Media.Knet.Ca

On January 15, 2008 Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Mr. Chuck Strahl visited the community of Pikangikum First Nation.

He was accompanied by the Grand Chief Stan Beardy and his associates.

He was greeted by the Chief,  Elders and members of the community and followed by luncheon at the local restaurant.

Water is a human right. Take action now!
Today is International Human Rights Day.

The Council of Canadians is launching an online campaign to pressure Prime Minister Stephen Harper to stand up for the right to water at the United Nations.

There is no denying that a global water crisis is underway.

Health Canada Press Release ...

Federal Government Announces Historic Health Care Agreement with Northern Ontario First Nations
August 30, 2007

MOOSONEE - The Honourable Tony Clement, Federal Minister of Health, announced today a new plan to resolve the duplication of health care services and health care gaps for First Nations in the Northern Ontario Weeneebayko region.

Traditionally, federal and provincial governments have both offered health care services to First Nations communities in this James Bay region, resulting in a duplication of health care delivery, health services gaps, and not providing all communities with the quality, timely health care they need and deserve.

The new agreement, which the Federal Government will be signing with the Province of Ontario and communities in the Weeneebayko area, is called the Weeneebayko Area Health Integration Framework Agreement.

"This agreement demonstrates once again our government's commitment to improving health care services for First Nations people,” said Minister Clement. "First Nations in the region will be able to take a greater role in managing health care services in their communities."

Once the agreement is underway, the Federal Government will be investing $12 million per year towards ensuring the new focused and collaborative objectives are achieved. By integrating federal and provincial health services under a community-controlled organization, local residents will see real and positive change in health care delivery focused on community needs.

The new agreement will allow parties to collaborate on a more effective way to deliver health care services, including:

• Agreeing to cost-share certain health care services to create greater economies of scale;
• Amalgamating the federal Weeneebayko General Hospital with the provincial James Bay General Hospital;
• Providing capital funding for new projects;
• Improving primary health services through effective integration with hospital services under the direction of a single provider.

As this agreement evolves over time it will address patient needs, demographics, performance standards and other factors concerning health care in order to provide residents in the Weeneebayko area with an efficient and effective health care system.

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Media Enquiries:
Erik Waddell
Office of the Honourable Tony Clement
Federal Minister of Health
(613) 957-0200

Public Enquiries:
(613) 957-2991
1-866 225-0709

AHF press release ...

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation’s Latest Study Looks at the Potential Health and Social Impacts of Indian Residential School Lump Sum Payments

August 20, 2007

OTTAWA – The Aboriginal Healing Foundation’s latest research study, released today, has been prepared in anticipation of the imminent arrival of the $1.9 billion Common Experience Payments, a central component of Canada’s Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement.

Lump Sum Compensation Payments Research Project: The Circle Rechecks Itself assesses the impact of past compensation payments to Aboriginal people. The research consisted of two phases, a first-phase literature review and a second-phase key informant survey. The second phase involved 117 field interviews conducted across western and northwestern Canada.

Between 1892 and 1969, the Indian Residential School System operated across Canada through a partnership of the Federal Government and various church entities. Under federal law, “Indian,” Métis, and Inuit children were institutionalized in hostels, industrial schools, and residential schools for the purposes of Christianization and assimilation.

According to Aboriginal Healing Foundation Executive Director, Mike DeGagné, “this document presents the experiences and concerns of Indian residential school survivors, families, and community members in their own words. The goals and recommendations are grounded in community efforts to support healing, health, safety, and security.”

Today, Aboriginal communities are beginning to heal themselves from the historical legacy of physical and sexual abuse in residential school institutions, as well as the broader policies of removal of children, cultural engineering, and forcible assimilation.

“It’s not our business to tell people how to spend their compensation payments,” Mr. DeGagné added. “We have published this research because responses to crises, challenges, and opportunities developed by and for Aboriginal people are desperately needed. This study supports those recipients who will seek out practical and emotional support, whether it is trauma counseling, crisis management, investment advice, or entrepreneurship.”

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation is a not-for-profit, Aboriginal managed national funding agency which encourages and supports community-based healing efforts addressing the intergenerational legacy of physical and sexual abuse in Canada’s Indian Residential School System.

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For more information: please contact Wayne Spear, Director of Communications: (613) 324-3278, (613) 237-4441 extension 237, or toll-free 1-888-725-8886.

AHF's Lump Sum Compensation Payments Study (Pdf)

This particular editorial, as well as the CBC story below, is very timely as we sadly report the untimely and probably preventable deaths of two more friends and residents of Health Canada's "Sioux Lookout Health Zone". Cameron Sainnawap of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug passed away earlier this week. Last night, Julie Kejick of Lac Seul First Nation also passed away. 

Editorial from Canadian Medical Association Journal ...
CMAJ • August 14, 2007; 177 (4). doi:10.1503/cmaj.070950.

Jordan's Principle, governments' paralysis
Noni MacDonald, MD MSc* and Amir Attaran, LLB PhD

Section Editor, Public Health, CMAJ* Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ont. For the Editorial-Writing Team (Paul C. Hébert, Matthew Stanbrook, Barbara Sibbald and Ken Flegel)

Children are vulnerable members of our society. They are voiceless in decision-making, subject to the judgments and actions of others. First Nations people are also vulnerable — victims of ill-will and broken promises and suffering from the worst social, economic and health conditions in Canada.

So imagine the unenviable situation to be a First Nations child, very sick and living on a reserve where there are minimal children's services.

"Jordan" was a child with a rare neuromuscular disorder born in 1999 on the Norway House Cree Nation reserve in northern Manitoba.1 His complex medical needs could not be managed there, so he was referred for treatment to Winnipeg. As his illness progressed, he became wheelchair-bound, ventilator dependent and unable to speak.

By 2001, Jordan's hospital caregivers decided to discharge him to specialized foster home care near to his home reserve. Both his physicians and family agreed that this decision was best for Jordan. Then, the bureaucrats ruined it. The federal and Manitoba governments could not agree on who was financially responsible for Jordan's care. Bickering erupted: over foster care, transportation to clinic — even over tiny items, like a showerhead. For over 2 years, warring bureaucrats left no stone unthrown.

This intergovernmental dispute only stopped when — you guessed it — Jordan died from his underlying disease in a Winnipeg hospital, far from his family and community. No one has been held accountable for blocking Jordan's care closer to home.

Canada is a party to the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty that states: "In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration."2

Jordan's interests fell a distant second; intergovernmental squabbling over the duty to pay came first. Canada contravened this treaty.

Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms forbids discrimination. Many of the services Jordan needed would be paid for without question for a white Manitoban, or off-reserve Aboriginal resident. It was Jordan's living on-reserve that caused the bureaucracy to choke. That is discrimination pure and simple.

Canada's constitution recognizes and affirms Aboriginal and treaty rights. The Supreme Court in 1984 declared "the Government has the responsibility to act in a fiduciary capacity with respect to aboriginal peoples," in a relationship that "is trust-like, rather than adversarial." One wonders how this obligation was met by the bureaucrats who allowed Jordan to live and then die in the Winnipeg hospital far from his loved ones, while the adversarial turf war raged.

Other First Nations children with complex medical needs are frequently caught in this bureaucratic nightmare. Last March, the families of 37 profoundly disabled Norway House Cree Nation children were told that funds for further health professional and support services in their community would cease.3 Families wanting health care for their children were forced to send them away — likely forever.

Those who defend the status quo say that Canada's geography makes health care delivery for complex chronic illness difficult and costly. The same critics usually omit to mention that Canada's geography — its petroleum, timber, minerals and waterways, much of it within First Nations' traditional territory — also makes it wealthy. Geography is no excuse for the pusillanimous, inequitable distribution of wealth, such that advanced care exists only in the south and First Nations children, parents and communities endure psychological and cultural stress to access it. The point isn't what portion of the cost the federal, territorial and provincial governments each pay but, rather, that the wrangling stop so that the right care, at the right place, at the right times can be provided for people on First Nations' reserves.

Today the CMAJ endorses what is called "Jordan's Principle" (www.fncfcs.com/more/jordansPrinciple.php). Consistent with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we endorse putting the medical needs of First Nations' children first. We also make this recommendation: that if the provincial, territorial and federal governments ignore Jordan's Principle and entangle themselves in financial or jurisdictional battles first, then governments deserve to be sued, in the most winnable test case that First Nations' advocates can manage. Let the courts decide, if the bureaucrats and politicians continue to refuse to find a timely resolution.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements: We acknowledge the contributions to this editorial of Cindy Blackstock MM, Executive Director, First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, Ottawa; Bradford W. Morse LLM, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa; and Jeff Reading PhD PHS, Scientific Director, CIHR Institute for Aboriginal Peoples' Health, University of Victoria, Victoria.

REFERENCES

• Lavallee TL. Honouring Jordan: Putting First Nations children first and funding fights second. J Paediatr Child Health 2005;10:527-9.
• United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Available: www.ohchr.org/english/law/pdf/crc.pdf (accessed 2007 Jul 9).
• Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. Disabled children lose services because governments won't pay. Available: www.manitobachiefs.com/press/norway-house.pdf (accessed 2007 June 18).

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From CBC News online ...

Sue for fair medical treatment, CMA editorial tells First Nations
August 16, 2007

First Nation governments should sue to receive fair medical treatment, said an editorial published Tuesday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

"The bleeding sore on Canada and its human rights record is how very little consideration First Nations get for basic needs," said editorial co-author and University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran.

In the editorial titled "Jordon's Principle, governments' paralysis," Attan and co-writer Dr. Noni MacDonald urged the federal, provincial and territorial governments to pay medical treatment bills for First Nations children, then argue over who foots the tab once treatment is given.

This concept is called "Jordan's Principle" after a Manitoba child who had a rare neuromuscular disorder and died in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of four while the federal and Manitoban governments argued over who would pay his medical bills.

Attaran said it's a shame that governments argue over who should pay for complex medical expenses while aboriginal children die and their families suffer.

He cited the case of McKenzie Olsen, a 12-year-old boy from the Nacho Nyak Dun First Nation in Mayo, Yukon.

Olsen has Hurler-Scheie Syndrome, a disease causing toxins to build up in cells, leading to progressive damage to bones, joints, the heart and respiratory and central nervous systems. His treatments cost up to $17,000 a week, and the province of Alberta, where Olsen now lives, will only pay 40 per cent of the costs, claiming that his medical bills are a federal responsibility.

Attaran said that First Nation families like the Olsens need to take the issue to court in order to prevent the deaths of aboriginal children from a lack of medical treatment while governments squabble over the bills. 

"[MacKenzie] and his family are hostages to the indifference and inefficiencies of bureaucratic processes, and I expect they're only going to get a final decision on McKenzie's treatment if they go all the way to a trial and judgment," he said.

If the governments are unsure of their responsibility, Attaran said, they merely need to look at the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees equal treatment for all Canadians, and let common sense prevail.

In an interview with CBC Radio he issued a warning to government officials about treating First Nation children differently.

Attaran said, "Anyone listening to the broadcast who works for the territorial government, the provincial one, the federal one, mark these words well, it's the advice of the leading medical journal in Canada that you'll be sued if you do not provide the treatment that First Nation children require."

From Thunder Bay Chroncile Journal ...

Aboriginal physician travels world to study shamans, healers for new TV series
By LISA ARROWSMITH - August 14, 2007

EDMONTON (CP) - Sick with the flu, Dr. Daniele Behn Smith felt a ripple of fear as she stood on the outskirts of a tribal trance dance in Namibia and waited for a whirling, zombie-like medicine man to touch her chest.

The aboriginal doctor, 27 years old when she joined the healing ceremony of the African San people in September 2006, was a long way from the northeastern British Columbia community of Fort Nelson where she was born.

That’s where she’d started her eight-month journey to document the world’s indigenous healers, shamans and medicine people. The project explored how their knowledge could relate to modern medicine for a new television series called Medicine Woman, to be broadcast this fall in Canada on Vision TV.

The previous day, Behn Smith had attended a ceremony where the medicine man had tried to heal a sick baby. He went into what she thought was a frightening trance as members of the tiny community clapped and chanted to help him commune with the spirit world.

Battling stomach cramps and diarrhea, Behn Smith had been ducking out every few minutes to relieve herself as the camera crew filmed the latest ceremony. Now the healer was going around the circle, from person to person, and Behn Smith grew afraid as her turn approached.

"He came up to me and did his singing and dancing around me and put his hand on my chest," she said in an interview from her home in Dawson City, Yukon, where she now has a family practice.

"From that moment forward, my stomach was fine. Everything was fine. My body was completely healed."

It was just one of several life-changing experiences for Behn Smith, a member of the Eh-Cho Dene, as she travelled to 10 countries and several continents - from the fringe of the Arctic Circle to the jungles of Asia and the grasslands of Africa - to learn about traditional healing.

Filming began last August in Behn Smith’s hometown of Fort Nelson, B.C., and wrapped up in February in Saskatchewan.

The doctor, who grew up in Winnipeg, saw many things. The power of herbs from Celtic herbalist and Druid arch-priestess Gina McGarry in Ireland. The healing energy of Ruben Orellana Neira, a Peruvian archeologist, who discovered new digs at Machu Picchu, and established the Kamaquen Healing Center in Peru’s Urubamba Valley.

But the same thread ran through every mystical or healing experience.

"I knew that there was this fundamental connection and understanding among indigenous people about what true health is, and that there is this connection with an energy greater than ourselves that needs to be acknowledged," Behn Smith said.

There were also the not-so-mystical experiences such as going head-to-head with a five-centimetre-long cockroach that invaded her hotel bathroom in Sri Lanka.

She didn’t feel very spiritual as she tried to batter the giant bug with a pink slipper, finally summoning the courage to crunch it with a heavy hiking boot.

"I had to summon all of my strength to go back in and hit this cockroach over the head, which I did, and killed it. That took all my energy so I couldn’t even bring myself to scoop it up."

She didn’t shower for five days, fearing retribution by giant members of the bug’s cockroach clan.

"They fly!" she exclaimed. "If I’d known that, I would have slept in our van."

Her healing experiences have changed her in subtle ways that her patients in Dawson City may not detect, Behn Smith said.

"I don’t go in trying to heal people or affect change. I go in praying to the Creator that the Creator will use me that day to try and honour someone else’s experience."

But filming the series has also forced her to take a more holistic approach. She now says she recognizes that some health problems - and the state of the planet - may be related to a lack of spiritual and social well-being or a failure to recognize that all living things are connected.

Shirley Cheechoo, an award-winning Ontario-based Cree director, actor and playwright, was recruited to direct the series at a pitch session in Cannes a couple of years ago. Australian co-producer Norm Wilkinson of Visionquest Entertainment had been kicking around the idea for a few years and approached her.

Cheechoo well remembers meeting the Peruvian healer.

"He came up to me and said, ’You better go home and take care of your liver.’ I came home ... and discovered that I had problems with my liver," said Cheechoo in an interview from Manitoulin Island, Ont.

"It struck me, how did he know that just by looking at me?"

Gerry Sperling, executive producer for Regina-based 4 Square Productions, raised the $1.5-million cost of the Australian co-production and set off on a quest to narrow the field of 20 potential aboriginal show hosts.

"They had to be female, beautiful, young and they had to be an M.D.," Sperling said. "I think the aboriginal community should be proud that they had so many aboriginal female doctors out there."

With U.S. and international distribution deals either inked or in the works, Sperling said the show should have universal appeal. "People are looking for alternative ways to treat themselves, and ancient ways to treat themselves, and this is what happens in the series."

The series will also be broadcast on APTN and SCN in Canada.

From National Post ...

Probe set for plan to give braces to aboriginal children - Experts question whether it is a health priority
Tom Blackwell, National Post- August 09, 2007

Health Canada has commissioned a study of its multi-million-dollar orthodontics program for Aboriginal children, as some experts question whether installing braces should be a government priority in a population afflicted by a litany of other health and dental problems.

More than 20,000 First Nations children have been approved for non-cosmetic orthodontic treatments in the past 10 years under a program that cost $5-million in 2006-07. The federal department says it is trying to find out whether the treatments, which can themselves encourage tooth decay, actually improve patients' overall oral health.

"What we want to know is are we doing more harm by keeping the braces on?" said Bonnie Tolstoy, director of benefit management for Health Canada's Aboriginal health program.
"For example ... after the braces come off, would it mean extraction of teeth due to decay and rot? Would it mean an increase in root canals?"

Independent experts say there is no question that braces can lead to "horrendous" cavity problems in some Aboriginal patients, who already are several times more likely than the general population to experience dental decay.

Public-health dentists have long debated whether the government should fund what could be considered an elective procedure when dental and gum disease is widespread, and often untreated, said Dr. Gerry Uswak, acting dean of dentistry at the University of Saskatchewan.

"If one was looking at this as public money and if one was looking at providing the best bang for the buck, personally I would like to see more money into prevention and treating the existing disease to get people out of pain and suffering."

For some Aboriginal people, who can have terrible tooth misalignments, orthodontics is an "absolutely" appropriate service for taxpayers to fund, said Dr. Doug Brothwell, head of community dentistry at the University of Manitoba.

The trouble is that many of the children who get braces do not regularly brush their teeth, and orthodontics only makes dental hygiene more difficult, he said. The result of giving them braces can be "horrendous failures," said Dr. Brothwell.

"Some are getting harmed through, I would say, poor case selection." 

As with many other areas of health, Canada's Aboriginal people suffer disproportionate teeth trouble. As many as half all First Nations preschoolers develop early childhood "carries": so many cavities they have to be put under a general anesthetic while all the bad teeth are fixed or extracted. That is about 10 times the rate in the general population, said Dr. Brothwell.

Likewise, Aboriginal people generally get three to five times as many cavities as the overall population.

Poor diet in communities that have shifted in recent decades from traditional "country" foods to more processed and packaged fare is one factor, dentists say. In places where poverty, poor housing and deficient water supplies are more pressing challenges, teeth cleaning can also be overlooked, they say. And, despite federal help, many Aboriginal people have little access to professional dental care.

Dental care of First Nations members is provided under the government's non-insured health benefits program, which also covers their medical costs.

Orthodontics services are provided for young people who have facial "anomalies" such as cleft palates and to counter severe functional defects, said Bonnie Tolstoy, director of benefit management for the program. Braces are not applied for purely aesthetic reasons, she said.

Still, the department has no clear idea of the overall result of the service, which is why it has commissioned Kathy Russell, an orthodontist and professor at the Dalhousie University school of dentistry, to study the question.

Dr. Uswak said one reason that aboriginal people end up needing braces in the first place is because they had numerous cavity-ridden teeth removed earlier in life. He advocates putting more resources into prevention - teaching people about dental hygiene, providing more professional dental care and flouridating drinking water - before the problems become serious.

From the Toronto Star ...

Balancing the wheel of life
Christine Graef - Jul 22, 2007
 
In seeking good health, be mindful of the lessons of the moose, experience of native people suggests

OTTAWA – When loss of habitat resulted in a decline in the moose population in the Opasquayak Cree Nation in Manitoba, hunters were unable to provide for their families. They went on welfare and began drinking. The women no longer had the work of preparing meat or hides. Sons no longer had pride in going out with the men. Rates of abuse, crime and diabetes went up.

The government poured money into diabetes prevention programs – toward monitoring symptoms and glucose in the blood. The rates of diabetes and of crime continued to rise.

"But as we watched the moose population go up after a moose management program was instituted in 1975, we saw the diabetes and abuse go down," said Henry Lickers, a Seneca Indian, Turtle Clan, and director of the Department of Environment for the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. "There's now about 1,250 moose. Men are out on the land. Sons and daughters have duties. Even the worst hunter in the community can bring home a moose."

Biologists had measured the moose population. Health Canada had measured the diabetes. But no one had thought of the two as interlinking components of the community's health. When the Mohawk department of environment partnered with the University of Ottawa's Institute of Environment and several First Nation communities to take a new look at the problems, the result was a community health indicator study, launched in 2000.

"When we went to the elders, we were told that `we do not need non-natives to study us and tell us we're not healthy. We know that,' " said Lickers. "They asked, 'who among you studies life?' "

Western culture tells people what is wrong with them by measuring descriptors such as disease, suicide and death, but not causes. It brings no hope, Lickers said.

The Circle of Health Indicator on this page is divided vertically. The right half of the wheel represents the spiritual side. The left side represents the corporal/physical world.

The circle is then divided in half horizontally. The upper half represents the intellectual aspect of the community. The lower half represents the visceral aspects.

In the centre is "Health." The segments around the circle are divided into eight opposite life indexes that balance each other: Environment/Morale; Economics/Values; Religion/Spirituality; Politics/Responsibility.

For the Cree Nation, Economy represented the number of moose and Value represented the number of successful hunters. Today, all because the moose are present, the community today has its own school, water treatment plants and a hotel. Energy once spent on bureaucratic issues has shifted toward youth programs.

"When we asked communities what we could measure in their community to indicate health, not one ever said death or illness," said Lickers.

A Davis Inlet community said a well-lit recreational centre was a component for their health. Environment, the amount of bright sunlight, was balanced with Morale, the community gatherings of picnics.

IN THE MIAWPUKEK First Nation in Newfoundland, playing drums equalled spirituality and having drums equalled religion.

"So they counted the number of drums and found there were more than 100, but no one was playing them," said Lickers. "The link between spiritual and religion was broken."

The community began singing and invited others to join them. They were again working together and motivated.

"The indictor has to give hope," said Lickers. "It has to give something that the people can do."

Lickers and George Haas, a research associate at the Institute for Environmental Research, began working on the health indicator study because of the impact of pollution in Akwesasne.

Akwesasne spans the St. Lawrence River where Quebec, Ontario and New York State meet. In 1957 the St. Lawrence Seaway was completed. On its shores, the Reynolds Metals Company emitted thousands of pounds of fluoride that settled on the lands, crops, animals, water and people in surrounding communities. Tons of PCBs were dumped into the river.

In the 1970s, people of Cornwall Island began to study the effects. But in 1985, health studies done with Health Canada and others concluded there was no link between the pollution in the river and the community's declining health.

"But diabetes was found in 75 per cent of adults," said Lickers. "The people had stopped eating fish, a high-protein diet."

As the Mohawk department of environment studied the river, they watched the impact on the people. Because of the warnings about toxic fish, fishermen were laying down their nets and turning toward new income found in border smuggling.

By 1990 there were also five casinos, causing splits in the community as some supported the gaming and others fought against it. In the summer of 1990, an army was sent in to quell a violent outbreak.

The governments were doing the same thing over and over again expecting to get a different result, Lickers said. Haas and Lickers sat down and asked how could they break the insanity.

"In the past, a doctor was the single extender of health into a community," said Lickers. "Then public health came in and doctors worked with doctors. Then there was a need for a team surrounding a doctor, such as nurses and midwives. Why do you believe health is from one doctor? It takes sociologists, psychologists, environmentalists, all the fields working together with communities to have health."

A community knows what is important to it, said Haas.

"Native communities were being told that diet and exercise would fix everything," said Haas. "That's offensive. It fixed nothing."

Haas said that when they asked the community about its health, the people said that pollution, high population density and men working isolated outside of their communities were major stressors.

"We structured a research model that was designed by the community and found exactly what they said – the high pollution, population density and working outside the community were all factors where we found diabetes," said Haas. "The way they look at it is different from the western components of diabetes."

The way many aboriginal people look at the world is as circles within circles.

"In the smallest circle that we can look at as an example is a sub-cell," said Lickers. "Then at an individual. Then a family or group. Then community. Then nation. Then nation within a Confederacy. Then in the spiritual realm around us. So when we say diabetes, we see it as a whole. We don't just treat the individual. We treat the family too, as, for example, encouraging gardening. Family is in community, so we look at that too."

IN THE EVENTS that arose in Akwesasne after the river was polluted, the sub-cellular level was the fish. Then the individuals, the fishermen, took the consequences.

"Then the family lost that income and had to look for another income," said Lickers.

"Then community respect of trade between fishermen and farmers was lost and politics changed. Then the nation approaches the issue.

"The Confederacy is now impacted. Canada and United States call in the police, call in the army and spend billions of dollars since 1990."

The cause of the uprising and the diabetes at Akwesasne was not economics, he said.

The cause was PCBs in the river.

"Between 1990 and the present, Canada has spent about $2.5 billion on policing Akwesasne," said Lickers.

"A fraction of that money could instead have cleaned the river and sustained community health."

Press release from Ontario government ...

Nutrition Information Phone Line Connects Ontarians To Registered Dietitians

TORONTO, July 18 /CNW/ - The McGuinty government is continuing to improve the health of all Ontarians by launching the free EatRight Ontario telephone information service that provides healthy eating and nutrition advice.

"Credible information on nutrition and healthy eating is key to good health. That's why we've created the EatRight Ontario telephone service - to provide Ontarians with a new free resource that connects them directly with qualified individuals who can discuss healthy food choices and explain diet-related health risk factors," said Health Promotion Minister Jim Watson.

The toll-free EatRight Ontario telephone service enables individuals to ask Registered Dietitians nutrition questions by calling 1-877-510-510-2 or visiting www.ontario.ca/eatright.

The EatRight Ontario team of Registered Dietitians is available by phone Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. The service is available in over 120 languages including Mandarin, Korean; Polish; German; Spanish, Ukrainian; Punjabi; Hungarian; Portuguese; Italian; Arabic.

The call centre was developed in partnership with the Dietitians of Canada, to help Ontario families become better informed about healthy food choices, especially in rural areas where Registered Dietitians are not easily accessible.

"Dietitians of Canada is pleased to have a key role in making this service a reality," said Helen Haresign, VP Development for Dietitians of Canada. "We know that the public is interested in nutrition and trusts the nutrition advice from Registered Dietitians. EatRight Ontario gives Ontarians better access to an authoritative information source that can help guide their daily food choices."

The www.ontario.ca/eatright website offers articles on nutrition, including healthy weights, family and seniors' nutrition and disease prevention, tips on packing healthy lunches and food labeling, and links to valuable resources within Ontario's health network.

July 5, 2007

Chiefs of Ontario Community Support Services is pleased to announce a Northern First Nations Training session on Palliative Care

July 24 – 26, 2007 at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.

Objectives of the program:

1. To familiarize the learner with traditional healing approaches to spirituality and end of life care
2. To expand knowledge about the dying process, pain and symptom management, psychosocial issues, ethical decision making at end of life
3. To understand and learn practical approaches to grief and bereavement care
4. To enhance communication skills for working with dying persons and their families and care providers
5. To provide a forum for community support services personnel from various First Nations communities in Ontario to learn together and share ideas.

For further information, please contact:

Donna Loft at (613) 396-1140 lofi@kos.net. OR
Carol Antone at 1-877-517-6527 health@coo.org