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Ontario government press release ...

McGuinty Government Helping People Access Apprenticeship - Pre-Apprenticeship Training Opens Doors To The Skilled Trades

OAKVILLE, ON, Nov. 27 - The McGuinty government is creating close to 800 pre-apprenticeship spaces across Ontario to help people qualify for skilled trades training, Chris Bentley, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, announced today.

"Our government knows that many Ontarians need help to access opportunity," Bentley said. "Pre-apprenticeships open doors for people who want to learn a skilled trade, providing them with skills that can lead to a well-paying, fulfilling career."

Pre-apprenticeship training helps people develop the technical, academic and employment skills they need to succeed in an apprenticeship for a skilled trade. Pre-apprenticeship projects, which include a minimum eight-week work placement, can run for up to 40 weeks.

This year, Ontario is investing more than $7.6 million in 37 new projects that will prepare people who want to become apprentices for training in specific skilled trades. Included are projects for youth, Aboriginal peoples, women and groups traditionally under-represented in apprenticeship programs.

Bentley was joined for today's announcement by Kevin Flynn, MPP Oakville, at Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning where 25 early high-school leavers will receive pre-apprenticeship training in the Industrial Mechanic Millwright trade. The government will provide Sheridan with $257,000 for the project, offered in partnership with the Halton Industry Council, Job Connect and the Peel Halton Dufferin Training Board.

"I am extremely pleased that additional resources are being made available to Sheridan College here in Oakville," said Flynn. "Pre-apprenticeship programs create real opportunities for individuals, and ensure we will have a labour force able to meet the growing demand for skilled workers."

The Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program is helping the government meet its commitment to raise the number of annual apprenticeship registrations to 26,000 in 2007-08.

"Through increased investment from the province, as well as innovative partnerships at the local community level, Sheridan will continue to fulfill our role as an economic development catalyst," said Dr. Robert Turner, Sheridan President and CEO.

Pre-apprenticeship training can be accessed through Employment Ontario, Ontario's training and employment network. Employment Ontario provides integrated training, apprenticeship and labour market services, bringing together about 470 service providers in almost 900 locations funded by the Ontario government.

Information about Employment Ontario services in communities across the province are available online at www.ontario.ca/employmentontario, or by calling 1-800-387-5656.

The government is also working on other initiatives to provide opportunities for Ontarians, including:

- Investing $6.2 billion more in postsecondary education and training by 2009-10 - the most significant multi-year investment in Ontario's higher education system in 40 years

• Investing approximately $100 million annually in Employment Ontario's apprenticeship related programs
• Investing $127 million this year in Employment Ontario's Job Connect services to link employers with both youth and adults, including three new centres with a special focus on helping newcomers.

"By providing more people with a chance to develop the skills needed in today's economy, everyone in Ontario benefits," said Bentley. "Through pre-apprenticeship training, we're helping people take another step toward reaching their potential."

www.edu.gov.on.ca
www.resultsontario.gov.on.ca

Backgrounder
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THE PRE-APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING PROGRAM

Pre-apprenticeship helps people who want a career in a specific skilled trade by providing the technical training necessary to enter an apprenticeship in that trade. Pre-apprenticeship programs can last up to 40 weeks and include an eight-week work placement to give each participant real work experience.

Many projects offer participants the opportunity to upgrade their academic skills to meet the academic requirements for the trade in which they are training. Participation in the program is free.

This year, the Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program will provide opportunities for 773 people to strengthen their skills and become eligible for an apprenticeship in a specific skilled trade. The government is investing more than $7.6 million in the program to support 37 projects in 19 trades.

The Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program is part of Employment Ontario, the province's integrated training and employment network. Employment Ontario provides seamless, coordinated training, apprenticeship and labour market services, bringing together about 470 service providers in almost 900 locations funded by the government of Ontario.

People interested in participating in the Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program should call the Employment Ontario Hotline at 1-800-387-5656, or 416-326-5656 in the Toronto area, for details about individual projects.

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Skilled trade Funding Amount for 2006-07
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Automotive Service Technician $801,936
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Brick and Stone Mason $164,235
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Construction and Maintenance Electrician $472,743
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Construction Craft Worker $290,874
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Cook - Assistant Branch 1 $1,002,960
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Cook - Branch 2 $467,559
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Early Childhood Educator $165,969
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General Carpenter $1,230,614
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General Machinist/Industrial Mechanic Millwright $170,730
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Glazier/Metal Mechanic $431,562
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Hairstylist $201,413
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Heavy Equipment Operator $157,959
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Horticultural Technician $150,000
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Industrial Mechanic Millwright $257,000
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Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Mechanic $233,983
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Truck and Coach Technician $1,035,458
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Welder $145,347
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Welder and Metal Fabricator $248,816
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TOTAL $7,629,158
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www.edu.gov.on.ca
www.resultsontario.gov.on.ca

For further information: Sheamus Murphy, Minister's Office, (416) 325-7215; Tanya Blazina, Communications Branch, (416) 325-2746; Public Inquiries: (416) 325-2929 or 1-800-387-5514, TTY: 1-800-263-2892

Manitoba government press release ...

Grand Relations Strategy To Support Positive Family Relation With Grandparents, Extended Family

Enhanced Services Strengthen Alternatives to Court: Mackintosh - November 27, 2006

Grandparents and extended family members will have better options and more help to resolve access and guardianship disputes, Family Services and Housing Minister Gord Mackintosh announced today.

“Grandparents, parents and others have told us that we must provide better ways to solve disputes without the financial and emotional burden of contested court hearings and we are responding,” said Mackintosh.

“These initiatives recognize that a child can benefit from a healthy relationship with a grandparent,” said Healthy Living Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross. “We need to support loving relationships between children and their extended families including elders.”

The reforms continue to ensure the child’s best interests remain the overriding consideration in resolving family access disputes while ensuring children’s parents - who have primary responsibility for their well-being - have a voice in proceedings that affect their children, said Mackintosh.

Called Grand Relations, the five-point plan includes:

• Providing a grandparent advisor immediately to help families find the best solutions and services when grandchild access and guardianship is in dispute. The grandparent advisor is available toll-free at 1-800-282-8069, ext. 7236.
• Providing new leading-edge alternatives to court:
  • Piloting First Choice, a new dispute resolution service, as of April 1, 2007, to resolve custody and access-related disputes without a contested court hearing. A Canadian first, this initiative combines mediation and evaluation by using the early attention of a professional two-person team that advises on the likely outcome of a family assessment report in addition to mediating a settlement of outstanding issues.
  • Mandating For the Sake of the Children, the education program for parties to a family dispute where the care of and access to children is in dispute, and enhancing the component of the program relating to the importance of positive grandparent and extended family relations.
  • Developing an Aboriginal model of dispute resolution such as healing circles for out-of-court settlements.
• Proposing legislative changes in the Grandparent Access and Other Amendments Act to:
  • strengthen the recognition in law of grandparents by requiring courts to consider that “a child can benefit from a positive, nurturing relationship with a grandparent” when making an order regarding grandparent access to a grandchild;
  • better facilitate grandparent and other family access by providing, not just an all-or-nothing approach, but also creative solutions for courts, lawyers and families such as certain times for visits, attending activities, sharing gifts and communication, sharing photos and other information;
  • allow courts to adjust orders as a relationship evolves; and
  • allow orders to be made more quickly where appropriate.
• Creating a provincewide education campaign about options to resolve family access disputes that recognizes that children can have many important family relationships.
• Creating a grandparent fostering outreach program, particularly in Aboriginal communities, to alert grandparents to the benefits of becoming foster parents with compensation and supports.

“Grand Relations will help maintain children’s positive relationships with grandparents and others. It builds on Manitoba’s strong government and court initiatives that resolve most family conflicts without an adversarial hearing in court,” said Andrew Swan, MLA, Minto, who led consultations and the development of the reform package.

The province will invest up to $600,000 on a full-year basis including the addition of seven new staff for Grand Relations.

More information is available at http://www.gov.mb.ca/fs/childfam/grandparents_access.html.

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BACKGROUND INFORMATION (Word Doc)

Ontario First Nations Young Peoples Council

LOGO DESIGN COMPETITION

The Ontario First Nations Young Peoples Council is announcing a public competition for a logo design. The logo that is selected will serve as visual representation for OFNYPC in print, web and broadcasting communications.

The design must reflect First Nations culture and the submission must include a detailed description or explanation of the logo designed. This design should be kept simple, with a maximum of four colors; this is to allow for easier reproduction for future promotional materials. The OFNYPC would like this logo to symbolize respect, unity, as well as diversity amongst the First Nations in Ontario.   

This invitation is extended to First Nations Youth from across Ontario. Submissions will only be accepted from individuals ages 15-29.

An award of $250.00 will be given to the designer of the winning logo.

Entries must be received by January 31st, 2007. 

All submissions must include your name, age, address, postal code, telephone number and/or email.  Hard copies must be submitted on a separate piece of 8½” by 11” white paper and can be mailed to:

Ontario First Nations Young Peoples Council
c/o Chief of Ontario Political Office
Suite 101, 90 Anemki Dr.
Thunder Bay, ON P7J 1A5

Electronic submissions can be sent by email and should be attached as JPEG, GIF or PDF.  E-mail: laura@coo.org.  Subject line “logo competition”

For more info on the OFNYPC, check out our website at www.chiefs-of-ontario.org/youth.

Please note that the winning design will become the property of the Ontario First Nations Young Peoples Council and the Chiefs of Ontario.

In support of AFN's call for clarification on the federal government's recent announcement (see press release below), the premier of BC is now calling on Ottawa to recognize Canada's Aboriginal population as a nation, similar to the recognition providers to Quebecers (see Globe and Mail story below).

AFN press release ...

First Nations seek clarity on Harper's motion on 'nationhood'

     OTTAWA, Nov. 23 /CNW Telbec/ - In reference to the motion made by Prime Minister Harper yesterday, the Assembly of First Nations calls upon the Prime Minister to clarify his position in a way that does justice to the status and role of First Nations in Quebec and within Canada as a whole.

     National Chief Phil Fontaine commented that "mindful as we are of our own history and identity, we want to be respectful of other communities and traditions in Canada. The AFN has been, and remains, open to recognition of the nature of Quebec society that acknowledges features such as the French speaking majority in that province. It is important, however, that such recognition be carried out in a way that does not dismiss or diminish in any way, the nationhood of First Nations in Quebec and throughout Canada."

     AFN Regional Chief of Quebec and Labrador, Ghislain Picard added that "the First Nations of Quebec reserve the right to assert and affirm our status as Nations regardless of what other governments may imply." Furthermore, Picard stated that "the recognition by one government of another is only meaningful through a process of negotiation to confirm mutual understandings of the relationship."

     The Aboriginal and Treaty rights of First Nations peoples, as referenced in the Constitution Act (1982), already provide for the unique status of First Nations in law. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which delivered its final report 10 years ago this week, provided a comprehensive affirmation of our rights and title, as well as a clear path forward for First Nations and all Canadians. Yet, Canada has failed to act and failed to respond in a manner consistent with Aboriginal and Treaty rights and title.

     Indeed, First Nations across Canada are expressing frustration at the lack of action and attention to First Nations issues. At the same time, as putting forward this motion, the Government of Canada is actively opposing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada's opposition to this non-binding Declaration that would set only minimum standards for dignity, survival and well-being of the world's Indigenous Peoples is unprincipled and inconsistent.

     "The announcement of a larger than anticipated surplus and more tax-cuts by Minister Flaherty today is yet another blow to First Nations" noted the National Chief. "In the full awareness of the growing socio-economic crises in First Nation communities across Canada, First Nations receive neither recognition nor investment."

     "Despite this, we believe that Canadians do care, and, if given the chance, Canadians would support our plans to overcome the disproportionate problems in health, education and housing in our communities," said the National Chief. "The challenge is for the Government of Canada to finally act, to finally recognize First Nations, and work with us in the best interest of First Nations peoples and all Canadians. It would be a very sad comment that unless you constitute a block of potential swing ridings, your voice, regardless of your legal entitlements and rights, is meaningless in this country."

     "There is space for all in Canada," concluded the National Chief. "The Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and all subsequent governments must seek a balance of the rights of the Quebecois, First Nations, and the rest of Canadians to ensure the prosperity of this country we all share."

     The Assembly of First Nations is the national organization representing First Nations citizens in Canada.
 
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/For further information: Bryan Hendry, A/Director of Communications, (613) 241-6789, ext. 229, Cell (613) 293-6106, bhendry@afn.ca/

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Click here to see the Globe and Mail story below

Campbell: Declare natives a nation - B.C. Premier wants 'third solitude' given same status as Québécois within Canada
MARK HUME - November 27, 2006 - Globe and Mail

VANCOUVER — British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell is calling on Ottawa to extend the same acknowledgment of Quebeckers as a nation within Canada to the country's aboriginal peoples, opening another front in the fractious debate.

In an article he wrote that was released to some media organizations, Mr. Campbell praised Prime Minister Stephen Harper for moving to recognize the uniqueness of Quebeckers within Canada. But he said there is a "third solitude" out there that now needs to be given the same honour.

"Indeed, I would urge the Prime Minister to work with aboriginal leaders to develop a similar motion that offers a positive affirmation of Canada's three founding nations -- French, English and aboriginal alike," he wrote, under the heading Setting A More United Canada in Motion.

Mr. Campbell, who in recent years has championed a new government-to-government relationship with first nations in B.C., said he could understand why aboriginal people might feel "confusion, frustration and disappointment," at not being included in the Quebec motion.

That omission should be put right by Parliament, he said.

"Canada's first nations, Métis and Inuit people should not be further marginalized by dint of this effort to unite Canada, which leaves them noticeably out of the picture," Mr. Campbell said.

"It is high time we formally acknowledged Canada's 'third solitude' -- the aboriginal peoples of Canada. We should do that formally, proudly and emphatically in a similar resolution that embraces our heritage as a nation of many nations."

Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, yesterday expressed his support for Mr. Campbell's comments. He said the recognition of aboriginal people as a nation is a necessary "symbolic" move, just as it is for Quebeckers.

"We occupy a special place in Canada," Mr. Fontaine said from Vancouver. "So it would do a disservice to the country if we were to ignore, as this motion has done, the important historical fact of the first nations in Canada.

"We are not of a lesser status [than] the Québécois or . . . any people in this country," he said, adding that the current motion should be amended, or a separate motion drafted to recognize aboriginal people.

Mr. Campbell has emerged on the national stage as a major proponent of a better working relationship with first nations. In B.C., his government has recognized the right of aboriginal societies to self-governance, while at the same time seeing them as intrinsic components of the province. The Premier was also a driving force and key champion of the Kelowna accord between Ottawa and aboriginal groups aimed at improving housing and health services. The $5-billion plan -- negotiated with Paul Martin's government in 2005 -- was killed by the Conservatives in May.

Mr. Campbell sees a parallel with Mr. Harper's motion, which would recognize that the "Québécois form a nation within a united Canada," without conferring on the province any additional civic or legal authority.

"In short, this motion is about the Québécois as a people and a culture, not about recognizing the province of Quebec as a 'nation,' " Mr. Campbell said. "Mr. Harper has also stressed that his motion does not have any legal or constitutional significance. With that assurance, I have no difficulty supporting it."

Mr. Campbell said Canadians shouldn't get "bogged down in an unproductive semantic debate" but rather should strive to find a new definition of what the country should be in the 21st century.

"The Prime Minister's attempt to negate the separatists' raison d'être with a positive statement to Quebec's francophone people is not perfect. But it has set in motion a national debate that should lead us all to openly embrace our French, English, aboriginal and multicultural heritage with new resolve and understanding," he said.

Mr. Fontaine said that he was pleased to see Quebeckers recognized as a nation, but that the motion brought up old concerns.

"We've never opposed -- even in Meech Lake -- Quebec as a distinct society. What we opposed then, is the suggestion that we could be dealt with later," he said. "We don't want the same thing to happen here -- that we are seen as an afterthought. It's not a helpful approach to nation building," he said.

Grand Chief Doug Kelly of the Sto:lo Tribal Council said native leaders across Canada were left wondering last week why Quebec was so special, when first nations weren't.

"When I saw that motion I thought, what about us? I'm sure the 200 chiefs in B.C. all felt the same way."

He said first nations already see themselves as "nations within a nation," but getting official recognition of that, in a statement by the federal government, would have huge symbolic value.

He said recognizing multiple nations within Canada will not shatter the country into Balkanized states.

"We come from different places, we have a different history . . . but having differences doesn't make us weaker as a nation. Internal conflict is what will make us weaker. If we focus on what we have in common, we will be a much stronger and a much healthier nation," he said.

Three more stories from the Atkinson series ...

Click here to view the following Toronto Star article

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
Nov. 26, 2006 - MARIE WADDEN - ATKINSON FELLOW

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 Anishnawbe 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-year-old 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 suicide happened it was often followed by others and this used to scare the heck out of us."

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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.

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.

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Click here to view the following Toronto Star article

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
Nov. 26, 2006 - MARIE WADDEN - ATKINSON FELLOW

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, especially since they've proven it lowers addiction levels in a community that was also rife with alcoholism and suicide.

Sexual abuse had become a way of life in Hollow Water, as it had in many First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities when they became dependent on 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.

"Alcohol abuse was at its highest point then," Bushie says. "You could find a party in the community any time of the day or any day of the week. There was violence between men. Gangs. There was also violence against women, both physically, sexually, mentally and psychologically. But the physical violence and sexual assaults were the most visible. Women did not start drinking until the '60s. That's when our community started to go downhill. Prior to that, the women were holding everything together."

Psychologists, sociologists and Aboriginal people say historic, collective and intergenerational trauma make their societies dysfunctional. In a 1997 government report called The Four Circles of Hollow Water, author Christine Sevill-Ferri said the sexual abuse was a result of "the deliberate intent of the dominant society to sever a people from themselves."

It was noted that federally run residential schools, which no longer exist, did the greatest damage, severing family ties and making children vulnerable to abuse within these institutions.

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 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 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.

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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. It takes five years.

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`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'

Nina Buckskin, teacher

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"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 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 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."

Click here for the Toronto Star story found below

Inuit women raise battle cry
Violence fuelled by addiction threatens a treasured culture
Nov. 24, 2006 - MARIE WADDEN - ATKINSON FELLOW

'Violence has become so destructive to women, children, family relationships and community health that it threatens the very future of the Inuit.'

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 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 English-speaking 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.

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 addiction and mental health 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 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 seal-oil 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.

Hello, everyone in NAN country. 

We are having an excellent visit in Yellowknife, N.W.T.  The people, scenary, food are wonderful. We experienced many benefits to being in this part of the country. 

The Dene and regional First Nations groups are very proud of their language, culture, arts and crafts, lifestyle and have been more than willing to share their culture with us. 

The Blueprint for the Future Conference, hosted by the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation was amazing featuring Tamara Podemski, and many other First Nations role models. 

The life lessons that were gained through this career fair will hopefully be life impacting with the benefits pouring right back into the NAN communities. 

It has been our privledge to take ten NAN youth to Canada's far north as part of an investment in their lives.  We fly back home tomorrow a.m. and are looking forward to being back in our territory.

Meegwetch for reading! 

Check out www.naaf.ca to see future Blueprint for the Future Conferences, perhaps you will consider going with a group from your community.

Desta, Rosalie and Brian

PS: Click here to check out the other KNEWS story about this trip

The Toronto Star's "Atkinson series - Tragedy or Triumph - Canadian Public Policy and Aboriginal Addiction" continues this week with two more articles. Click here for links to all the stories from this series.

About the Author ...

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 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.

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Click here for Toronto star story

The lost generations - Two Aboriginal doctors seek a way to heal the trauma that has haunted a community for a century
Nov. 25, 2006 - MARIE WADDEN - ATKINSON FELLOW

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.

"Nell" Wieman is Canada's only Aboriginal 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, co-director 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 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 non-Aboriginal world.

"This is the Jay Silverheels Complex," she says, acting as a Six Nations tour guide one day in January. Wieman knows the reserve well since she ran 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 from 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 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 "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 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 second-degree murder. Experiences like this are heartrending for her.

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`The signs of improvement are all there, but we still have to deal with addictions and mental health issues.'

Dr. Peter Menzies

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"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 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 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 self-esteem.

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."

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Click here for link to the following Toronto Star story

The healing power of huskies - Inuit community restoring pride after a century of traumatic events
Nov. 25, 2006 - MARIE WADDEN - ATKINSON FELLOW

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 525-kilometre 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 population. An Inuit woman's organization called Pauktuutit says violence and abuse in their communities threatens the survival of the entire culture.

Out west, smallpox epidemics destroyed many First Nations communities in British Columbia in the late 19th century and their recovery was hindered by the gold rush that brought thousands of newcomers with alcohol and laws forcing the original residents to live on reserves while also banning customary religious practices.

In the 1950s, the Anishnawbe of Grassy Narrows and Wabaseemong (White Dog) in northern Ontario were gathered up from small isolated reserves where their economies were still viable and resettled to less productive land along a river that soon became polluted by mercury from a paper mill. Anastasia Shkilynk documents their experience in her book A Poison Stronger than Love. It's a frightening description of how a community can turn upon itself in a single generation.

The outlawing and destruction of Aboriginal practices like the Potlatch in western Canada and the "shaking tent" ceremonies — considered pagan by Christian churches — stripped Aboriginal people of their ability to recover from trauma.

"We went from nomadic self-sufficient 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 2,000 people from about 15 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.

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On the frozen ground of Kangirsuk, the Inuit dog sledders are doing their part to make sure the burden is lighter.

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 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 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 46-year-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 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.

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Click here for the following Related Toronto Star Story

Trial delay in scandal raises concern - Case that surfaced in 2000 won't be heard until 2008 - Health Canada officials punished for their roles
Oct. 18, 2006 - MARIE WADDEN - SPECIAL TO THE STAR

An opposition MP and a Crown prosecutor have expressed concerns about delays in the trial of the man at the centre of a multimillion-dollar scandal involving highly placed Health Canada officials.

Perry Fontaine, director of the Virginia Fontaine Addiction Foundation of Manitoba, was charged after media reports in 2000 of a Caribbean cruise involving Fontaine, about 70 foundation staff and Paul Cochrane, the senior Health Canada official who was responsible for funding the foundation.

Fontaine has been charged with five counts of giving benefits to a public official and five counts of fraud over $5,000 as well as forgery and possession of goods by crime. The case will not be heard until Oct. 14, 2008, and his trial is expected to run until March 2009.

Meanwhile, the fallout from the case and the delays in wrapping it up have hurt other treatment programs for natives, according to health-care workers.

Crown prosecutor Dale Harvey expressed concern about the long delays in bringing the case to trial.

He said the latest delay was caused by the busy schedule of a defence lawyer. Fontaine's lawyer, Harvey Pollack, declined comment.

Judy Wasylycia-Leis, the MP for Winnipeg North, says she is shocked Fontaine's trial won't be heard for another two years.

"This is one more delay in a case that's been dragging on for too long," says the New Democrat MP.

This spring, Wasylycia-Leis, who keeps raising the matter in the House of Commons, once again asked for a public inquiry to prove sufficient measures are in place to ensure against abuse of public funds.

"(Health Minister) Tony Clement said he'd look into it," she says.

Two of the senior Health Canada officials have already been tried, convicted and punished for their roles.

Cochrane, former head of Health Canada's First Nations and Inuit Health branch, was convicted in March 2005 after pleading guilty to taking gifts worth more than $200,000 from Fontaine's foundation.

Cochrane agreed to testify against Fontaine and was sentenced to a year in jail. As part of his plea bargain, charges against his wife and son were dropped.

Last November, Patrick Nottingham, the former regional director of Health Canada in Manitoba, pleaded guilty to arranging funding for the treatment centre in exchange for $1 million in personal benefits. Nottingham received a conditional sentence of two years less a day after agreeing to testify against Fontaine and to return as much of the money as he could.

While awaiting trial, Perry Fontaine works as a long-distance dispatcher in Edmonton for the moving franchise Two Small Men with Big Hearts. The firm is operated by his daughter, Vera Bruyere, who was associate CEO for the foundation and also faces charges of giving benefits to public officials.

The Virginia Fontaine treatment centre, closed down by Ottawa in 2000, was located on the Sagkeeng reserve, 145 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

Sagkeeng, also known as Fort Alexander, is the largest reserve in Manitoba with 6,500 residents.

At its peak, the Virginia Fontaine centre employed 100 and had the capacity to treat 46 alcoholics and 36 solvent abusers at a time. A small wing of the building reopened in 2004 as the Min Pimatiziwin Family Treatment program.

Susan Thomas runs this program with only 14 staff to help troubled families with addiction problems. She says the demand for services far exceeds the centre's ability to meet them and this is the most troubling legacy of the scandal.

Health Canada moved quickly when details of the Caribbean cruise were made public. Auditors were paid $2 million to examine the department's books and those of the foundation. Details of what they learned are available on the federal department's website.

According to the auditors, $12 million went to the foundation during a 2 1/2-year period. Accounting procedures were loose. The auditors say they could find: "... no contracts to support payments, no invoices to support payments, little or no evidence of deliverables, questionable business rationale for payments, inconsistent explanations provided by (Virginia Fontaine Addiction Foundation) officials, questionable documents used as support for explanations ..."

Cochrane was responsible for authorizing Health Canada's payments to Fontaine. Cochrane, a Newfoundlander with a degree in engineering, began working for Health Canada in 1974.

The Cochrane and Fontaine families took four cruises together between October 1999 and October 2000, according to the Health Canada audit. The foundation also gave Cochrane season's tickets to the Ottawa Senators' games. One of Cochrane's sons worked at the treatment centre while another received a vehicle purchased by Perry Fontaine. According to the auditors, Patrick Nottingham and his wife, Julia Mandamin, were also among Fontaine's friends. Mandamin created a company called Animeke that received $917,000 to produce educational material on addiction prevention. The auditors found three papers produced by Animeke to account for this contract. The auditors reported the material had been plagiarized.

As part of Nottingham's plea bargain, charges against Mandamin were dropped.

Sharon Clarke, executive director of the Native Addiction Partnership Foundation (NAPF) in Saskatchewan says the affair tarnished all aboriginal people who work to heal their communities where, according to reports, between 70 and 80 per cent believe addiction is the single greatest problem. Worse, the affair has diminished the resources available.

Clarke's foundation, with a staff of five, reaches out to Canada's most remote aboriginal communities to provide training for more than 1,400 addiction workers, prevent staff burnout, help in the completion of complicated reports required by Health Canada and ensure treatment centres qualify for accreditation.

"I could cry when I think about what's been lost," she says. "When we approached people at Health Canada for an increase in our funding after the Sagkeeng scandal, they were very cautious. They were all new staff. It's a long process of education getting them to trust you, especially after Sagkeeng. I don't think the new people trusted anybody and you can't really blame them."

The Campaign 2000 Report Card found at http://www.campaign2000.ca/rc/rc06/06_C2000NationalReportCard.pdf highlights the plight of Aboriginal children in Canada.

From http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2006/11/24/child-poverty.html

Aboriginal children are poorest in country: report
B.C. and Newfoundland have highest rates; Alberta and P.E.I. have lowest rates - November 24, 2006 - CBC News

A national network of advocacy groups released a report on Friday that paints a bleak picture of poverty facing First Nations children in Canada.

In its report, called Oh Canada! Too Many Children in Poverty for Too Long, the advocacy group Campaign 2000 says First Nations children are suffering the greatest levels of poverty of all children in the country.

The group defines poverty rates by using information compiled by Statistics Canada on low-income families. But Statistics Canada does not use the word "poverty," saying there's no objective definition.

The report says one in four children in First Nations communities lives in poverty, and it calls upon federal and provincial governments to take action to ensure aboriginal children on reserves and in urban areas will thrive.

"With an increasing First Nations and aboriginal population that is both rural and urban, young, vital and rapidly expanding, Canada must address the extremes of poverty that First Nations face on a daily basis. This poverty is systemic and long-standing, and requires concerted action from all levels," it reads.

According to the report, First Nations children face terrible daily living conditions and are more likely than other Canadian children to suffer health problems. Among the problems listed:

• One aboriginal child in eight is disabled, double the rate of all children in Canada.
• Among First Nations children, 43 per cent lack basic dental care.
• Overcrowding among First Nations families is double the rate of that for all Canadian families.
• Mould contaminates almost half of all First Nations households.
• Almost half of aboriginal children under 15 years old residing in urban areas live with a single parent.
• Close to 100 First Nations communities must boil their water.
• Of all off-reserve aboriginal children, 40 per cent live in poverty.

"Now is the time for governments at all levels to collaborate with First Nations governments and aboriginal organizations to ramp up social investments that enable young aboriginals to succeed," the report says.

"We need to have the money getting to people who need it the most," Vera Pawis Tabobondung, president of the National Association of Friendship Centres, told CBC News. "We need to have a comprehensive strategy between all levels of government. That it's not just the federal government."

The report says poverty rates vary across Canada.

According to the report, the highest child poverty rates occur in B.C. (23.5 per cent) and Newfoundland and Labrador (23.1 per cent).

The lowest occur in Alberta (14.5 per cent) and P.E.I (10.8 per cent).

The report notes that Quebec is the only province where child poverty rates have been consistently declining since 1991. It credits a package of family support benefits implemented in 1997, the expansion of child benefits and enhanced parental leave.

Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, and Laurel Rothman, national co-ordinator of Campaign 2000, were scheduled to hold a news conference about the report on Friday morning in Toronto.

Campaign 2000 calls itself a public education movement to build Canadian awareness and support for the 1989 all-party House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. It puts out an annual report on child poverty in Canada that measures the progress of the resolution.

From http://www.canab.com/mainpages/events/musicawards_files/2006winners.html

2006 Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards Winners

Best Female Artist - Tamara Podemski on "Tamara"

Best Female Traditional Cultural Roots Album - "Fusion of Two Worlds" on M'Girl

Best male Artist - Jared Sowan on "Eclectically Yours" 

Best Songwriter - Tamara Podemski & Karen Kosowski  "So Damn Beautiful", "She Knows Better" "Tamara"

Best Rock Album - "NO LIMITS" on Highway 373 

Best Song Single - "100 Years", Andrea Menard on "Simple Steps"

Best Producer/ Engineer - Peter Bacsalmasi  "The Journey" by Donna Kay 

Best Group or Duo - Eagle & Hawk on "Life is..." 

Best Folk Album - "Simple Steps"  Andrea Menard 

Best Album Design - "Sacred Healing" by David R. Maracle

Best Fiddle Album - "Skiffle Fiddle" Cliff Maytwayashing 

Best Blues Album - "Eclectically Yours" Jared Sowan 

Best Pow Wow Album Contemporary - "Nikamo-Sing!" Northern Cree Singers 

Best Music Video - "I Will Return" by Susan Agulkark  Margaret Malandruccolo & Blink Pictures Inc.

Best Rap or Hip Hop Album - "Now or Never" REDDNATION

Best Country Album - "Bad Boys & Angels" Mike Gouchie 

Best Pow Wow Album Traditional - "Enter the Circle" Red Bull

Best Hand Drum - "Slide and Sway" Northern Cree Singers & Friends

Best Album of the Year - "Simple Steps" Andrea Menard