Media.Knet.Ca

An impressive online multi-media presentation called "The Four Directions Teachings", found at http://www.fourdirectionsteachings.com, provides a rich resource for everyone to learn more about Aboriginal people, their understanding of their place on this earth and their relationship to all things.

From the Introduction ...

Four Directions Teachings celebrates Indigenous oral traditions by honoring the process of listening with intent as each elder or traditional teacher shares a teaching from their perspective on the richness and value of cultural traditions from their nation.

In honor of the timelessness of Indigenous oral traditions, audio narration is provided throughout the site, complimented by beautifully animated visuals. In addition, the site provides free curriculum packages for grades 1 to 12 to further explore the vast richness of knowledge and cultural philosophy that is introduced within each teaching. The curriculum is provided in downloadable PDF and can also be read online through the Teacher’s Resources link.

The elders and traditional teachers who have shared a teaching on this site were approached through a National Advisory Committee of Indigenous people concerned with the protection and promotion of Indigenous knowledge. This committee was formed directly for the purposes of this website to ensure a community based approach that was respectful and accountable.

Four DirectionsTeachings.com was made possible through the Canadian Culture Online Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Be sure to check out http://www.fourdirectionsteachings.com/resources.html

The Toronto Star's Atkinson series provides another essay by Marie Wadden on an important issue facing our society where alcohol consumption (like smoking cirgarettes) seems to be an honoured right for young people (or so the corporations tell us in their ads) ... Fetal Alcohol Sprectrum Disorder or FASD.

From http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1163976614517&call_pageid=1096063291893&col=1096063291594

Troubled before they were born - Mothers' alcohol abuse leaves scars

Aboriginal kids face consequences - Nov. 20, 2006 - MARIE WADDEN - ATKINSON FELLOW

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 non-Aboriginal 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-month-old-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.

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`Aline and I have suffered when our son has suffered'

Jean Chrétien, former prime minister

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That's when 40 Labrador Innu children were evacuated to St. John's, Nfld., for routinely inhaling gas fumes from plastic bags. Rosales was asked to examine them. They were closely supervised for four months in 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.

"He was the first one brave enough to call me Dr. Miyagi to my face," Rosales remembers with a smile. "You know, whatever came to his mind, he'd say. And if he thought of doing something, he went 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 had 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 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. My recommendation was that all these children need ongoing lifelong resources and support. 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."

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`My recommendation was that all these children need ongoing lifelong resources and support'

Dr. Ted Rosales, a pediatric geneticist

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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 raise the standard of living in Aboriginal communities and launch a public health campaign promoting alcohol abstinence on the scale of tobacco cessation programs in the south.

"From a public health point of view, that's the only program I know that will work," Rosales says. "Unless things are changed now, I think their very existence as a culture, as a very unique group of individuals, is really at stake."

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 condition is not prevented. "If alcohol use during pregnancy is not stopped, the next generation will not have the brain capacity to appreciate their own culture as something they should be proud of," he says.

What's needed for those with FASD now, Rosales says, are individuals who can act as "second brains," helping loved ones and friends make better decisions.

In Sheshatshiu, an Innu nurse named Mary Pia Benuen does that for children affected 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.

At last week's Chiefs of Ontario assembly, resolutions supporting the development and delivery of telehealth services and the necessary broadband connections to support telehealth applications were passed. These resolutions moved forward by two chiefs from Keewaytinook Okimakanak and supported by the chiefs in assembly.

The two resolutions are:

• CHIEFS OF ONTARIO SUPPORT FOR TELEHEALTH SERVICES
  • MOVED BY: Chief Royal Meekis, Deer Lake First Nation
  • SECONDED BY: Chief Tom Bressette, Kettle & Stoney Point First Nation
     
• CHIEFS OF ONTARIO SUPPORT FOR THE KUHKENAH NETWORK PARTNERSHIP WITH SMART SYSTEMS FOR HEALTH AGENCY
  • MOVED BY: Chief Joe Meekis, Keewaywin First Nation
  • SECONDED BY: Chief Arthur Moore, Constance Lake First Nation

Click here for copies of these two resolutions (PDF document) as they were presented to the chiefs for their consideration.

From http://66.244.236.251/article_9668.php

Ontario delaying mining legal battle: First Nation
By Angela Pacienza, The Canadian Press - Nov 18, 2006
 
TORONTO — Ontario’s refusal to sign off on an agreement that would kick-start negotiations between aboriginals and a mining company is hampering any resolution of the contentious dispute, a native spokesman says.

The Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation claims the provincial government is refusing to sign a basic consultation agreement would allow them to begin court-ordered talks with Toronto-based Platinex Inc.

The junior exploration company wants to drill in the Big Trout Lake area, some 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. While the proposed site is not on reserve land, it is within the aboriginal band’s traditional territory.

Northern Development and Mines Minister Rick Bartolucci’s signature would prove the government is sincere about wanting to resolve whether Platinex can drill on the remote, fly-in-only property, said band spokesman John Cutfeet.

“It is absolutely essential to demonstrate good faith and that they are actually trying to meet the standards by the decision of the judge,” he said.

While some preliminary talks have been held, the aboriginal band says meaningful negotiation can’t begin until the agreement is signed.

Bartolucci maintains that the document is still being written and that’s why he won’t sign.

“I am ensuring that our ministry is involving themselves in a very proactive way with ensuring that the protocol is in place,” said Bartolucci.

He added that the ministry has offered up a “considerable amount of money to help with those consultations.”

The case could have wider implications for exploration in the province’s mineral-rich north because the band is also challenging the Ontario Mining Act on constitutional grounds.

The band wants the act to mandate consultation with aboriginal people even before explorers go in search of gold, diamond and nickel deposits so that the mostly impoverished communities can reap some economic benefit from mining.

The dispute escalated earlier this year when protesters blocked an access road and landing strip, arguing the government had no right to grant Platinex a mining permit for their land.

Platinex filed a $10-billion suit and asked for a court order to remove the protesters. The band filed a countersuit and successfully obtained an temporary injunction prohibiting exploration on the land.

Superior Court Justice Patrick Smith gave the band, company and province five months to talk.

They’re all due back in court on Jan. 5.

Given the looming deadline, the government’s explanation that the agreement isn’t ready amounts to nothing more than a stalling tactic, said Cutfeet.

He said other provincial governments have had no qualms about signing similar documents as part of the normal protocol before beginning talks.

He pointed to the Blueberry River First Nations in British Columbia who inked a consultation agreement regarding the oil and gas sector last year.

NDP Leader Howard Hampton said the government needs to start working with First Nations people or all sides will lose out on potentially billions of dollars worth of mineral deposits on native property.

“The far north probably has some of the best mineral resources and mineral reserves in the world,” said Hampton, who represents the Northwestern Ontario riding of Kenora-Rainy River.

“But the First Nations correctly have said they are not prepared to allow any kind of mining development activity to happen unless and until there are real honest and actual consultation with the Ontario government.”

++++++++++

From http://www.guelphmercury.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=mercury/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1163852288126&call_pageid=1050067726078&col=1050421501457

Aboriginals say Ontario stalling on mining legal battle
 
TORONTO (Nov 18, 2006)

Ontario's refusal to sign off on an agreement that would kick-start negotiations between aboriginals and a mining company is hampering any resolution of the contentious dispute, a native spokesperson says.

The Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation claims the provincial government is refusing to sign a basic consultation agreement would allow them to begin court-ordered talks with Toronto-based Platinex Inc.

The junior exploration company wants to drill in the Big Trout Lake area, some 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. The proposed site is within the aboriginal band's traditional territory.

The following online document from 2003 describes a reality faced by all not-for-profit groups across Canada. Understanding these major shifts by government programs and their agents is important for any new or existing organization along with First Nation communities.

Funding Matters: The Impact of Canada's New Funding Regime on Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations

http://www.vsi-isbc.ca/eng/funding/fundingmatters

From the Executive Summary: A Warning and an Opportunity

The capacity of the nonprofit and voluntary sector to fulfill its important role in Canadian society is being undermined and eroded by new funding strategies that are intended to increase accountability, self-sufficiency and competition.

This study describes the emergence of a new funding regime for the nonprofit and voluntary sector and warns of serious challenges for the sustainability of a cross-section of organizations. Instability of this sector threatens the future of a diverse range of social, health, cultural, recreational, environmental, and other not-for-profit community services for millions of Canadians. ...

The study found that on the funding side:

• Funders are adopting an increasingly targeted approach to funding.
   
• There has been a marked shift away from a core funding model, which funds organizations to pursue their mission. The new model is project-based and is characterized by contracts that give funders increased control over what the organization does and how it does it.
   
• Funders are reluctant to fund administrative costs that cannot be directly tied to a project or program.
   
• Funding is being provided for shorter periods of time, and is increasingly unpredictable.
   
• Reporting requirements have increased.

Funders are increasingly requiring organizations to make joint submissions with other project partners and to demonstrate that they have secured funding from other sources – either financial or in-kind contributions – before extending their support.
No one disputes the right of private donors to allocate their money as they see fit, whether it involves individual or corporate giving. This study describes concerns in some quarters about the trend among private corporations to replace donations with sponsorships. But the major, overriding concern is about the new funding strategies of governments, which are the largest funders of the nonprofit and voluntary sector in Canada.

To be clear, the participants in this study were generally supportive of the stated motives of funders to increase accountability, support partnerships, promote diversification of funding sources, and foster efficiency and innovation within the sector. However, the study found a major disconnect between the stated intent of funding reforms and the consequences of these changes for nonprofit and voluntary sector organizations across the country.

Recognizing that organizations are coping with current realities in a variety of ways and with differing levels of success, the study has identified some worrisome trends:

• Volatility – As organizations struggle to diversify their funding sources, they can experience huge swings in revenue. This volatility undermines an organization’s stability and its capacity to provide consistent, quality programs or services, to plan ahead, and to retain experienced staff.
    
• A tendency to “mission drift” – As organizations scramble to qualify for narrowly prescribed program funding or to win government contracts, some are being pulled away from their primary mission, which is their long-term purpose and the source of their credibility within the community.
    
• Loss of infrastructure – With the move to project-based funding and the tightening of restrictions on administrative costs that will be covered by funders, some organizations are losing their basic infrastructure. They are becoming a series of projects connected to a hollow foundation.
   
• Reporting overload – Many smaller organizations are losing heart as they face yet another round of short-term contracts, short-term hiring and letting-go of program staff, all the while pursued for multiple reports from multiple funders with multiple forms and requirements.
   
• House of cards – Because funders often now require financial or in-kind contributions from other sources, the loss of one contract or the end of one partnership agreement can bring down the whole interlocking structure. A service that is thriving one year can collapse the next. Organizations despair of arrangements in which funders will not commit until other funding partners are on-side, the last one standing being the preferred position.
   
• Advocacy chill – When organizations must cobble together different projects and partners in order to survive, being seen as an outspoken advocate on behalf of one’s client group can be regarded as too risky, despite the justice of the cause. Some organizations may not want to have their name in the media when their next funding submission comes up for approval. In effect, advocacy organizations have been effectively marginalized over the past 10 years.
   
• Human resource fatigue – People, both paid and volunteer, are stretching themselves to the limit to meet the new challenges and yet remain faithful to their mission and to the citizens and communities to whom they feel responsible. But how long can this go on?

All successful community programs and services require local input and support during all stages of development and operation. Seems simple enough. But the newspaper article below shows that some things never change when it comes to control of the resources (millions of dollars) to address issues, especially when it comes to Aboriginal health initiatives. The Health Canada controlled Labrador Innu Comprehensive Healing Strategy and the FNIB Pandemic Planning initiative are two examples presented below.

From http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1163803813494&call_pageid=968332188774

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, Marie Wadden reports

Nov. 18, 2006. 06:38 AM
MARIE WADDEN - ATKINSON FELLOW

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 people to be healed.

At stake are the youth, who are dying at an alarming rate from suicide and addiction, and babies like Thomas, whose future depends on stopping the cycle of tragedy in the communities.

Thomas's 20-year-old father, diagnosed five years ago with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, just got out of jail and is back to inhaling gasoline. Thomas's 19-year-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 10-year mandate. Two consultants' reports — completed in 2003 but whose contents were just recently made public — have been critical of its progress.

The reports — one by the Health Research Unit at Memorial University in St. John's, the other by IER Planning and the Aboriginal Research Institute of Ottawa — 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 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.

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.

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Little Thomas Rich's future was compromised 40 years ago.

"In the 1960s, the self-sufficient 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.

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`I see kids on the road sniffing gas, and I'm not allowed to counsel them'

Nympha Byrne, an Innu who works for Health Canada

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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 fume-induced 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 Indians 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 Indians in Alberta 35 years ago, specializing in addiction recovery.

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The Innu want the Labrador Health Secretariat disbanded so they can use its funding to administer the remaining years 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.

The news media is carrying all the meetings that Prime Minister Harper is having in the far east where he is addressing other countries' human rights violations. Back in Canada, Aboriginal people continue to be discriminated against by a system and nation that has gained so much at their expense. To see Canada arguing against the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights for Indigenous People is just another example of our shameful treatment of Aboriginal people.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1163803814049&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

Where tragedy falls off Canada's map - Along with poverty, addiction, despair, aboriginal communities battle myths

Nov. 18, 2006 - MARIE WADDEN - ATKINSON FELLOW

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 signposted 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 middle-class 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 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 fast-tracked for Newfoundland after Premier Danny Williams insisted on getting a fair share of offshore 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 three-bedroom 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.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 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 tax-free — 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.

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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, Man.
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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 self-government. 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 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 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 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 15-year-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-year-old 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-in-law'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 aboriginal communities. 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."

++++++++++

And the government officicals blame each other's government for the problems that continue to plague First Nation communities.

From http://www.wawatay.on.ca/index.php?module=pagesetter&func=viewpub&tid=5&pid=237

Tories respond to Valley's claims - 2006.11.09

In response to your November 7, 2006 story "MP blasts Tories over First Nations water," Liberal MP Roger Valley claims the federal government has failed "to provide safe drinking water."

This is simply not factual.

The community has a water treatment plant and water points in the community ensure that clean, drinkable water is available to all residents.

We acknowledge that the majority of homes have not been hooked up to the treatment plant. There are two main reasons for this:

1. The First Nation has limited power supply from a diesel generator, which cannot supply the electricity needed for pumping water to all the residences.
2. The issue is complicated by the presence of burial sites throughout the community, making it difficult to carry out the work necessary to hook up the houses.

Long before Mr. Valley called for "immediate action," Indian and Northern Affairs was working with the First Nation to develop a new hydro transmission line to the community from Red Lake.

Last month, October 19, 2006, the Ontario Regional Director General met with the Tribal Council and offered to co-ordinate all issues in the community, including proper sewage treatment and a new school, with the Department, the First Nation, the Tribal Council and the Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

Ontario region's current Five Year Capital Plan identifies $1 million for water and wastewater work in Pikangikum this fiscal year, $1.1 million for the next year, and a total of $9 million in future years.

The First Nation receives approximately $676,670 a year to support operations and maintenance of its water and wastewater treatment systems, as well as approximately $1.26 million a year in minor capital funding, some of which can be used for work on water and wastewater infrastructure.

The First Nation manages this funding, along with any user fees or other revenue, to safely operate and maintain its water and wastewater systems. We find it curious that Mr. Valley would allege inaction by Canada's New Government of nine months when his own riding, which includes the First Nation, was represented by a Liberal Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs between 1999 and 2003.

I trust this helps clear up the numerous inaccuracies contained in the statement by the MP for Kenora.

Bill Rodgers
Director of Communications
Office of the Hon. Jim Prentice
Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada

The Keewaytinook Okimakanak team hosted the first in a series of live video conferenced and online Business and Economic Development information sessions on Thursday, Nov 16. For more information about these sessions visit http://meeting.knet.ca and join the online discussions (found under Public Works -> Economic Development Workshops)

The first session, Proposal Writing Tips, included participants from Attawapiskat, Keewayin, North Spirit Lake, Thunder Bay and Balmertown. Click here to watch the archived session (uses windows media).

From http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2006/11/16/flanagan-pressclub.html

Selling reserve land could help solve poverty: professor - November 16, 2006 - CBC News

One of the only ways to address poverty on native reserves is to enhance property rights, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former senior campaign adviser said Wednesday night.

The system in place now is stopping aboriginal Canadians from improving their economies, said Tom Flanagan, a University of Calgary professor and co-editor of  Self Determination:The other path for Native Americans, a new book that takes a hard look at property rights on reserves.

The value of property on native reserves has gone up significantly, especially on the outskirts of cities like Calgary, he told a meeting held at the Ottawa press club. 

Yet people on reserves live in poverty and their homes are falling apart, added Flanagan, whose 2000 book, First Nations? Second Thoughts, called native reserves dysfunctional although he admits he's never been to one.

Under Canadian law, many people on reserves face restrictions when it comes to selling or leasing land but Flanagan believes some of those should be lifted.

Aboriginal people should have the right to sell some of their land to business developers, who would make better use of their property and create jobs for native people, he said.

"I don't think native people have much choice in the matter because they are maybe three per cent of the Canadian population," he added. "They are surrounded by western capitalism everywhere."

That comment angered Wayne Courchene, an adviser to the Assembly of First Nations. He said Flanagan's views are narrow-minded and don't take into consideration the traditional connection aboriginal people have to their land.

"I was outraged by the remark," he told CBC News. "I didn't think it reflected what a lot of Canadians feel."

Flanagan, whose work also questions why First Nations should live in a tax-free environment with free housing, stressed that he's not advising the government on aboriginal issues.

Three days of meetings and visits provided visitors from Industry Canada with a good overview about the importance of broadband connectivity for the people across northwestern Ontario. The visitors included:

• Carl Seibel, Telecom Officer with FedNor in Thunder Bay,
• Joe Poirier, First Nations SchoolNet Project Officer in Ottawa
• Dan Winters, Broadband Program Technical Advisor in Ottawa

The visit agenda included a whirlwind visit to Slate Falls and North Caribou Lake First Nation on Wednesday to meet with the folks at the band offices, health centres and schools in each of these First Nations. Both communities were gracious hosts, providing us with clear directions to further develop opportunities for their local development of infrastructure and bandwidth. Click here to check out some of the pictures from this trip.

A four minute video of this trip, called "Learning about Broadband Uses in Slate Falls and Weagamow First Nations" was produced by Cal Kenny, K-Net's Multimedia Producer. This video can be viewed at http://streaming.knet.ca/learning_about_broadband.wmv

Meetings and tours were also held with

• the Youth Workers who were attending their training workshop in Sioux Lookout
• the Atlantic Regional Management Organization to discuss the development and importance of the First Nation regional networks and their role in supporting the communities
• the Sioux Lookout local infrastructure of the Kuhkenah Network and all the staff members
• Pelican Falls First Nations High School
• Keewaytinook Internet High School
• Wahsa Distance Education Centre

Thanks to one and all who supported the KO team in helping to welcome our visits to this special part of northern Ontario!