walks to work from
her downtown condominium.
Wieman’s truck belongs to
the life she shares with her
PETER POWER/TORONTO STAR
Dr. Cornelia Wieman, Canada’s first First Nation’s psychiatrist, has vowed to find ways to overcome the
“intergenerational trauma” that exists in First Nations communities.
husband Tim, a custom furniture
maker, at a ranch-style home on
the outskirts of Six Nations.
That’s where Wieman sprouted
new Aboriginal roots after the
first ones were severed when she
was very young.
Intergenerational trauma forced
Wieman to lead separate lives
between the Aboriginal and nonAboriginal world.
“This is the Jay Silverheels
5/2/07
3:07 PM
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Tragedy or Triumph
Complex,” she says, acting as a
Six Nations tour guide one day in
January. Wieman knows the
reserve well since she worked at
the local mental health clinic for
eight years. “Jay Silverheels was
Tonto in The Lone Ranger series.
He comes from this community.
Actually, I met his nephew in
Toronto.”
Wieman’s birthplace is
farther away, in Little Grand
Rapids, Man. She was able to
avoid the trauma trap because
she was raised off the reserve by
a Dutch family in Thunder Bay
after her mother died after binge
drinking. Wieman studied
medicine and psychiatry at
McMaster University. Her work
at Six Nations enabled her to see
first-hand what had killed her
mother.
“I think you’re dealing with
generations of people who have
been damaged by colonialism,”
Wieman says, “and the way that
we have been treated by the
dominant culture makes you feel
dispirited. You feel devalued and
so people will turn to things like
addictions as a way of coping, of
self-medicating, of not really
wanting to be here because their
situation is just so intolerable.”
Experts in the field of
Aboriginal mental health say
“intergenerational trauma”
killed Wieman’s mother.
It also prevented Dr. Peter
Menzies’ parents from raising
him. Menzies, 53, is the manager
for Aboriginal services at the
Centre for Mental Health and
Addiction in Toronto. He did his
Ph.D. thesis on Aboriginal
intergenerational trauma and
still marvels today at this
achievement.
That’s because like Wieman,
his life got off to a rocky start.
Menzies’ mother comes from the
Sagamok Anishnawbek First
Nation near Sudbury, but he was
raised by the Sisters of St. Joseph
and the Children’s Aid Society.
Menzies never turned his
back on his Aboriginal heritage;
instead he embraced his people’s
social challenges, looking for
answers. His CV reflects that
commitment — “20 years
experience in the field of social
work: child welfare, family
services, income maintenance,
addiction and mental health.”
Now he’s helping Toronto’s
Aboriginal homeless from a
clinic on the busy corner of
Parliament and King Sts.
“I’ve always maintained that
alcohol and drugs are only
symptoms,” he says.
“When I sit down with an
Aboriginal person to provide
counselling, I don’t even deal
with the drinking issues. Like, I
see guys who have left their
community because they have so
much trauma in them that they
don’t know to how deal with it.
The community can’t deal with
them because they don’t have the
mental health services. So why is
that? Why can’t they stay in their
communities or near their
communities and get treatment
for however long it takes to deal
with this trauma that they’re
carrying?”
Canadians first connected
trauma with alcoholism when
the military hero Gen. Romeo
MARIE WADDEN PHOTO
Dr. Peter Menzies sees the effects of trauma on Toronto streets. Alcohol and drug abuse are only symptoms, he says.
Dallaire was found drunk on a
park bench in 2000. Dallaire had
“post traumatic stress disorder”
— the psychological effect of
witnessing atrocities in warfare.
The other types of traumas
people experience as a result of
war are called “collective” and
didn’t come back until they were
17; many of them had been
abused physically and sexually.
Their parents were, in the
meantime, at home grieving their
children, so they turned to
alcohol.”
In April, Wieman was asked
to do a
psychiatric
evaluation of a
female
Aboriginal
offender serving
a life sentence
for seconddegree murder.
Experiences like
this are
heartrending for her. She says
“I want to see an improved
mental health status for our
people,” she says firmly. “I would
love to see much lower rates of
prison incarceration and suicide.
I want to be part of the solution
to that.”
Menzies shares Wieman’s
commitment.
He dreams one day of
creating an addiction treatment
centre that will help Aboriginal
leaders who are still drinking to
return to their reserves and
better serve their people.
“I watch some of our leaders
and I see a lot of pain and
suffering. Why do their
personalities look defeated? Why
don’t I see a head held high? As a
therapist, I think if I spent an
hour with that person I’m going
to find out what’s not resolved. I
want to create a place where they
can come for their own healing.
There would be highly trained
therapists to work with them.
Maybe in an old farmhouse,
somewhere peaceful. I’d like to
’The signs of improvement
are all there, but we still
have to deal with addictions
and mental health issues.’
Dr. Peter Menzies
“historic” trauma — terms used
to describe what happened
psychologically to the Jews who
survived the Holocaust and the
Japanese who survived the
atomic bomb.
Harvard University scholar
Dr. Sousan Abadian compares
the experience of Canada’s First
Nations communities with that
of the Japanese and European
Jews.
“When indigenous people
were traumatized, they could not
get healed by their ceremonies
because they had been outlawed.
The Japanese still had theirs.
There were still rabbis in other
parts of the world to help the
European Jews. Indigenous
people lost everything, even their
sacred lands.”
“The trauma I see is huge,
huge,” says Edmonton’s Dr. Jane
Simington, who has been
counselling Aboriginal women in
Canada’s prisons for 16 years.
“Children were ripped out of
their homes at the age of 5 for
residential schools and they
make it a centre of excellence for
the study and treatment of
indigenous addictions.”
“We need to acknowledge
what’s happened in the past
historically,” says Wieman. “But
we also need to focus on the
solutions and what the future
holds. I think that will come from
my generation and even more so
from the generation that comes
after.”
Both doctors have similar
prescriptions for improving their
peoples’ lives. The first would be
streamlining government
departments and health agencies
so the care goes where it’s
needed. “Once a First Nation
person moves to an urban centre,
Ottawa is saying that they are the
responsibility of the province,
but the province is saying, no,
well, they’re not our
responsibility because the Indian
Act says ‘Indian,’” Menzies says
with frustration.
“So if they can just get rid of
all this and say, yeah, we at
Indian Affairs are responsible for
First Nations, that’d be a big
help.”
The jurisdictional problems
also infect the medical
profession.
“In psychiatry, no one really
wants to deal with addictions,”
says Wieman. “If someone with a
substance abuse problem goes to
a psychiatrist, they’ll be told to
get help for their addiction first.
Those who have substance abuse
problems also have mental
health issues. I think the two are
inextricably linked.”
When the lives of Aboriginal
people were disrupted, there was
little social support available
within their communities
page 7
because everyone was affected in
the same way. Social workers and
welfare cheques sent in from the
outside seem to have only made
things worse by creating
dependency and killing selfesteem.
The problems might seem
insurmountable to many, but not
to these two gifted Aboriginal
healers.
“Actually, I see a lot of hope,”
says Menzies. “No. 1, we’re the
fastest growing population in
Canada; No. 2, there are more of
us than ever attending colleges
and universities. Who would
have thought that every month
in Toronto a First Nations
newspaper would come to my
doorstep? Who would have
thought that there would be an
Aboriginal People’s Television
Network?
“So the signs of improvement
are all there, but we still have to
deal with addictions and mental
health issues. We still need to get
at the core of the
intergenerational trauma.”
Wieman sees a long road
ahead, particularly the challenge
of creating more Aboriginal
health-care specialists.
“The Royal Commission on
Aboriginal People recommended
10,000 health professionals be
trained in 10 years,” she says.
“The infrastructure to train that
many health professionals just
doesn’t exist. Try to tell any of
the 17 medical schools in Canada
that they need to make training
Aboriginal physicians a priority.
There are very few schools in
Canada that have answered that
challenge.”
There are also discriminatory
pay practices on First Nation
reserves that Wieman deplores.
She was forced to leave her Six
Nations job because of the poor
pay.
“If I tell people as a
psychiatrist I billed $36,000 last
year, they’d think I’m lying,” she
explains. “A colleague of mine
started working for a mental
health clinic at Townsend, three
kilometres from our clinic, and
as soon as she started she got
sessional fees because it was off
reserve.”
Dr. Wieman was paid on a
fee-for-service basis by the
province of Ontario while her
mental health nurses were paid
by the federal government.
“We had tried for eight years
to access these sessional fees
only to be told, well, she’s
practising on a reserve so it’s a
federal thing, so you can’t have
these things. I don’t think I ever
billed more than $40,000 a year
because I didn’t see people every
five minutes, I saw them once an
hour,” she says.
Wieman quit to put her
energies into changing the
system. Climbing out of her
truck when the Six Nations tour
is over, she becomes more
reflective.
“We’re taught that we need to
use the gifts we’ve been given as
best we can and work as hard as
we can over the course of our
lifetime to make things better for
our young people especially.
That’s a huge responsibility and
one that I take seriously.”
5/2/07
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Tragedy or Triumph
page 8
The healing power of huskies
Inuit community restoring pride after a century of traumatic events
A woman leans out the
window of her house and shouts
in Inuktitut. Children on their
way to school turn and start
running toward the harbour.
“There’s a dog team coming
back,” one of the children calls
out over her shoulder as she
dashes for the harbour at
Kangirsuk, a village of 400 Inuit
in the eastern Arctic.
All eyes scan the vast expanse
of white for something other
than snow and ice. Race officials
station themselves near the long
string of colorful flags that mark
the finish line. Tiny dark specks
draw closer to the end of the 525kilometre Ivakkak race that
crossed from one end of the
Nunavik region in northern
Quebec to the other.
With astonishing speed, 12
dogs, spread out like a fan, rush
toward the finish line, pulling a
sled with two men on board.
These dogs are special and
symbolic, a dozen of only 200
Inuit husky that carry on the
bloodline after 20,000 were
killed by Quebec police and the
RCMP during the 1960s and `70s.
The police say the dogs were
diseased. The Inuit have another
explanation.
“We believe the dogs were
killed so our people would be
easier to control,” says Pita
Aatami, the president of the
Makivik Corporation, the
company that administers a
$124-million dollar Inuit
heritage fund and also sponsors
the dog sled race.
It’s a harsh accusation and
the suspicion will linger until an
inquiry takes place, adding to the
bitterness felt for other policies
that have damaged Inuit life,
such as the relocation of people
to larger communities,
residential schools that were
sites of sexual abuse, and
banning religious and cultural
customs.
The attempts to assimilate
the Inuit go back more than 100
years, producing what experts
call “intergenerational trauma”
that has resulted in the highest
rates of alcohol addiction and
suicide in the country. The
problems were compounded by
diseases that decimated
populations.
The trail of trauma extends
across the country:
In 1919, one-third of the Inuit
population in eastern Labrador
was killed by the Spanish Flu
epidemic carried on a mission
boat. By the 1950s, these Inuit
were just recovering when they
were resettled to larger centres
where it was more difficult to
hunt and fish. They found
themselves stuck in places where
they had nothing to do. Because
hunting defines who they are,
culturally the people are
devastated.
Today, the Inuit experience
the highest rates of addiction and
suicide in the country, and it is
especially prevalent in the male
Fifteen dog sled teams participated in the 525-kilometre Ivakkak race that crossed from one end of the Nunavik region in northern Quebec to the other.
MARIE WADDEN PHOTOS
20,000 Inuit husky were killed by Quebec police and the RCMP during the
1960s and 1970s. The police say the dogs were diseased. The Inuit believe
the dogs were killed so their people would be easier to control.
Hundreds of people gathered in the Kangirsuk recreation centre to celebrate
the Ivakkak race and feast on frozen char, salmon and caribou meat.
population. An Inuit woman’s
organization called Pauktuutit
says violence and abuse in their
communities threatens the
survival of the entire culture.
“We went from nomadic selfsufficient family camps to being
moved, sometimes without
consent, into permanent
settlements with much larger
and unfamiliar social structures,”
Mary Simon, the leader of
Canada’s Inuit organization, told
the Healing Our Spirit
Worldwide conference in
Edmonton this past summer.
“Epidemics took a terrible toll.
Many lost their lives while many
others were left orphaned and
dependent on others for their
very survival.”
The Healing conference, held
every four years, began in 1992 as
a forum to discuss alcohol and
drug abuse issues and programs
in indigenous communities
throughout the world. The latest
gathering in August drew more
than 3,000 people from about 15
As they cross the finish line of
the Ivakkak race, mushers
Adamie Qurnak and Allie
Tukalak are surrounded, hugged
by bear-shaped men in heavy
parkas. The children stand back
as though in awe of their power.
Qurnak and Tukalak had
raced their dogs from
Puvurnituq on the Hudson’s Bay
coast, east to Kangirsuk on
Ungava Bay. The April journey, in
one of the world’s harshest
climates, took eight days.
The winning team made the
same trip in five days.
“I feel like a proud Inuk
man,” says Tukalak, emerging
from another embrace, his smile
lighting up a face burned the
colour of mahogany.
The mushers hammer poles
into the ice to tether their
exhausted dogs as Kangirsuk
boys hover, ready to help.
Hundreds of people gathered
in the Kangirsuk recreation
centre to celebrate the 15 teams
that participated in the race
countries.
The consensus among
presenters at the conference was
that bringing back traditional
ceremonies and practices will
help heal individuals suffering
from intergenerational trauma.
Among the other
recommendations: restore elders
to their former role in Aboriginal
society as the teachers of
Aboriginal values, and increase
psychotherapeutic services to
assist with addiction and mental
health problems.
Charlene Belleau from Alkali
Lake, B.C. a First Nations
community that became famous
for its sobriety movement 25
years ago, summed up what has
to be done in her speech.
“It’s really, really important
that our children not be made to
carry the burden of our past,” she
said.
On the frozen ground of
Kangirsuk, the Inuit dog sledders
are doing their part to make sure
the burden is lighter.
through a territory in northern
Quebec the size of France. Here,
10,000 people live in 15 scattered
coastal communities.
People had arrived from their
homes with boxes of frozen char,
salmon and caribou meat. Others
had come with an abundance of
cooked food, but the southerners
were fascinated by delicacies like
fermented walrus, and seabirds
(in some cases not only
uncooked but also unplucked).
The raw and frozen food was
laid out on clean strips of
cardboard in the centre of the
hall floor (the cooked food placed
on tables at the front) creating an
ingenious dining table for
hundreds. The raw food diners
knelt on the floor, showing the
uninitiated how to cut a piece of
frozen fish or fowl with a sharp
knife and then how to vigorously
chew. The visitors were told to
“think sushi.”
Outside the building there
were clusters of inebriated young
Inuit men. One of them, who a
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3:07 PM
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Tragedy or Triumph
few days before had, with great
skill and humour, translated
from Inuktitut to English for
visitors, apologized for how
people were eating inside.
“These are very traditional
people,” he said. “We don’t eat
like that now, many of us, we’re
more modern today.”
The translator’s
embarrassment of his peoples’
cultural eating style is shared by
many young Inuit today, who see
no reflection of their way of life
in the popular media and fear
something must be wrong with
it.
Participants in the dog sled
race certainly didn’t sign up to
rebuild their egos. They had their
eyes on the prizes awarded this
night, everything from cash to
expensive commodities not
otherwise available here —
stainless steel refrigerators and
leather sofas.
The race’s sponsor, Makivik,
was established in 1978 by the
money Inuit here received as
compensation from the James
Bay and Northern Quebec
hydroelectric project that caused
flooding and water diversion on
their land.
Pita Aatami, Makivik’s 46year-old president, is bound to
reinvest profits from
investments — which includes
Air Inuit and First Air — back
into the community.
That includes this race and
the Inuit huskies that were
almost wiped out. Makivik is
breeding more and it is the only
page 9
breed allowed in the Ivakkak dog
sled race — no blue-eyed
Siberians permitted here.
The strategy likely won’t
make Makivik more money, but
it will create something that
finally has a chance to grow. Inuk
pride.
Inuit women raise the alarm on violence
Violence fuelled by addiction threatens a treasured culture
Lavinia Barbour was passing
a neighbour’s house when she
heard children screaming. She
heard men’s voices too.
Inside the house in Nain, an
Inuit community in Labrador,
she saw a man trying to grab a
little girl while her father fought
him off.
“He wanted to touch the little
girl sexually,” says Barbour, the
receptionist at the local RCMP
detachment. “She was seven but
is very tiny, she looks like she’s
four.”
Barbour knew the man — he
had been arrested before.
Barbour says this is not an
exceptional example of the
violence and chaos she regularly
sees in the town of 1,500.
In May, Barbour was passing
a friend’s house when she heard
her screaming. “He’s hurt, he’s
hurt!”
Barbour went inside and
found her friend’s husband dead
on the floor. He had shot himself
while his children watched.
Barbour has overheard some
of the officers at the RCMP
detachment compare what is
happening in Nain with what’s
going on in nearby Hopedale,
another Inuit community.
“They say ’domestics’ are
different in Nain. Women in
Hopedale get black eyes. In Nain,
people are out to kill each other,”
Barbour says.
The message was just as blunt
in a 2006 report called A
National Strategy to Prevent
Violence in Inuit Communities.
“Some community leaders
believe that violence has become
so destructive to women,
children, family relationships
and community health that it
threatens the very future of the
Inuit,” says the report, prepared
by Pauktuutit, the national
organization that represents all
Inuit women.
Canada’s Inuit are a national
treasure. Their art and artifacts
grace our galleries and museums.
The inukshuk (a stone structure
shaped like a person with
outstretched arms) is a Canadian
icon. Inuit are a tiny minority in
this country. Population
estimates range from 46,000 to
55,000, the size of a small
Canadian town. An estimated
5,000 Inuit live in Ontario towns
and cities.
Most Inuit live in 53
communities spread out over
4,000 kilometres, from Nain in
the east to the Northwest
Territories. The majority live in
Nunavut, the largest of four Inuit
territories in Canada.
The future of their culture,
shaped by the world’s coldest
weather, is already compromised
by climate change. Violence is
now a much larger threat and
Barbour says denial about its
main cause — alcohol abuse — is
the biggest obstacle to a recovery.
Nunavut’s crime rate in 2004
was eight times the Canadian
rate, according to Pauktuutit.
The number of women and
children who left their homes in
Nunavut because of violence
increased by 54 per cent between
2001 and 2004. Over the same
period nationally, the increase
was 4.6 per cent.
Inuit women say the isolation
of their communities makes it
easy for other Canadians to
ignore the reality of sexual and
physical abuse in the north.
Leesie Naqitarvik, who helped
prepare the Pauktuutit strategy,
says addiction to drugs or alcohol
is one of the root causes.
“The loss of culture,
dependence, breakdown of
families, denial and mistrust are
other causes,” she says.
In Nain, Barbour says people
drink at the hotel year round, but
the chaos gets worse when the
ice breaks up and ships restock
the beer store. That’s when the
cells start to fill at the RCMP
detachment.
Barbour can describe the
drinking culture in her
community because she has been
part of it. It starts with a few
beers at home, then at the hotel
bar where they connect with
friends. Someone offers to host a
house party where the drinking
continues into the early hours of
the next day. There’s sexual
promiscuity, fighting, people
passing out.
Experts say alcohol and drugs
alone don’t cause abuse, but
make it more likely to occur,
especially when people drink a
lot of alcohol at a time.
A study by the National
Aboriginal Health Organization’s
Ajunnginiq Centre says many
Inuit avoid alcohol completely
and abstinence rates are higher
than the Canadian average.
However, the 40 per cent of Inuit
who do drink alcohol consume
five or more drinks at a time, the
definition of a binge drinker.
A Statistics Canada report,
Family Violence in Canada, states
that the spouse of a binge drinker
is more likely to be abused than
that of a moderate drinker.
Aboriginal women are three
times more likely to be abused
Susie Pinguapik and her four childrenat kangirsuk, Nunavuk, (northern Québec).
Inuit baby snuggles inside it’s mother’s “amaut” (parka hood) in Kangirsuk, Nunavik (northen Quebec).
than any other women in Canada
because of the amount of binge
drinking in their communities.
The abuse they suffer is more
violent.
“Overall, Aboriginal victims
were more likely (to be) either
beaten, choked, threatened with
or had a gun or knife used against
them, or sexually assaulted,”
states a report prepared by the
Canadian Centre for Justice
Statistics in 2005.
Barbour’s husband is a
weekend binge drinker who
doesn’t hurt her, but she and her
daughters frequently take refuge
in one of the bedrooms to watch
TV because they are bothered by
the noise created when he is
joined by friends.
Experts agree the higher level
of alcoholism and violence in
Aboriginal communities is
caused by trauma that was
suffered in the past but is passed
on from one generation to
another. Trauma is called
“collective” when it affects an
entire population.
Inuit suffered collective
trauma 60 years ago when
Canadian public policy tried to
change them from nomadic
hunters and fishers to Englishspeaking village dwellers. Many
Inuit in Nain are the
descendants of people who were
forcibly relocated by the
government from islands where
they’d been self-sufficient to a
life of welfare dependence.
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Tragedy or Triumph
Jennifer Dickson, the
executive director of Pauktuutit,
says the shortage of addiction
treatment services for Inuit, and
those with mental health
problems, is appalling and there
are very few safe places for
women and children to go to
avoid being abused.
Barbour says there is a
shelter in Nain, but women can’t
stay there forever and end up
returning to an abusive spouse
because they have nowhere else
to go.
Inuit live in the most
overcrowded houses in Canada,
according to Statistics Canada.
In some case, several families
share a house and sleep in shifts
within houses that average less
than 1000 square feet. Home
ownership is out of the question
for most because it’s so expensive
to build houses in the north.
Permafrost makes it impossible
to put in conventional water and
sewer services and building
materials have to be shipped up
from the south during a short
construction season.
People rent social housing
instead, but that’s not keeping
pace with the demand, especially
as the number of new Inuit
families is growing at a very fast
rate. The average age of Inuit is
20 (compared to 37 for Canada as
a whole) and 60 per cent are
under the age of 30. Inuit are
having twice as many babies as
most other Canadians.
At a gathering of Inuit
addiction and mental health
workers in Ottawa this past
spring, Meeka Arnakaq, a
Nunavut elder, used a metaphor
to explain why she feels so many
Inuit men are angry and
frustrated: “If the sled is toppled
over, it cannot go. The man is
underneath. This is how Inuit
men are today. They are stuck.
Their responsibilities have been
taken away. Who is going to
stand them up? We’ve found
different ways of healing women,
but not the men. The qamutik
(sled) has to stand up. The dogs
have to start running.”
Women are on the frontline
of this crisis because they
provide most of the social
services in their communities. At
the Ottawa conference, the
workers complained about
burnout, but demonstrated a
remarkable commitment to
being agents of change in their
communities. Organizers tried to
bolster their morale with
inspirational talks and games,
including a word association
game. Their answers to “What
Inuit feel today” demonstrate
that the pall in their
communities is never far from
their minds.
Among the negative feelings
recorded: anger, frustration,
rejection, humiliation, racism,
domination, vengeance, jealousy,
isolation, scared, insignificant,
worthless, oppressed and
suicidal.
Jack Anawak, Canada’s
Ambassador to Circumpolar
Affairs, grew up in Repulse Bay,
Nunavut, at the time Inuit
children were sent to residential
school and the men’s role was
changing.
“It was not a very good period
in the late ’60s and up to the late
’70s,’ he says. “Young men
suddenly lost their role as people
who hunted. If you weren’t
successful in hunting, you
starved. All of a sudden, that role
was taken away by the
introduction of store-bought
foods. It was devastating for
them.”
Two of Anawak’s brother died
from suicide.
Barbour says there’ve been so
many suicides in Nain, residents
have become almost numb to it.
Her husband lost a niece (aged
20) and nephew (aged 18)
recently and she’s concerned he’s
drinking to cope with the loss.
“You have to keep very busy,”
she says, “or drink to deal with all
the terrible things that are
happening.”
The high suicide rate — eight
to 10 times higher than the
Canadian average — is one of the
reasons Inuit men have a much
shorter lifespan than other
Canadian men (62 years
compared to 75).
Pauktuutit’s Leesie
Naqitarvik is asking local
governments to pass zero
tolerance resolutions, set up
abuse prevention committees
and sponsor prevention
programs.
“Land claims organizations
can name abuse as a top priority
social and economic issue.
Governments can work with
Inuit in setting abuse prevention
and spending priorities,” the
strategy recommends.
Pauktuutit is lobbying all
levels of government for funding
to improve addiction and mental
health services and want the
Canadian public to support
them.
Barbour says her husband
wants to stop drinking, but must
overcome his embarrassment
that other people will know he is
seeking treatment. She also says
he doesn’t have a lot of
confidence in the treatment
services that do exist because so
many people return and take up
drinking again.
People are actually punished
for not drinking, she says. When
page 10
Barbour’s husband stopped for
nine months a few years ago, the
family lost all its friends and no
one came to visit.
This summer, at an
international conference in
Edmonton, Mariam Aglukaq
from Nunavut’s Gjoa Haven
symbolically lit the qulliq, a sealoil lamp symbolic of Inuit
survival, in front of thousands of
Aboriginals from around the
world who also want to make
change in their communities.
Closed-circuit cameras
broadcast her actions on two
giant screens. She poured seal oil
into a soapstone bowl, then took
a small pouch made of caribou
skin from an ingenious purse
fashioned from an arctic loon.
There wasn’t a sound in the
Shaw Conference Centre hall as
the audience waited for the
kindling inside Aglukaq’s pouch
to ignite with sparks from the
two stones she rubbed together.
A puff of smoke soon
emerged from the bag and when
Aglukaq blew air on it, a brilliant
blaze of light jumped up from the
qulliq.
Pauktuutit hopes its
campaign will ignite a flame that
will stop the cycle of trauma and
violence in time to preserve the
beauty of one of Canada’s most
ancient cultures.
Strength of Spirit
CIRCLE HEALING | Behaviour had so degenerated in Hollow Water, a Manitoba reserve, that
women had to talk in secret about the problem of sexual abuse. Then, as more people joined the
discussion, a miracle happened
The children of Hollow Water
today bounce confidently on the
trampolines that can be found in
almost every front garden,
testing gravity, delighting in their
falls because there is a soft
cushion of springs ready to catch
them. It wasn’t always like this.
Hollow Water gets its English
and Anishnawbe name,
Wanipigow, from a whirlpool on
the lake near the Manitoba
reserve. The whirlpool is chaotic,
its energy created by the
spinning water. Circles of
turbulence, an apt metaphor for
the community.
Circles are sacred shapes for
the Anishnawbe people. In
Hollow Water, circles of people
are used to heal the scars of
sexual abuse, which once
threatened to engulf the
community of 950. Their
solution to this most heinous
crime has been both successful
and scorned: Embrace the
abuser. In their world of justice,
jails are a last resort.
The sophisticated,
therapeutic process called
Community Holistic Circle
Healing was developed by the
people here about 20 years ago.
What they can’t understand is
why Canadian policy makers
have been slow to support it,
started to go downhill. Prior to
especially since they’ve proven it that, the women were holding
lowers addiction levels in a
everything together.”
community that was also rife
Psychologists, sociologists
with alcoholism and suicide.
and Aboriginal people say
Sexual abuse had become a
historic, collective and
way of life in Hollow Water, as it
intergenerational trauma make
had in many First Nations, Inuit
their societies dysfunctional. In a
and Métis communities when
1997 government report called
they became dependent on
The Four Circles of Hollow
outsiders 50 years ago.
“If you had seen this
community back in the `70s
when there was so much chaos,
visible chaos, you would have
written us off,” says Burma
Bushie, director of the CHCH
program.
People stumbled around
drunk in public. Women were
bruised and beaten. Children
cowered.
Nina Buckskin, teacher
“Alcohol abuse was at its
highest point then,” Bushie says.
“You could find a party in the
Water, author Christine Sevillcommunity any time of the day
Ferri said the sexual abuse was a
or any day of the week. There
result of “the deliberate intent of
was violence between men.
the dominant society to sever a
Gangs. There was also violence
people from themselves.”
against women, both physically,
It was noted that federally
sexually, mentally and
run residential schools, which no
psychologically. But the physical
longer exist, did the greatest
violence and sexual assaults were damage, severing family ties and
the most visible. Women did not
making children vulnerable to
start drinking until the ’60s.
abuse within these institutions.
That’s when our community
Bushie was sexually abused
by her grandfather between the
ages of 6 and 9. She was raped by
someone else when she was 12.
“It got to the point where I
would eat and eat and eat and
never know that I was full. Or I
would go for days without eating
and not know I was hungry. I was
totally disconnected from my
body,” she says of the damage it
’Imagine, we’re expecting our children
to come and learn. When they have
issues like that, how can they learn?
Sexual abuse is ... being done by
grandpa, grandma, mom, dad, brother,
sister, cousin.’
caused.
When a child is assaulted,
Bushie says, he or she loses their
spirit.
“I have been looking at my
community for a long time,” she
says. “The weakest piece in the
community is the spiritual. We
started to use all these drugs and
alcohol, pills and what-not to
numb the pain. That separated
us from our spirit even more.
Your spirit’s home is your body,
so if you are putting all this bad
stuff in your body, does your
spirit want to live there?”
Between 20 and 25 per cent
of convicted sex offenders in
Canada are Aboriginal, according
to 2002 figures from the
Aboriginal Healing Foundation,
which also notes there may
actually be as many as 150,000
who have committed sex
offences.
Sexual abuse is not just an
Aboriginal problem, but it is
aggravated by the fact that
alcoholics and other addicts are
more likely to be sexual abusers,
according to Dr. William
Marshall of Queen’s University
and Y.M. Fernandez of Ontario’s
Bath Institute in a 1999 report.
“Once sexual abuse
commences, feelings of guilt or
fear will facilitate further alcohol
or drug use and this may escalate
into addiction. Prolonged
addictions wear away social
restraints so that sexual
offending may occur as part of a
more general breakdown in
appropriate behaviour,” write
Marshall and Fernandez.
Nina Buckskin delivered the
same message more bluntly in
August at the Healing Our Spirit
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Tragedy or Triumph
page 11
MARIE WADDEN
Playground on Hollow Water reserve. Twenty years ago, an estimated three out of every four people in the community had been sexually abused. Now, Community Holistic Circle Healing is helping both
victims and offenders deal with the insidious cycle of destructive behaviour.
Worldwide conference in
Edmonton. During a
presentation by the federal
government on its strategy to
prevent Aboriginal youth suicide,
the 60-year-old Blackfoot
woman from the Kainai First
Nation (Blood Reserve) in
Alberta stood up at the back of
the room
“I think all the suicides in
Aboriginal communities are
caused by sexual abuse,” said the
retired teacher.
“I worked for 34 years and
many of the children would tell
me stories about what was
happening to them and you know
sometimes it’s just unbelievable,
the things that they tell me.
Imagine, we’re expecting our
children to come and learn.
When they have issues like that,
how can they learn? Sexual abuse
is rampant. It’s being done by
grandpa, grandma, mom, dad,
brother, sister, cousin.”
Appropriate behaviour had so
degenerated in Hollow Water by
the early 1980s that Bushie and a
handful of women had to meet in
secret to talk about it. The
women estimated that three of
every four persons on the reserve
had been sexually abused and
that one of every three persons
was an abuser. Few would have
gone to the police about this,
mainly because the abuse was at
the hands of loved ones.
The women knew it had to be
stopped. But how? What
happened next is in the realm of
miracles. In 1986, Bushie and a
group of about 24 men and
women turned the power of evil
into a power of such goodness
that Judge Murray Sinclair of the
Manitoba Provincial Court has
allowed them to deal with their
sex offenders on their own terms,
rather than hand them over to
the courts.
CHCH doesn’t want to send
sex offenders to jail for one
simple reason: Jail doesn’t
change their behaviour.
“The easy thing to do is just
to deny everything and go sit in
jail for a couple of months,
because in many cases in
Manitoba we’re finding that the
sentences for sexual abuse are
two years less a day,” Bushie says.
“I believe that you have to serve a
third of that sentence. So on
good behaviour you can be out in
a few months. That’s the easy
way out.”
The CHCH process sets in
motion a community-wide
response to a disclosure of sexual
abuse. First, a trained team
meets with the victim and
ensures he or she is safe. If it’s an
incest situation, the child is
taken out of the home, but if it is
not, the CHCH team believes it’s
important to keep the child in as
secure a setting as possible
where medical help and
counselling are provided.
Another team immediately
confronts the abuser, no matter
the day or night. They do their
best to get the abuser to admit to
the crime. If he or she does not,
the police are called in. If the
abuser admits guilt, criminal
charges are still laid, but those
charges are stayed until the
CHCH process is completed.
“We bring that person into a
circle,” says Bushie. “We ask
them to tell us what they’ve
done. In a lot of cases, when we
start working they can’t tell all
the details. With each circle they
add on and add on as they begin
to feel the support. They begin to
understand that they are not
being judged, that we’re here to
help them, that we want the
crimes to stop and we want them
to become productive, balanced
people.
“They have to have weekly
sessions with their abuse worker.
They have to have weekly
sessions with the therapist and
counsellor. They have to have
weekly sessions with the human
sexuality program. We, as a team,
sit with them on a monthly
basis.”
The second circle starts in
four months and the offender is
asked to sit with the CHCH
workers and the offender’s
family. The offender must go
through the difficult task of
telling his or her partner and
their children what they’ve done.
Even harder is the third circle,
where they face their extended
family and do the same thing.
Then there’s a fourth circle.
“This is where they tell the
whole community,” Bushie says.
“We feel if a person can go
through those four circles, then
we’re convinced that he or she is
committed to healing and will do
everything to continue. If that
person is not able to complete
the circles, then we will honour
the courts.”
A judge is invited to attend
the fourth circle to pass
sentence, usually on the
recommendation of the
community. Then there’s a feast
to celebrate reconciliation
between the offender, victim and
the wider circle of family and
friends.
“I don’t believe for one
minute that people are using us,”
Bushie says. “They find out very
quickly how difficult it is to face
their own people.”
Transparency ensures
abusers are held to account for
their actions for as long as they
remain in the community.
Therapy heals the victim and the
offenders (few sexual offenders
who’ve been through the CHCH
program reoffend).
It’s an exhausting process for
the small CHCH team. Seven
workers paid 352 home visits in
one year. The circles involve so
many people, sometimes it can
take 10 to 12 hours to complete
them. One disclosure may bring
out a history of sexual abuse that
involves many members of an
extended family. In one year
alone, 282 circles were held. The
pay for CHCH workers is about
$30,000 a year, but they keep at
it because the benefits for the
community are so tangible.
One supporter is John
Higgerty, an Alberta crown
prosecutor who is involved in a
restorative justice program that
started in 1999. He says the
pressure to provide these kinds
of services likely will come from
justice departments across the
country.
“It costs $90,000 a year to
lock up a male and $130,000 to
lock up a female. That money,
put into communities across this
country, can go an awful long way
toward alternatives than jail and
having them come out worse
offenders than when they went
in.”
Not all are convinced of its
merits. Ike Fehr owns a small
hotel in the Métis community of
Manigotogan. His hotel is the
nearest place to Hollow Water to
buy alcohol.
“They don’t send their sex
offenders to jail,” he says. “They
give them a feast instead, for
god’s sake. How perverted is
that?”
The circles have had an effect
on Fehr’s business: He estimates
that since he opened the hotel 20
years ago, business has dropped
by more than 60 per cent.
(Bushie estimates 80 per cent of
the community’s adults now
abstain from alcohol.) Fehr plans
to sell the hotel.
Bushie says the CHCH
process has transformed not just
Hollow Water but the three
neighbouring Métis
communities as well, with a
combined population of 2,000.
“At first we were saying
alcoholism was the problem,
suicide was the problem, child
neglect was the problem, kids
dropping out of school was the
problem. The more we learned
about ourselves, the more we
learned about our community.
Then we started touching on
sexual abuse,” Bushie says.
“There were 60 people at one
workshop; church workers,
single moms and the general
membership.
“We couldn’t ignore the
problem because we were faced
with actual numbers. The stats
were very shocking. It was a
crisis. People disclosed because
of all the work we had been doing
and because people had sobered
up.
“A lot of us have gone down
that road of abusing alcohol to
numb the pain,” Bushie says.
“Thoughts of suicide were never
far away from our minds, so we
had travelled that road, and we
knew what the symptoms were.
Those were awesome times that
sent us deeper.”
Bushie, 57, has the confident
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Tragedy or Triumph
bearing of a woman who has
accomplished much. She has
been frequently asked to speak to
groups, to inspire others. Her
community now takes in foster
children from neighbouring
reserves in northeastern
Manitoba, and is in danger of
being overwhelmed by their
needs.
CHCH receives $200,000 in
funding, split between the justice
departments of Canada and
Manitoba. This money pays
salaries, but that’s about all. The
team operates out of a split-level
house where quarters are very
cramped. There’s a large room
set up with sewing machines and
a table for scrapbooking projects
and quilting, some of the
therapeutic activities.
Circles used to be held in the
basement, but frequent flooding
has made the space unusable.
“People from all over the
country phone,” says councillor
Donna Smith, “and they ask if
they can come here and work on
issues, but we have to turn them
away because we don’t have a
place for them.”
Bushie dreams of having a
healing lodge, where families
from other communities can be
housed while they go through the
process. CHCH has developed a
training program to teach
members of other Aboriginal
communities how to do this
work, but funding is too tight to
export it. Bushie would like more
Canadian support.
“We’ve come a long way and
our struggle should be celebrated
and not ridiculed,” Bushie says.
“That kind of acceptance and
acknowledgement would go a
long way to make the struggle
less painful. This is our fight and
we will do it.”
Bushie says there’s more
page 12
balance in the lives of Hollow
Water’s people today. They’ve
come out of the darkness.
“There is definitely a reason
why my community was chosen
to deal with this problem. We
really believe that we are
instruments of the Creator, of
our grandfathers and
grandmothers. It’s time to heal
from all this.”
Turning the tide of despair
SUICIDE | In September, Travis James Kelly, 24, hanged himself. Now, role models like Tania
Cameron are trying to find solutions to this curse of the reserve
COLLEEN SERBIN FOR THE TORONTO STAR
Travis James Kelly, shown in this undated photo, left behind a young family who cannot make sense of his death. Tania Cameron, right, setout to do something about the glaring shortage of mental
health and addiction services for the communities around Kenora.
Travis James Kelly was a
leader of drum songs. His voice
rose and fell in time with his
drumstick, resonating with an
energy that came from deep
within.
His tenor voice sang ancient
Anishinawbe songs that vibrated
with the heartbeat pounding of
his drumstick. His audience,
seated in a circle around him,
raised their hands in thanks and
bowed their heads in reverence
at the end of each stirring
performance.
In September 2006, 24-yearold Travis James (T.J.) Kelly, the
transcendent singer of the
Whitefish Bay First Nation in
northwestern Ontario, hanged
himself. His sons Tyrick and
Avery and their mother, Misty
Blackhawk, cannot make sense of
his death. They do know it is the
most common cause of death for
young Aboriginal men in Canada.
The loss of their ceremonial
drummer and singer is a big blow
to the staff at the Kenora Chiefs’
Advisory (KCA) on addictions
and mental health, whose job is
to prevent suicide. The other
members of the KCA drum
group, who performed with Kelly
at powwows in Canada and the
United States, were overcome
with grief and could not play at
his funeral.
Suicide has become such a
serious problem that the 14
reserves around Kenora and the
49 reserves north of and
surrounding Thunder Bay have
declared a state of emergency. At
the same time Kelly killed
himself, a 16-year-old on a
neighbouring reserve killed his
girlfriend and then himself.
No one knows for sure how
many Aboriginals are dying from
suicide each year because there
is no central agency keeping
track.
The coroners in many
provinces do not tabulate suicide
by ethnic origin. More than a
decade ago, the Royal
Commission on Aboriginal
Peoples estimated the rate to be
five or six times higher than the
Canadian average. It
recommended the creation of a
co-ordinated national strategy
on Aboriginal suicide that would
keep track of the number of
deaths, conduct research into the
causes and fast track solutions.
The recommendation has not
been followed. The Royal
Commission felt the issue was so
urgent it released an interim
report on suicide before the main
report was released in 1996.
Six years ago, the Canadian
Institute of Child Health
estimated that First Nations men
between the ages of 15 to 24 kill
themselves at the rate of 126 per
100,000, compared to 24 per
100,000 in the general
population. The rate among Inuit
is believed to be even higher, but
again, no one is keeping an
accurate count. Measure it this
way: It’s rare to find an
Aboriginal person in this country
who has not lost a close friend or
relative to suicide.
In the absence of a
coordinated strategy, Aboriginal
people across the country are
trying to find solutions on their
own.
In 2001, Tania Cameron, a
26-year-old from the Dalles
reserve near Kenora who was
program manager of KCA’s
Aboriginal Healing and Wellness,
set out to do something about the
glaring shortage of mental health
and addiction services for the
communities around Kenora.
She successfully negotiated a
deal with Ontario’s Ministry of
Health and Long Term Care to
create the KCA mental health
and addiction advisory. It
enabled her to hire Dr. Ozzie
Seunath, who now leads a team
of six mental health and
addictions workers for the 14
reserves around Kenora, which
have a combined population of
about 14,000.
Seunath, an immigrant from
the Caribbean, will never forget
his first day on the job three
years ago. There’d been a suicide
on one reserve, followed by
another, then another
“I thought, I don’t know how
to stop this,” he says. “We were
rushing in there, making sure the
friends and family members are
looked after because when one
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Tragedy or Triumph
suicide happened it was often
followed by others and this used
to scare the heck out of us.”
Seunath has learned enough
to now confidently identify one
of the reasons young Aboriginal
men take their lives.
“What is there for young
people to do in terms of defining
economic and individual
independence?” he asks. “What
is there for young people to look
forward to in terms of training
and so on? Without that
direction and hope for the future,
it’s easy to sink into ’that’s all
there is.’”
In Whitefish Bay, population
700, Kelly is the 10th young
suicide in less than two years.
People say he had a difficult
relationship with the mother of
his children.
“The young adults put so
much emotional energy into
their relationships,” Seunath
says, “that if they break up, life
seems pretty worthless. It’s like
the worst blow that will ever hit
them. But if life had more
opportunity, more hope for them
and support, then they would see
a break-up as a barrier to
overcome rather than something
to succumb to.”
Seunath compares it to his
experience as the descendant of
slaves growing sugar cane in the
Caribbean. He says while his
people suffered poverty, there
were enough of them to maintain
the cultural and spiritual beliefs
that sustain emotional resiliency.
That’s not the case for many of
his clients.
“The native people had more
denial and suppression of their
cultural practices and identity,”
he says. “Because of residential
schools, they haven’t learned
parenting and their traditional
ways, so it is very difficult for
them to pass on that kind of
learning.”
Whitefish Bay, where Kelly
lived, is a place of great natural
beauty, about six kilometres off
the highway connecting Kenora
to Sioux Narrows.
Pelicans with bright orange
beaks lounge on the lake near the
reserve. There are no shabby
houses. There are tidy lawns,
flower pots hanging from door
frames, and dads pushing their
children in strollers.
This spring, an elder and
some children designed and
mounted a large, handmade
billboard near the entrance to
the reserve. In bold letters it said:
“Bootleggers, We Know Who You
Are. Stop Selling Alcohol.”
In defiance of the sign, a
group of men huddle behind the
band council building, drinking
beer. A drunk approaches a
visitor, beer in hand, his face
scratched. The women’s shelter,
surrounded by a high fence
protected by security cameras,
speaks of the violence alcohol is
fuelling.
“People don’t get up and say
I’m going to become a drunk,”
Seunath says. The problem is a
lack of hope and direction. It
leads to ’Give it up. Let’s just do
what feels good at the moment.’”
Part of the solution, he says,
is more opportunity for
employment and better role
models. Tania Cameron is just
such a role model. Now 31, an
elected councillor on her reserve
and the busy mother of two,
Cameron organized Kenora’s
first Suicide Prevention Day in
September 2005. It was held on
the Kenora waterfront, but didn’t
attract many non-Aboriginals. A
lot of people came in from the
reserves. “There was this large
circle of tee lights, reflecting off
the water.” Cameron says. “It just
breaks your heart to think of
them as so many peoples’ lives.
Their lights were blown out, you
know. I try to place my mind
where these kids were. It was a
place of no hope.”
The efforts to combat suicide
have come on several fronts,
including the entertainment
world. Aboriginal actors Tom
Jackson and Tina Keeper, who
starred in the Canadian series
North of 60, changed career
paths radically after one of the
young people on the show took
his life 10 years ago.
Mervin Good Eagle, 19,
played the part of Joey Smallboat
on the show that introduced
Canadians to life on a fictional
First Nations reserve.
page 13
Keeper quit acting, became a
Liberal Member of Parliament
and today continues to lobby for
the kind of co-ordinated national
strategy on Aboriginal issues
recommended by a 1994 Royal
Commission.
Jackson, who’s also a singer,
spends several months a year
travelling across northern
Canada on his Dreamcatcher
Tour, performing and facilitating
workshops on suicide
prevention.
Jackson’s workshops are
designed to get people thinking
about what creates stress in their
communities and what they can
do to relieve it.
“When you get those
answers, you hand the solutions
back to the community because
through this exercise they
determine what needs to be
done. Fifty people in a room who
are committed to making change
now know collectively what
balloon to pull down to get the
resources they need. It
empowers them,” he says.
‘Dry’ town just a myth
Inuit community caught between bootleggers and alcohol laws that aren’t working
The addiction treatment centre in Kuujjuaq is set to reopen after its program was revamped to reflect Inuit culture. Only nine addicts can be treated at one time.
Two young men swing a large
unmarked cardboard box into a
pickup truck parked in front of
the Air Inuit hangar in Kuujjuaq,
on the western shore of Ungava
Bay in northern Quebec.
“We’ll have to drink quick,”
one of them jokes, “before it gets
stolen.” The contents of this box,
flown here from a Montreal
dépanneur (convenience store)
1,500 kilometres away, were hard
to come by: four cases of beer
and a large bottle of Johnnie
Walker.
No retail sales of alcohol are
allowed in this Inuit community,
so the only way to get it for home
consumption is to order it from
one of several Montreal stores
licensed to supply it.
These men paid $259 for 48
beers and a 40-ounce bottle of
whiskey, plus $103 for air freight.
Last year, $1 million worth of
alcohol was flown from Montreal
to Kuujjuaq, population 2,000.
West of Kuujjuaq, in Iqaluit,
Nunavut, residents have to apply
for a permit to get alcohol that is
brought in by air from Rankin
Inlet, 1,300 kilometres away.
Absurdly, if you want to drink in
Rankin Inlet, it has to be flown in
from Iqaluit.
Alcohol is flying around in
planes across the North because
the Inuit feel uneasy about
making it too accessible on the
ground. Yet lots of alcohol is still
available and continues to cause
untold misery.
At the centre of this apparent
madness are communities
besieged by alcohol, drugs and
gambling with no idea how to
control it.
Aboriginal communities’
experiences trying to keep out
alcohol has been so mixed, many
have decided to give up trying
altogether. Kuujjuaq is one of
those. The emphasis in Canadian
public policy has been on making
people sober rather than on
preventing addiction.
For years, prohibition was
considered the solution to
addiction in Aboriginal
communities, leading to myths of
“dry communities.” There’s no
such thing.
So-called “dry” communities
are created when band councils
pass a resolution prohibiting the
possession and consumption of
alcohol, but they have not been
successful at enforcing these
bans. That failure has created an
industry for bootlegging and
drug smuggling.
In Old Crow — the Vuntut
Gwitchin community in the
Yukon and the most remote First
Nations community in Canada —
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Tragedy or Triumph
alcohol has been banned for 15
years. Old Crow is also one of the
most socially healthy Aboriginal
communities, but Chief Joe
Linklater credits that to selfgovernment (also achieved 15
years ago), not the alcohol ban.
In fact, he says there’s more
alcohol in the town now than
ever before and that has led him
to consider removing the ban to
put the bootleggers out of
business. “I want to stop this
criminal element from growing
any stronger,” he says. “Who
knows what else they’ll bring in
here if they’re not stopped?”
Linklater is frustrated the
police haven’t been able to keep
drugs and alcohol out of remote
fly-in communities like his, but
the RCMP head of Aboriginal
policing says there are limits to
what the police can do.
Sales of alcohol at the bar are
invested in recreational
programs.
The RCMP’s Reti says, ban or
no ban, where there’s a thirst for
alcohol, a way will be found to
get it. He has confiscated gas
cans full of whiskey and old video
recorders with flasks hidden
inside. He believes tackling the
causes of addiction is more
effective than stepping up
enforcement.
One of the most famous “dry”
communities is Alkali Lake in
British Columbia. It’s a triumph
because it is still largely “dry” —
not because there is no access to
alcohol (it’s sold in neighbouring
Williams Lake), but because the
slide into addiction was halted in
1972, before it became an
ingrained part of the reserve’s
social life.
sons needed help from an alcohol
treatment program and they are
bitter there has been so little
economic opportunity for
themselves and their children.
“Living on the reserve is the
same as residential school,” Andy
Chelsea says. “Nothing’s
changed. It’s still controlled, but
now chief and council are the
priests and nuns, and the
principal of the whole thing is
the Department of Indian
Affairs. You’re still not allowed to
develop any land. You’re not
allowed to go against the
principal’s policies.”
The result, the Chelseas say,
is a generation of disillusioned
Aboriginal youth, who choose to
escape reality with alcohol and
drugs.
At the root of the Aboriginal
alcohol problem is binge
MARIE WADDEN PHOTO
After a 1,500-kilometre flight from Montreal, a box filled with beer and alcohol is loaded into a pickup truck at the
Kuujjuaq airport.
“Technically, we don’t have
the authority to search luggage
for alcohol because it’s not an
illegal product,” says RCMP
director general Doug Reti, who
coincidentally is from Old Crow
but now lives in Ottawa. “We
have to have grounds to conduct
such a search.”
Kuujjuaq is revisiting its ban
on retail alcohol sales too, not to
take business away from
bootleggers but from those
Montreal dépanneurs. “Some of
the benefits from these alcohol
sales should come locally,” says
Kuujjuaq’s 36-year-old mayor
Larry Watt.
Watt has invited Kuujjuaq’s
non-profit organizations to
compete for a permit to sell
alcohol. The applicant will have
to invest the money earned back
into the town, as the
community’s only bar does now.
The story of how this came
about is told in a powerful film
called The Honour of All
featuring former chief Andy
Chelsea and his wife Phyllis.
Phyllis was the first to sober
up, then Andy, who became chief
and appointed Phyllis as welfare
officer. Welfare cheques were
replaced with food vouchers to
prevent people from buying
alcohol.
For nearly a decade, the
Chelseas and others took tough
action against the drinkers,
visiting them in their homes,
confronting them about their
behaviour. The sobriety
movement slowly snowballed to
include almost everyone on the
reserve.
Today, the Chelseas are in
their 60s and living in extreme
poverty on the Alkali Lake
reserve. Recently, one of their
drinking — consuming more
than five alcoholic beverages at a
time. Compared to other
Canadians, a higher percentage
of Aboriginals abstain
completely from alcohol.
However, there are twice as
Centre.
In his book Fighting
Firewater Fiction, Saskatchewan
sociologist Richard Thatcher
argues Aboriginals have no
genetic predisposition for
alcohol addiction. He believes
the emphasis must be switched
from encouraging total
abstinence among Aboriginal
youth to teaching safer ways to
drink.
Aboriginal Canadians such as
Dr. Maggie Hodgson, co-founder
of Alberta’s Nechi Training
Research and Health Promotions
Institute, say moderate drinking
is not possible at this time and
total abstinence must still be the
message promoted in Aboriginal
communities.
Total abstinence is certainly
the philosophy behind Canada’s
National Native Alcohol and
Drug Addiction Program. It was
created 25 years ago by Health
Canada with the mandate to hire
one addiction worker for every
500 residents on First Nations
reserves. Workers needed just
one qualification — sobriety.
Despite receiving low pay and
little training, these Aboriginal
workers have saved thousands of
lives.
The NNADAP program has
been credited with reducing
alcohol abuse rates in many First
Nations communities, from
highs of 95 per cent to half that
today. Unfortunately, it wasn’t
available to the Inuit for many
years and this has set back their
sobriety movement.
Today there are 700
Aboriginal community workers
and another 700 Aboriginals
working at NNADAP’s 50
treatment centres, including 10
centres that help youths recover
from solvent abuse. NNADAP is a
triumph of Canadian public
policy, but prevention programs
remain the weakest link in the
chain. Until the investment is
made to promote healthier lives,
Aboriginal communities need
greater guidance on how best to
handle the flow of drugs and
alcohol.
This confusion is being
played out in Kuujjuaq, as a
group of residents worry their
efforts to reopen the town’s only
addiction treatment centre will
be wasted if alcohol becomes
more readily available.
The centre was closed
because its programs were
considered ineffective. Jacob
Partridge, an Inuit elder, has
been hired to make the
treatment centre more culturally
and spiritually suitable for Inuit.
His original vision was to
’Alcohol in any form is a deterrent
for our people to go forward.’
Jacob Partridge, Inuit elder
many problem drinkers in
Aboriginal communities as in the
general population — 35 per cent
compared to 17.
“Studies around the world
show that fights and violence,
suicide, family and employment
problems, accidents and injuries
are usually the result of binge
drinking,” says Marja Karhonen
of the National Aboriginal Health
Organization’s Ajunnginiq
build a new centre on the edge of
town containing three buildings
representing three Inuit housing
types, each with a different
service, including relapse
prevention. Lack of funding
means he has to make do with
the current 60-year-old building,
so small it can only treat nine
addicts at a time.
David Forrest, the volunteer
chair of the new treatment
page 14
centre, remains optimistic that
even in its modest form, it will
have an impact.
“We are going to put the Inuit
way of doing things into the
treatment centre,” Forrest says,
“and adapt exiting protocols to
Inuit philosophy. I’m very
excited about it. It’s pretty neat.”
Partridge worries about the
mixed message to residents
when the town’s leadership is
prepared to put profit before
prevention. “For me, alcohol in
any form is a deterrent for our
people to go forward,” he says.
“The bar should be closed as
well.”
Canada can learn from a
social experiment underway in
Australia that is making alcohol
hard to get, as well as investing in
raising the Aboriginal standard
of living.
Noel Pearson, an Aboriginal
lawyer and founder of the Cape
York Institute on Policy and
Leadership, has persuaded
Australia’s federal government
and private sector to invest
heavily in education, housing
and community development in
three Aboriginal communities
that have agreed to take part.
In return, the communities
have set up strict alcohol
management plans that ban
consumption of alcohol in the
home and permit tough
enforcement of these bans.
Pearson was surprised at the
resistance put up by nonAboriginals.
“The people who were most
intimately acquainted with
problems in these communities
— the teachers who didn’t have
kids in their classrooms, the
nurses who dealt with the broken
bones, the policemen who pick
up the drunks — thought their
ability to have wine and beer in
their fridges was a greater
imperative than trying to tackle
this raging social problem,” he
says.
Although the changes are
barely a year old, Pearson sees
positive results.
“Keeping alcohol and bingedrinking circles out of the homes
and out of the villages has
achieved the most positive
results,” he says.
In Canada, meanwhile, many
Aboriginal communities
continue to slide backwards
because community healing and
development has not been made
a national priority.
Forrest, a non-Aboriginal
businessman in Kuujjuaq, used
to binge drink with Inuit friends
he has made over 30 years. Since
becoming sober, he sees the
community in a new light.
“Sometimes when I land here
in the plane, I can feel the pain of
the people,” he says. “We’re faced
with it every day, through the
suicides, through the senseless
violence that occurs and through
the lack of hope we see in
peoples’ eyes.”
Partridge is also concerned.
“Even though it would look like a
good idea to get all these millions
of dollars into the community,”
Partridge concludes, “who’s
going to get the addicts healed,
who’s going to get them out of
it?”
5/2/07
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Tragedy or Triumph
page 15
Something to Crow about
Canada’s most remote Aboriginal community has kept tradition alive and its good health intact
The pride and joy of Canada’s
most remote and healthiest
Aboriginal community is plain to
see on its website.
Oldcrow.ca shows photos of
this year’s high school graduates
— four young men and two young
women — outside the school. The
young men wear their caps and
gowns with flair; one has his
arms crossed and his head
cocked as though challenging the
world to defeat him.
Sunshine reflects the healthy
sheen on the long dark hair of
the female graduates. One has
her arm around an elderly
Gwichin man.
Six high school graduates
from a community of 300 may
not seem like a big
accomplishment. But think of
the challenges.
Old Crow is in the Yukon and
has no roads connecting it to
anywhere else. It’s 200
kilometres above the Arctic
Circle and closer to the Alaskan
border than to any place in
Canada. If you think of Canada
having four corners, Old Crow is
the most northwestern corner.
After university, many of
these graduates will want to go
home because, despite its
remoteness, Old Crow is a good
place to live.
There hasn’t been a suicide in
Old Crow since 1996. That death
might not even have been a
suicide.
“It may have been
unintentional,” Chief Joe
Linklater explains, “and we
might have prevented it had we
been able to act more quickly.”
This is remarkable
considering the suicide rate in
many other Aboriginal
communities is many times
higher than the Canadian
average. No agency is keeping
count, but in northern Ontario
there’s fear it may be 40 times
higher.
One academic study always
cited on the subject of Canada’s
high Aboriginal suicide rate was
conducted in B.C. by professors
Chris Lalonde and Michael
Chandler. The professors looked
for the factors that made
communities with low suicide
rates different from more
troubled communities. They
learned that the healthiest
communities are the most selfgoverning. The less Ottawa, the
less suicide.
Old Crow has had selfgovernment since 1995. Chief
Linklater was elected to lead the
community in 1998 at the age of
34.
“We’ve learned more about
governance in the past 11 years
than all our years under the
Indian Act,” he says. “We’ve
come a huge distance in a short
while, especially when you
consider the Territorial
government is 70 years old, and
the Canadian government is 140
years old. I’m proud of what
we’ve accomplished.”
Linklater has a lot of help. He
leads a very inclusive governing
system. His small band council,
just four elected members,
administers the community’s
services. Policy is set by the
Elders Council, a Tribal court
and the General Assembly.
You can get a surprising
amount of business done this
way.
make recommendations, he
couldn’t find anyone who wanted
to stay neutral on the question,
which was one of the
requirements of the committee.
There are strong feelings all
around. So an independent
facilitator is to be hired to chair
community meetings until a
consensus is reached.
Linklater says he likes a beer
from time to time, but won’t
Richard Thatcher says
Aboriginal students who are
grounded in their culture and
raised to be comfortable outside
of it have the best chance to
avoid addiction and social
problems. Bicultural youth have
greater choices.
Children in Old Crow learn
the same curriculum as students
in B.C., but there are lots of
additions, like the Gwitchin
the students so they won’t get
too homesick.
The chief is not saying where
he stands on Resolution 11-2005,
the alcohol ban, but it’s not on
his short list of reasons Old Crow
is so healthy. “You cannot
legislate health”, says Linklater.
“Strength of culture would be
one reason we’re a healthy
community,” he says. “The
strength of the Gwichin language
MYRANDA TIZYA-CHARLIE PHOTO
Old Crow 2006 high school graduates include, from left to right, Wade Kaye, Amanda Frost, Travis Frost, Malinda Bruce, Robert Linklater and Floyd McGinnis.
Elder John Joe Kyikavichik stands third from right.
“We held a general assembly
this weekend,” Linklater says,
“and 40-50 people attended. We
passed 24 resolutions in three
hours. There was no yelling or
screaming. We got consensus and
compromise.”
Self-government must also
lower addiction rates. Old Crow
is so comfortable with its social
health, it is considering dropping
a 15-year-old ban on the
consumption and possession of
alcohol.
You wouldn’t tamper with
something that’s not broken, so
why consider abolishing a law
that seems to be keeping
everyone sober?
“There’s more alcohol here
now than there was 15 years ago,
when the ban was first imposed”
says Linklater.
Bootleggers have been able to
get alcohol and drugs past the
RCMP even in this remote place.
Drinking and drug use are not
big problems in the community,
but Linklater is afraid if the
bootleggers are not put out of
business they may use their
connections to start smuggling
worse things.
Not everyone in town is
comfortable with lifting the
alcohol ban. When Linklater
tried to strike a committee to
drink in the community as long
as it’s illegal. There are others
who feel Old Crow has enough
going for it to make moderate
drinking possible.
They might be right.
Old Crow hasn’t suffered the
same losses as most other
Canadian Aboriginal
communities. The habitat of the
Porcupine River caribou herd,
the community’s main food
source, has not been destroyed
by a hydro electric project or a
logging operation. Old Crow’s
isolation has been its saving
grace. The people still have their
land.
On the town’s website, the
radiant pictures of the 2006
graduating ceremony provide
insight into the source of the
chief’s confidence about its
future.
Elders in floor-length black
and red Gwichin gowns,
embroidered with traditional
emblems, dance and clap as they
lead the students into the
community hall for the
graduation ceremony.
The students are shown with
their caps and gowns set aside,
relaxing in soft caribou-skin
dresses and vests, embroidered
in the Gwichin tradition.
Saskatchewan sociologist Dr.
language and traditions.
“The school is an integral
part of the community life and
many of the local people work
with the students. This is
especially true of the elders who
spend a lot of time teaching the
pupils legends, how to trap, fish
and hunt,” the website explains.
Chief Linklater wants to
strengthen the students’ grasp of
math and the sciences with more
instruction on the land.
“We’ll study biology while out
trapping the animals,” he says,
“and physics by looking at the
property of snow. Our
environment is a living
laboratory.”
The challenges his students
face have been turned into
opportunities.
This year’s graduates — Wade
Kaye, Amanda and Travis Frost,
Malinda Bruce, Robert Linklater
and Floyd McGinnis — had to
leave home after Grade 9 to
attend high school in
Whitehorse, 600 kilometres
south.
For three years, they lived
away from their families,
returning only in the summer.
But their families never left
them. Old Crow is one big
extended family and Gwichin
families in Whitehorse support
is another. Third, our strong
sense of community — everybody
looks out for one another. And
finally, we all feel ownership of
what’s going on because we have
self-government.”
Linklater believes his
community is on the right
course, where alcoholism and
other addictions will not be an
issue in another generation if
they can establish relevant
programs and services, such as
the land based education,
recreational facilities and protect
and enhance their traditional
activities.
There is, however, another
potential threat.
The United States has been
talking about developing oil and
gas projects in the sensitive
calving and wintering grounds of
the Porcupine Caribou herd.
If these projects go ahead and
the caribou herd is affected, the
Gwichin of Old Crow may suffer
the kind of trauma that has
harmed so many other
Aboriginal people.
For now they’re doing
everything under their control to
prepare their children for
whatever the future holds.
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Tragedy or Triumph
page 16
Aboriginal family
triumphs over addiction
Priests had caused much pain, but one turned out to be heaven-sent
Francis Penashue leans
forward, watching the pomp and
circumstance from the raised box
seat usually reserved for the
Lieutenant Governor.
The 65-year-old Innu man is
seated in the box with five of his
nine children.
His wife, Tshaukuesh
(Elizabeth Penashue) is below,
on the stage of the St. John’s Arts
and Culture Centre, poised to
receive an honourary degree
from Memorial University in the
fall of 2005 for her
environmental activism. Her son
Jack stands beside her, ready to
translate her acceptance speech
into English.
Tshaukuesh has added some
cultural touches to her academic
dress — moccasins and a colorful
red and navy Innu cap. Jack
wears his University of Regina
graduation gown.
This is a proud moment for a
family that has suffered every
social ill known to Aboriginals.
It might never have happened
had the Penashues not been
willing to go to a place where
fighting alcoholism is the only
thing they had in common with
others, and where they had to
trust another Roman Catholic
priest.
Priests are the reason the
Penashue family was broken in
the first place. Time and again,
Roman Catholic priests betrayed
this family’s trust. And yet a
Roman Catholic priest pulled the
Penashues out, one by one, from
the dark hole into which they
were sinking.
Jack Penashue was filled with
so much rage when he first saw a
priest at the Brentwood
Recovery Home for alcoholics in
Windsor, he thought he was
going to kill him.
But Jack wasn’t the first
Penashue to seek help at
Brentwood. It was Peter, the
eldest. He was 26 in 1991.
“I woke up one morning, it
was my son’s sixth birthday. I was
so sick, really hung over, and my
wife had left me. All I could think
was, how am I going to get her
back and, where was I going to
find money to buy my son a
present? I was really about as far
down as you can get.”
Peter realized he was walking
in his father’s unsteady footsteps.
Throughout childhood, Peter had
been the fixer, the one who tried
to keep his siblings and mother
safe while his father drank.
Abenam Pone lives for
moments like the one that
brought Peter Penashue to his
door. At that time, he ran
Sheshatshiu’s National Native
Alcohol and Drug Addiction
MARIE WADDEN PHOTO
Elizabeth Penashue receives an honourary degree from Memorial University in the fall of 2005 for her environmental activism. Her son,
Jack, stands behind her.
Program in Labrador.
Pone had received help from
the Brentwood Recovery home
when he lived in Windsor. He
came triumphantly back to
Sheshatshiu in the 1980s —
sober, eager to run the “alcohol
centre,” referring people to
treatment programs, running
A.A. meetings and showing by
example what sobriety has to
offer.
“I wanted to go to Brentwood
because that’s where Abenam got
sober,” Peter recalls. “They didn’t
have a bed for me, so I begged
Abenam to get me out of
Sheshatshiu before the weekend.
I knew I’d fall back into the
drinking scene if I didn’t go right
away and who knows how long I
might have stayed like that and
what more damage I’d do?”
Pone and the staff at
Brentwood know there’s only a
small window to pull addicts
through when they look for help.
If the window isn’t open, it may
be years before they’ll try again.
Penashue was in by the weekend.
Penashue returned from
Brentwood sober and has stayed
sober, serving for a time as
president of the Innu Nation. He
inspired other members of the
family to get help.
Peter’s father, Francis, was
the only child of one of
Sheshatshiu’s most respected
hunters, Kanituakuet, who never
drank, never stopped believing
and practising the Innu religion
(although he adapted some
Catholic beliefs), but a man who
didn’t keep his son close enough
to him after his wife’s premature
death.
A priest persuaded
Kanituakuet that Francis would
be better off going to school than
travelling and hunting for
months at a time with his father.
Francis was left behind with
the priest, who was a strict
disciplinarian. Francis was once
strapped so hard with a piece of
birch firewood that he couldn’t
use his right hand for a month.
Then the young boy was sent
to Mount Cashel Orphanage in
St. John’s to finish his education.
(It has since been demolished
because of its legacy of clerical
sexual abuse.) There, he and
another Innu boy hid in a closet
when they got homesick and
whispered together in their own
language.
By the priest’s reckoning,
Francis was a success, an
English-speaker ready to help his
people deal with the culture that
surrounded them after they gave
up their nomadism to live in
houses in 1963. Francis became
the chief, a foreign concept to
most Aboriginals at that time.
That’s when he began to
binge drink to cope with stress
and rage. Alcohol released so
much anger inside him, his wife
and children — five boys and four
girls — scattered for cover
wherever they could find shelter.
“Sometimes people turned us
away,” his wife remembers,
“because they were afraid of
Francis.”
Tshaukuesh drank too in the
early years of the marriage. She
says she stopped when her
husband’s violence escalated and
she needed sobriety to stay alive.
A younger priest offered to
shelter her boys while their
father drank. She didn’t find out
until years later how he picked
them off one by one, seeking
sexual favors, terrifying them
into paralysis to get what he
wanted.
“I’d hear him coming and
would pretend I was asleep, or I’d
lock myself into the bathroom.
Then I’d feel guilty because he
would take one of my younger
brothers,” Jack remembers.
This living nightmare led
5/2/07
3:07 PM
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Tragedy or Triumph
Jack down a self-destructive path
that began with binge drinking
and ended with frequent suicide
attempts.
“I drank javex once, I hated
myself so much,” he says. “I cut
my wrists, took pills, even tried
to shoot myself a couple of times.
But people kept rescuing me.”
As recently as 1988, a priest
betrayed this family’s trust once
again by seducing one of the
younger boys.
It’s remarkable that three
years after that, Peter was able to
trust a priest to cure his
alcoholism. He was desperate.
The priest is Father Paul
Charbonneau, who founded the
Brentwood Recovery Home in
1964. He’s a short, powerfullooking man, even now, at 83.
Charbonneau learned how to
change addicts because he
wanted to help their children. He
was the child of addicts and
knows how they suffer.
“The children of addicts live
in fear,” he says. “When I first
started out as a young priest in
my parish, I could tell in Grade 4,
5, 6 — these kids come from an
alcoholic home. You’d see them,
their faces, their eyes. They’d be
almost like dead inside. They
wouldn’t be alive at school.
They’d be someplace else, afraid
to go home. The whole
atmosphere in an alcoholic home
is generally one of terror, one of
physical abuse, often sexual
abuse. It’s just horrible.”
The Brentwood Recovery
Home has moved from a twostorey house in the centre of
Windsor to a sprawling series of
buildings on the city’s outskirts
that were once used as a casino
and nightclub complex.
It’s a busy place that helps
100 or more addicts at a time.
There’s no receptionist to greet
visitors in the large lobby; this is
a stripped down kind of place
without a lot of the frills and
concern for privacy that
characterize other addiction
centres. Former clients — or
“alumni” as the recovered
addicts are called — come and go,
looking for help to prevent a
relapse or for a way to help
newcomers.
The “alumni” provide talk
therapy, the main catalyst used
here to change peoples’
destructive behaviour.
“It’s consciousness-raising,”
explains Don Russell, the
centre’s executive director. “It’s
the talking about the shame and
the hurt that helps. We’re not
talking about how much booze or
drugs we’ve had or used. That’s
only five per cent of the
problem.”
Francis Penashue says he
learned a lot while he was here,
but it was the prodding of a
former alcoholic that got through
to him.
“He used to ask me, do you
love your children? I said yes,”
Francis remembers. “And he said,
no, you do not. And he said I was
never at any of my children’s
birthday parties, but I always
said I was.”
This man continued to
confront Francis in the same way
whenever they were in a group
together.
“He said, Francis, when the
birthday was going on, were you
there with friends? And I said
yes. What he meant was, when
my son had a birthday I used to
get in a few dozen beers and call
my friends and have a party to
celebrate my son. That was mean
because I was not there. I had a
party for myself and my friends.
We frightened the children.”
After three months of talking
and listening to other addicts,
Penashue was finally able to
empathize with his wife and
children and leave Brentwood
sober.
It’s hard to imagine becoming
so deadened to the feelings of
others, but that’s the nature of
addiction. Father Charbonneau
believes there’s emotional
trauma in the addict’s childhood
that damages their ability to
trust anyone, especially for
emotional needs. Addicts are
selfish and spend their time
pursuing gratification through
alcohol, drugs, gambling, food or
sex.
“They don’t trust anybody
because they hate honesty,” he
says. “They don’t live by it and
they just feel everybody is the
enemy, even the wife, and they
almost become evil because they
can’t experience love.”
The children of addicts
sometimes become addicts
themselves.
“Many children of addicts go
on drugs or booze to kill some of
the pain,” he says. “They join
groups that do the same because
they feel a little secure in a group
since they can’t really feel secure
or at peace in their own family.”
This explains the cycle of
addiction in traumatized
Aboriginal communities and the
growing popularity of gangs
among their youth.
Most of Brentwood’s clients
are non-Aboriginal. Aboriginal
people prefer to attend
treatment centres where there is
a program that incorporates
their spiritual and traditional
beliefs. These treatment
programs also work very well.
But Brentwood was somehow
right for the Penashues, and is
also used by members of the
nearby Walpole Island First
page 17
Nations reserve.
Father Charbonneau says
there is value in getting
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
clients to work through their
problems together.
“If they’re still blaming the
white man or the government,
they’re into self-pity and they
won’t make that breakthrough,”
he says, “but when they’re
involved with the white person
in recovery, then they have to
trust this one and trust that one.
And they can make the
breakthrough individually and as
a group, which is so basic to
being spiritual because self-pity,
blaming others, is really what
alcoholism is all about.”
Francis Penashue is worried
about a son and grandson who
still binge drink. He knows
where to send them when they’re
ready to change. In the
meantime, it’s time to celebrate
what has been accomplished.
After convocation ends and
all the pictures are taken, the
Penashues invite friends to join
them at a steak restaurant.
Tables are pushed together and
restaurant staff place a bottle of
red wine on each table. The wine
sits there, all through the meal,
uncorked.
NWT answers the wake-up call
Chalmers report sparks a renewed commitment to solving addiction problems
A lonely young boy pulling
his family’s belongings on a sled
through a Northwest Territories
village has inspired Dr. Jennifer
Chalmers to write compellingly
about the deplorable state of
addiction services there.
“I was out for a drive and saw
this five-year-old child,” she
recalls, “pulling a sled along a
muddy path with two TVs, boxes,
towels, some toys on it. When I
offered to help, he said `I’m
moving, we were kicked out of
our house.’ There was no sign of
his parents.”
She is the lead author of A
State of Emergency; A Report on
the Delivery of Addiction
Services in the NWT that was
published in 2002 and updated
this year with a progress report
on what the government has
done.
Chalmers has received the
ultimate compliment for her
work: Instead of shelving her
reports, the NWT government is
using them to set policy.
Members of the legislature
frequently refer to the
“Chalmers’ Report” whenever
they rise to speak about drug or
alcohol abuse problems.
There’s a lot of talk inside and
outside the NWT legislature
about addiction and Chalmers
explains why in her preface:
“The greatest problem facing
the people of the Northwest
Territories is addiction to
substances such as alcohol,
nicotine, marijuana and problem
gambling. ... Improved economic
opportunities as the result of oil,
gas and mineral exploration have
done little to decrease the
incidence of addictions.”
Chalmers was shocked to find
that despite all that was known
about the need for addiction
services in 2002, only three per
cent of the Territories’ Health
and Social Services budget was
spent on treatment and
prevention.
“You can’t go to a band
council meeting, a school
meeting, the RCMP and not hear
about the problems with the
youth in terms of alcohol and
drug use,” she says. “If you ask
for support from any community
agency for anything to do with
addictions, mental health,
substance abuse, everyone will
sign up. You’ll have 10 people
right away. So the overwhelming
demand and the urgency has
been there.”
Chalmers first began working
in the NWT 16 years ago, when
the Gwich’in Tribal Council
hired her to set up a program to
motivate addicts to stop hurting
their families and bring
reconciliation between parents
and children (called a family
treatment program). She has
maintained a close relationship
The bright faces of Innu youth in Natuashish, Labrador, reflect the hope that their generation can overcome the problems of addiction that have plagued Aboriginals.
5/2/07
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Tragedy or Triumph
with Gwich’in communities,
helping to devise suicide
prevention strategies, providing
trauma and grief counselling,
even providing mental health
services from a tent in remote
hunting camps.
She has earned the trust of
the Territories’ Aboriginal
population (approximately
20,000 people in 32 communities
spread out over an area the size
of India. There are an equal
number of non-Aboriginals,
mostly living in the capital,
Yellowknife).
It’s no wonder they trust her.
She’s one of the best in the
business.
Chalmers, who has Mohawk
and Micmac ancestry, has four
university degrees in psychology
and did her doctorate at the
prestigious Adler School of
Psychology in Chicago. She has
done post-graduate training in
substance abuse, group therapy,
child psychology and is a
member of all the right
professional associations in the
U.S. and Canada.
Her State of Emergency
report has been instrumental in
reversing the trend of cuts that
severely damaged addiction
services in the mid ’90s.
The NWT government had
decided to close three of its four
residential treatment centres
because the emphasis was
shifting throughout North
America from treating addicts at
residential centres to outpatient
clinics.
Unfortunately, the
government didn’t reinvest what
it saved. Spending on addiction
services went from $14-$15
million in 1994-1995 to just $3
million by 2001. The slow
deterioration caused by the cuts
rendered the whole system
useless by the time Chalmers
conducted her evaluation.
“The whole system of
addictions’ services lacks
credibility from the client’s
perspective, the government
perspective, from the health care
sector, and from the community
perspective,” she wrote in her
report.
Like the false fronts or
facades in TV westerns,
Chalmers and her colleagues
found community services that
were just shells, giving the
appearance that something was
happening when really, nothing
was. The community addiction
programs, her report stated,
were underfunded, housed in
poor facilities and staffed by
demoralized people, 37 per cent
of whom had no education or
qualifications for their jobs.
What was happening was a
rebuild it from scratch.
“Our health indicators tell us
alcohol consumption is two
times the national average,
smoking, family violence,
sexually transmitted infections ...
they’re all linked together,” he
system,” he says, “and made
addictions and mental health a
core service.”
Miltenberg has followed
Chalmers guidelines and 48
recommendations, almost to the
letter.
Dr. Jennifer Chalmers is the lead author of “A State of Emergency: A Report on the Delivery of Addiction Services
in the NWT”, published in 2002 and updated this year.
huge disservice, Chalmers wrote,
to the Aboriginal population
most in need of social healing.
When the State of Emergency
report came out, there was
widespread acceptance of its
findings. No one defended the
system that was in place, not
even the newly elected Minister
of Health and Social Services,
Michael Miltenberger. He agreed
to tear down the feeble
foundation of his department’s
addiction programming and
says. “So a major development
like the Mackenzie Valley
pipeline, if we’re not properly
prepared, will exacerbate the
already bad indicators.”
And so he got to work,
spending the increased budget
his department was given,
allocating $7 million a year for
services.
“We laid out a comprehensive
plan to restructure the entire
social services and health care
Seventy-seven new jobs have
been created for workers in the
mental health and addictions
sphere (counsellors, community
wellness workers and clinical
supervisors).
There have been 20
graduates from a program called
“community wellness,” surely
one of the toughest jobs in a
troubled community. The
workers run alcohol, drug abuse
and suicide prevention programs
and are called out when there’s
page 18
been a suicide to help coordinate
the community’s response,
particularly to prevent a cluster
of suicides that often follow.
Twenty-five new nurses have
finished their training from
Aurora College in Yellowknife,
making Chalmers’ dream of a
“northern health workforce”
more of a reality.
All of this has been
accomplished in a little less than
four years.
“The rebuilding has begun,”
Chalmers writes in her progress
report.
“Overall, the implementation
of recommendations to re-build
the system of addictions is a good
one,” she writes.
Chalmers describes a social
system that has been wakened
from sleep and is now dynamic,
changing to accommodate the
recommendations she made in
2002. But she warns against
complacency.
“The current funding of
community-based services is a
huge step in the right direction,”
she reports, “and ongoing
investments are needed to
further develop and solidify
these investments in the mental
health and addiction core
service.”
The new addiction and
mental health workers, for
example, earn half the pay of
their other Canadian
counterparts, who themselves
receive less than their worth,
according to Chalmers.
“The work is very
undervalued, extremely
undervalued, so people don’t stay
in it,” she says. “In fact, much
bias was heard with respect to
how job descriptions are
reviewed (they say) people do
not need a degree or that pay ...
to talk with people who have
addictions.”
The message Chalmers has
sent to the government is to
seize the moment and build on
all the good will she found.
“The passion and devotion to
addressing the mental health,
addiction, and family violence
problems is limitless right across
the NWT,” she notes. “People and
groups at the community level
realize there are no quick fix
solutions, no miracle programs
and few complete answers in
dealing with the magnitude, and
complexity of addiction and
mental health problems.”
The Award
The Atkinson Fellowship in
Public Policy is designed to
further the tradition of liberal
journalism and commitment to
social and economic justice
fostered by Joseph E. Atkinson,
former publisher of The Toronto
Star.
It is awarded to a full-time
journalist for a one-year research
project on a topical public policy
issue, culminating in the
publication of results in a series
of newspaper articles which the
journalist is then free to develop
into a book.
The Fellowship is open to all
Canadian journalists who have
achieved some distinction in
reporting on policy issues and
includes a stipend of $75,000.
As well, a budget for research
of up to $25,000 is available.
Sponsored by The Atkinson
Charitable Foundation, The
Toronto Star and The Honderich
Family.
Copyright The Atkinson Charitable
Foundation
Book Design Joan Blastorah
Telephone inquiries: (416) 368-5152. Website: www.atkinsonfoundation.ca. Printed on recycled paper using vegetable-based inks.
This publication is available in limited quantities upon request. The entire publication is also available on The Atkinson Charitable
Foundation’s website: www.atkinsonfoundation.ca
Tragedy or Triumph
page 19
Planning a way out of addiction
For Canadian Aboriginals devastated by addiction, the key to recovery lies within their own
communities. But they need assistance.
A 60-year-old Aboriginal man
bursts through the door of the
Sagamok Youth Centre, startling
the group that is seated around a
flip chart.
“Help me, help me,” he cries.
“I’ve been drinking for a month, I
haven’t eaten. I can’t sleep. Help
me.”
The 20 or so people in the
room don’t stir; it’s as if they are
watching a play. The man
appeared right on cue. Everyone
was just talking about the
Ojibway reserve’s drinking
problem.
But the man’s distress is very
real. He weeps and reverts to
speaking his native language,
although one English word gets
attention. When he says “detox,”
people spring into action.
“I’ll call Orion Southwind,” a
workshop participant says,
leaving the room to call the
addictions worker.
“We’ll take a 15-minute
break,” says Michael Bopp, cofounder of the Four Worlds
Centre for Development
Learning in Cochrane, Alta.
The 1,400 people in Sagamok
Anishnawbek First Nations, a
reserve 120 kilometres west of
Sudbury, are involved in a daring
social experiment that offers the
best hope for the future of
Aboriginal communities across
this country.
Government policies have
pushed Aboriginal Canadians to
the edge of destruction, but there
is time to turn the corner. The
story of what’s happening at
Sagamok shows what can occur
when Aboriginal people are
trained and supported to lead
their own recovery.
Just three years into its 10year healing and community
development plan, Sagamok can
boast that 88 per cent of its
employees are now sober,
including the 30-year-old chief,
Paul Eshkakogan. In 2003, those
who helped to draw up the
community plan estimated 70
per cent of males in Sagamok, 60
per cent of the females and 80
per cent of the youth abused
alcohol or drugs.
“At first I was pretty skeptical
about community planning,”
Eshkakogan says. “I think it was
because of the amount of work
that was involved. It was like
looking at a mountain and
saying, how are we ever going to
get up there and start to address
the work?”
But now he’s sold on it.
“Things are improving,” he
says. “I can see it in the people.
There is healing going on, there
is growth. Even myself. Alcohol
and drugs are not a part of my
life anymore, nor my family’s.
Our focus is on the children. I
think that’s where this whole
community healing has to start.”
Thirty residents will soon
graduate from the Moving
Towards Wellness course,
Residents of Saganok discuss the community; 10 Year Healing and Development Plan.
Michael Bopp from the Four Worlds International Institute for Human and Community Development and Healing plan to
lower community addiction levels.
designed by Michael and Judy
Bopp, and the graduates will in
turn teach what they’ve learned
to others in the community.
The Bopps have been honing
their skills in community
development for 30 years in the
Third World and in North
America’s Aboriginal
communities. They teamed up
20 years ago with Lakota leader
Phil Lane Jr., a pioneer in
Canada’s Aboriginal addiction
recovery movement, and have
built a reputation as informed,
compassionate people with
practical solutions.
In 2001, they conducted a
study of six Aboriginal
communities that have lowered
their addiction rates.
“We learned that
communities heal when there’s
strong leadership supporting
that process,” says Michael Bopp,
“and when personal, cultural,
economic, political and social
development are worked on at
the same time.”
The first part of the Bopps’
course encourages people to
learn what personal growth and
healing is needed in their own
lives. In the second part, they
learn about conflict resolution
and human relations. The third
teaches what’s needed for
community development and
nation building. The fourth
teaches program development.
“When are the children least
safe?” asks Bopp, back at his
flipchart when the group returns
from its unscheduled break.
“On cheque days,” says Albert
Eshkakogan without hesitation.
“Whenever money comes into
the community, children are less
safe because their parents may
go drinking.”
“The band council sponsors
events that sell alcohol to raise
money,” adds Violet Boissoneau.
“We make children less safe
then.”
After more discussion, the
group decides to recommend
alcohol no longer be sold at
community events. This
recommendation will become
band council policy.
“There’s an attitude,
certainly, in this community that
things have been going on for so
long, there’s no use trying to do
anything about it,” local
businessman Levi Southwind
says. “Community development
is development of people. It
opens up our minds to realize
that change is possible and puts
us on a learning curve to see how
that could be done.”
None of this would be
happening if Southwind hadn’t
successfully applied five years
ago for funding from an agency
called the Aboriginal Healing
Foundation. It was established in
1998 to help former students of
Canada’s residential schools heal
from the legacy of physical,
mental and sexual abuse.
The creation of the Healing
Foundation is a triumph of
Canadian public policy. Its
dissolution, when the funding
runs out in a few years time, will
be a tragedy.
Dr. Gail Valaskakis, the
foundation’s research director,
was raised on a reserve in
Wisconsin before moving to
Canada, where she served as a
dean at Montreal’s Concordia
University and founded that
city’s Native Friendship Centre.
She told the Senate
Committee on Mental Health
and Addictions this year that the
foundation needs more time to
complete the important work it
has started. She asked the federal
government for a one-time $600
million endowment that, when
invested, could fund the
foundation’s work for another
couple of decades.
“We estimate that it takes a
community an average of 10
years to reach out, dismantle
denial, create safety and engage
participants in the therapeutic
healing process,” she told the
Senators. “The projects funded
by the Aboriginal Healing
Foundation have played a critical
role in beginning the healing
process.”
More than 1,300 healing
projects have been kickstarted in
Aboriginal communities across
Canada thanks to the foundation.
Dr. Maggie Hodgson would
like the Foundation’s work to
continue. She is the godmother
of Canada’s Aboriginal healing
movement and living proof of the
“power of one.”
Thirteen years ago, the
Nadleh Whuten Carrier First
Nation woman from British
Columbia was instrumental in
creating National Addictions
Awareness week, for which she
received the Canadian Centre of
Substance Abuse Award for
Excellence. The daughter of poor
alcoholics, Hodgson barely
completed high school, yet has a
couple of honourary university
degrees and was among 1,000
women from around the world
nominated for last year’s Nobel
Peace Prize because of her work
in indigenous communities
around the world.
In 1992, she founded the
Healing Our Spirit Worldwide
movement to promote addiction
recovery in Aboriginal
Tragedy or Triumph
communities from here to
Australia. Since its creation, five
international conferences have
taken place.
Hodgson is also co-founder of
the Nechi Training, Research
and Health Promotions Institute
just outside of Edmonton, a
centrepiece of Canada’s
Aboriginal sobriety movement.
“An important healing
movement is growing,” she says.
“But like a plant, it needs strong
roots. I don’t think it’s grown
beyond my dreams. It’s growing
like it should.”
Her latest project is a
national day of healing and
reconciliation, planned for May
26. She hopes it will be embraced
by non-Aboriginal Canadians
and help close what
Saskatchewan sociologist
Richard Thatcher calls “the
profound distance between
Aboriginal Canadians and the
rest of the country.”
The movement Hodgson has
helped to build will go nowhere
without support from nonAboriginal Canadians and their
governments. That is proving to
be not so easy, even when there
appears to be the best of
intentions.
This past week, both the
federal and British Columbia
auditors-general criticized their
governments’ slow pace in
negotiating treaties with
Aboriginal groups in that
province, despite close to $1
billion being spent over the past
13 years.
But progress can be made
with affirmative action. B.C.
Premier Gordon Campbell has
promised to raise the Aboriginal
standard of living in B.C. — the
lowest in the country along with
Newfoundland and Labrador —
to the provincial average by 2016.
And this past week, the B.C.
and federal governments signed
an agreement that is expected to
inject $24 million a year into a
First Nations health plan with
the goal of extending life
expectency by 2015. The life
expectancy of Aboriginal
Canadians is seven years less
than that of the rest of the
population.
“We have two choices,” says
Campbell.
“We can continue to build a
culture of dependency and a
page 20
culture of addiction, of denial
and despair, or we can make
every effort to create a culture of
hope, a culture of education and
opportunity. Let’s build a house
of hope.”
In Sagamok, that hope is built
into the 10-year healing and
community development plan.
But it’s already three years old.
There’s a lot to do in the next
seven years.
People are reminded of that
whenever someone cries out for
help, like the man who burst in
through the door at the Sagamok
Youth Centre.
Sign at the entrance to the Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nations Reserve near Sudbury where the community has drawn up a Ten Year Community Economic
Development and Healing Plan to help lower addiction levels.
10 steps toward improving the
lives of Aboriginals
1. Make policies that protect and strengthen the social fabric
of Canada’s Aboriginal communities an immediate priority.
2. Remove jurisdictional barriers at all government levels so
addiction and mental health services can be substantially
increased in Aboriginal communities.
6. Enforcement must be stepped up to prevent drug
trafficking and the illegal flow of alcohol now flooding into
7. Promote and fund community planning that includes social
healing.
3. Remove the 3 per cent cap on Aboriginal health-care
funding.
8. Raise the living standard of Aboriginals as soon as possible
to the Canadian average.
4. There is an urgent need for more public education in
Aboriginal communities warning against binge drinking,
gambling and smoking.
9. Support Inuit women in their campaign against violence.
5. Renew and strengthen the mandate of the Aboriginal
Healing Foundation.
10. Governments respond to the wishes of the majority.
Ordinary Canadians need to unite with Aboriginals to make
their survival a priority.

Tragedy or Triumph: Canadian Public Policy

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