Fresh momentum for the National Native Addictions Partnership Foundation
Randy Dakota threw life to the wind
Public urged to remember plight of missing, murdered Aboriginal women
End the silence – stop the violence
Alberta’s on-reserve women’s emergency shelters celebrate
Even “light” drinking during pregnancy puts baby at risk
Aboriginal families in Ontario caught in red tape – still stuck in mouldy, flood prone homes
Type 2 DiabetesFresh momentum for the National Native Addictions Partnership Foundation
Under the direction of its Board of Directors and its interim Executive Director, Carol Hopkins, the National Native Addictions Partnership Foundation is looking ahead to a dynamic, promising future as the leading National Aboriginal organization working in the field of addictions.
The National Native Addictions Partnership Foundation has been in operation since August 2000, and as its five years strategic plan, began in 2002, is reaching its last year of implementation, the Foundation has decided to pursue a new operational direction that will consolidate its leadership role and expertise in the addictions field.
This impetus for renewal and growth has been further nurtured by the strengthening of NNAPF capacity in Research and Policy Analysis through the opening of two positions in these areas at the Foundation’s Bilingual Office in Ottawa.
There is a demonstrated need for the organization to provide a national perspective on a broad range of First Nations and Inuit addictions policy, research and program-specific issues, and to provide leadership with respect to First Nations and Inuit addictions knowledge development/ transfer, in order to participate in current priority exercises (e.g. addiction evidence base, the National Alcohol Strategy, the National Treatment Strategy Working Group) and better link the existing regional networks across Canada to achieve improved health outcomes.
To respond to this need, NNAPF will fulfill the following core strategic functions:
- Networking: Forge and maintain a national network, acting as a conduit linking NNADAP workers, treatment centre directors, FNIHB regional consultants, and others, and build lasting relationships with other expert organizations to enhance the knowledge-base of First Nations and Inuit addictions.
- Communications and Information Exchange: Contribute to and facilitate the exchange of information, including best practices and emerging issues, serving as a forum for discussions among NNADAP workers, treatment centre directors, FNIHB regional consultants, and other regional staff who are involved in addictions such as nurses and other addictions experts.
- Policy and Research: Provide policy advice to government and other groups regarding addictions based on evidence and proven practices; contribute to the body of First Nations and Inuit addictions research by setting and influencing research priorities with academic and other groups.
- Advocacy on Emerging Issues and Mitigating Strategies: Provide Health Canada with issue-specific advice on behalf of First Nations and Inuit, identifying emerging issues and proposing mitigating strategies; Raise awareness among mainstream expert groups and Canadians about the nature and extent of substance abuse within Canada’s First Nations and Inuit communities.
Beside the tasks integrated into these core functions, NNAPF will continue to consolidate its structure and maintain its philosophy as a community-based, community-oriented national organisation, while developing its international work in South America as part of the circle of Indigenous organisations and communities interested in strengthening their voice and influence through sharing their challenges and solutions in the field of addictions.
Randy Dakota threw life to the wind
By Malcolm McColl
Randy Dakota, 47, has experienced the highs and the lows of life and come a long way to find the balance between the two. The highs came two ways, as a highly paid builder of infrastructure and professional pipefitter, and musician playing in front of thousands of devoted fans. The lows found Randy living in streets (through two winters) in Edmonton, AB, where his idea of home was found under a bridge or beneath a parking garage, where a feast became snared rabbit obtained in the river valley. “It is delicious!” he says. He made snares from broken guitar strings. He cooked the rabbit over a fire and used McDonald’s Restaurant condiments to spice up the meal.
Randy Dakota has two driving passions, first the music, and then the art came as therapy, and he is great at them both. This painting is called “The Maze of Addiction”.
Until landing in this peculiar predicament, Randy was living a Canadian’s dream in Yellowknife, NT, during the 1990s, earning large wages pipefitting for mining operations. On a given two-week break from the working life Randy would depart the north to join top-flight blues and country musicians to play lead or bass guitar and sing many of his own songs (for he is an accomplished songwriter).
The life he made for himself in the north was percolating, and in it he was able to do most of what he wanted, including drugs and alcohol.
The slide onto an urban trap line began after his common-law wife in Yellowknife announced she was pregnant and hit him hard by announcing the child belonged to somebody else. This announcement caused him to depart job, city, and territory to live on the road.
He went south to find a band and live in a suitcase in hotels where he played across Canada. As time went by addiction grew into a ticking time bomb that threatened to blow away everything. And blow it did on New Year’s Eve in the year 2000 when a crisis occurred. The band played for the promise of a large New Year’s Eve pay cheque, and after the event, members of the band awoke to find cheques that were worthless, while the leader of the band stole the entire hotelier’s payment. This loss was doubled by the tragic reaction of a close friend and band member committing suicide.
Randy looks back and sees the picture clearly today, but at the time it was incomprehensible. His own crushing depression ensued and Randy decided to ‘step off’ stage. He abandoned the musical profession and divested of all his worldly possessions. He checked out of society, not in stages, but like it was some kind of hotel – he left all at once. He leapt full-time into a life of addiction, chasing cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. He played a battered guitar on the mean street corners, and in the underground stations of Edmonton’s Light Rail Transit system, and arranged himself a cost-efficient accommodation under a bridge. He says he became a troll.
Music has been a driving force in Randy’s life, “It is genetic,” ascribing this inheritance to Métis heritage, as he later learned, “My mother’s brother was a gifted player.”
He learned about this lineage later in life, where he came from, including that his great grandfather had been a Canadian voyageur, a courier de bois (runner of the woods). “I saw a picture of him and asked my grandmother why he had crease marks on his forehead and sides of his face. She told me the markings came from pulling York Boats upstream,” from the leather strapping to pull heavy watercraft upstream and portage over land. This true Manitoban Canadian had earned these distinctive facial markings by the work he did for the Hudson’s Bay Company. He carried mercantile trading goods from Winnipeg to Norway House and back, one long arduous voyage every year.
It turned out Randy has the purest form of Western Canadian heritage there is. Important details like family history were missing from his youth, by the fact he was adopted out by his biological mother, whom he did not meet until he was 37-years-old. And the close relationship with an adoptive family was interrupted by the period spent snaring rabbits in Edmonton’s river valley, and before that, deeply selfish addictive behavior.
Randy was raised by adoption into a family, and this wasn’t half bad. “My father gave me a trade as a pipefitter. He taught me a lot,” and was always generous to his adoptive son. His mother could not have children so they adopted Randy and his sister. It had been a normal childhood spent in a family environment and he felt nurtured far more than deprived, it was a good family environment and he feels he was blessed by it.
Later the nurturing away from addiction came from detox facilities and treatment centres and creating art as therapy, and the 12 step program that helped him to fill his medicine pouch used to form a powerful spiritual foundation, including later a faith in the Living God, his Higher Power.
Public urged to remember plight of missing, murdered Aboriginal women
By Jennifer Graham
Gwenda Yuzicappi sleeps with the phone next to her pillow, anxiously waiting for word about her daughter Amber Redman.
Redman was just 19 when she disappeared from Fort Qu'Appelle, SK, more than two years ago, becoming one of the hundreds of missing or murdered Native women and girls.
But Yuzicappi holds out hope.
“I believe she’s still alive. I believe that she will come home soon and I need to hold onto that as a mother,” Yuzicappi said October 4th at a vigil at a teepee in Fort Qu’Appelle, SK.
“Until I have facts, evidence in front of me that says otherwise, that’s my belief is that she’s still alive.”
Yuzicappi was among nearly 50 people who stood in a circle, with candles in hand, at the teepee to remember the missing and murdered women.
“I’m not the only mother, I’m not the only father, I’m not the only aunt or grandmother, the brothers, the sisters, the cousins that have this empty feeling inside of us,” an emotional Yuzicappi told the gathering.
It was one of more than 30 vigils held across the country to denounce a continuing epidemic of violence against Aboriginal women.
Beverley Jacobs of the Native Women’s Association of Canada urged governments and police forces to craft national strategies as the ranks of the murdered and missing continue to grow.
“Innocent women are being stolen from us every week as families are shattered and friendships lost,” Jacobs told a news conference on Parliament Hill.
“It’s time for all women and men to say: No more.”
Jacobs is midway through a five-year Sisters in Spirit campaign to build a database of cases and raise awareness. She estimates that at least 500 Native women and girls have vanished or been killed in the last 30 years.
Sandra Gagnon’s sister Janet Henry disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside ten years ago.
Gagnon last saw her on June 25, 1997 when Henry said goodbye with: “I love you and I miss you much.” It was a reference to one of Henry's favourite Janet Jackson songs. Henry was 37, the mother of a daughter, and a cherished sister who used drugs and sometimes worked in the sex trade. Her disappearance is unsolved. Gagnon recalled how slowly police initially responded to reports her sister and other women were disappearing.
“We need to keep this campaign going so we can get help to bring awareness and be acknowledged,” she said. “The missing women were loved. They were somebody’s daughter, mom, auntie, and best friend.”
In the most notorious case involving women from Vancouver’s troubled downtown, Robert Pickton is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Mona Wilson, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe, Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey and Andrea Joesbury.
He is to face a second trial at a later date on an additional 20 counts of first-degree murder. At least 41 other women are still missing from the Downtown Eastside.
Janet Henry is not among the women Pickton is accused of killing.
Jacobs says the “epidemic of violence” against Native women should be confronted as “a national outrage.”
Victims are abused and murdered in appalling numbers, she says, and governments cannot turn a blind eye.
Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada, says there has been little formal action since the release, three years ago, of a damning report called Stolen Sisters, which documented the magnitude of the problem.
“This cannot go on,” he said. “Indigenous women can not keep coming to Ottawa pleading for the safety of their granddaughters, their daughters, their sisters.
“It's time for comprehensive, national action.”
End the silence – stop the violence
Submitted by the Family Violence Prevention Centre
November is Family Violence Prevention Month in Alberta, and the 2007 theme is: End the Silence – Stop the Violence. Family violence is a complex issue that impacts all of us.
In 2004, Alberta had the highest rate (11%) of reported spousal assaults in Canada. Furthermore, Alberta had the highest rate of domestic homicide in Canada last year. When you calculate costs related to social services, education, criminal justice, labour, employment, health and medical, family violence costs in excess of $4 billion per year. Criminal justice costs alone are $872 million per year. We believe that the community must work together to effectively support those whose lives have been impacted by family violence.
In our experience, partnering with a number of organizations strengthens and enhances support for clients. Edmonton John Howard Society has operated the Family Violence Prevention Centre since 1999. This year, more than 1,800 individuals were served through our family violence programs.
Community Outreach:
- Responding to Victims of Crime in the Chinese Community
- Partner Check Outreach
- Outreach – for those experiencing abuse
The Community Outreach Programs provide support by addressing ongoing safety & protection issues; providing education on impact of family violence; facilitating access to resources; strengthening supports/decreasing isolation; and providing ongoing emotional support.
Furniture Donation and Moving Program
The Centre operates a furniture/moving program which coordinates the pickup and distribution of donated furniture for people who are leaving abusive situations.
Victims Assistance Program
Support clients through the criminal court process from when family violence charges are laid through to the conclusion of the case.
Services are provided by staff and very dedicated volunteers.
By helping to prevent violence, EJHS is building stronger families, raising healthier children and providing them with the opportunity to achieve their full potential and to experience happiness and success.
Alberta’s on-reserve women’s emergency shelters celebrate
After years of working with inadequate resources, Alberta’s on-reserve shelters have finally achieved parity with provincially-funded shelters. The news was announced this year and the impact has been impressive. Shelter staff are being paid respectfully; shelters have adequate resources for clients and the whole community is the beneficiary.
These shelters have earned the right to be community leaders. With heroic effort they have accomplished wonders:
- Alberta on-reserve shelters have provided national leadership on foregrounding the state of on-reserve shelters. They took a leadership role in working with INAC to improve services to on-reserve shelters
- Shelters are raising awareness in their communities, using innovative and traditional events, about family violence
- They are working with Aboriginal men, inviting them to be champions in their communities and to work with young Aboriginal men to prevent violence
- Shelters are compiling a growing body of knowledge, through their data gathering, on on-reserve shelter work in Alberta
They have achieved these results against difficult odds. The World Health Organization has declared domestic violence to be a pandemic. Wherever you go, whichever country you visit, whatever the culture, education or income level, women and children are at risk. In Canada, Aboriginal women are three times more likely to suffer from domestic violence than non-Aboriginal women. 54% of Aboriginal women experience severe and potentially life-threatening violence, compared with 37% of non-Aboriginal women.
Spousal homicide rates for Aboriginal women are more than nine times the rate for non-Aboriginal women. Women who are victims of violence report that 57% of Aboriginal children are exposed to family violence, compared with 46% of non-Aboriginal children (Statistics Canada 2005; The Daily “Aboriginal people as victims and offenders,” 2004).
Alberta can be proud of the on-reserve shelters. They are developing best practice in service provision, governance and data gathering, to name but a few activities. Their shelters will be presenting their innovations and successes at the upcoming World Conference of Women’s Shelters: Discovering the Common Core (8-11 September 2008). Held in Edmonton, shelters from around the world, including Indigenous Women’s Shelters, will be here to network, share their experiences and develop the world’s first baseline data on domestic violence interventions. This conference, being hosted by ACWS, will provide the on-reserve shelters with a forum to share and support one another.
On-reserve women’s emergency shelter staff are keeping women and children safe. They deserve our respect and commitment. Because they are there, communities have access to expert resources and help. Please support your local women’s emergency shelter during November! And all year ’round!
Even “light” drinking during pregnancy puts baby at risk
Many people know about the dangers of prenatal alcohol exposure, particularly the damaging effects that heavy drinking can cause to a child’s cognitive development. A study published in the March issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research (ACER) has found that even light to moderate drinking during pregnancy may interfere with learning and memory during adolescence.
“We have known for a long time that drinking heavily during pregnancy could lead to major impairments in growth, behavior and cognitive function in children,” said Jennifer Willford, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the study’s first author. “This paper clearly shows that even small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy can have a significant impact on child development.”
“Learning and memory are cornerstones for success in school and in everyday life,” added Sarah Mattson, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, and associate director of the Center for Behavioral Teratology at San Diego State University. “Disruption of the ability to learn and remember new information jeopardizes the job of children, that is, to go to school. The inability to learn new information in the verbal or nonverbal domain will interfere with a child’s ability to achieve alongside his or her peers.”
The data examined in this study were collected as part of the Maternal Health Practices and Child Development Project (MHPCD), an ongoing longitudinal study of 580 children and their mothers. The MHPCD examines the effects of prenatal exposure to alcohol, marijuana, tobacco and other illicit drugs on the growth, behavioral and cognitive development of the offspring. Researchers measure demographic status, maternal psychosocial characteristics, household environment and substance use at numerous intervals. They also assess the children’s growth, and behavioral, neuropsychological and academic status from birth onward.
“We chose measures that would help us understand the types of learning and memory difficulties experienced by adolescents who were prenatally exposed to alcohol,” explained Willford.
“We assessed verbal/auditory and visual/spatial abilities because each of us learns through a combination of verbal and nonverbal abilities. We also examined learning and memory to determine whether subjects were having difficulty with initial learning, remembering information for a short time or after a long period of time.”
“During the first trimester,” said Willford, “45 percent of the women drank, on average, less than one drink per day.” Despite these relatively low levels of alcohol consumption, researchers found an association with subtle difficulties with learning and memory in the offspring at 14 years of age, specifically in the auditory/verbal domain. “This indicates that drinking during the first trimester of pregnancy … has long-term effects on development. Many women do not realize they are pregnant and/or seek prenatal care during this critical time,” said Willford.
“These types of deficits have already been demonstrated in studies with much higher levels of exposure,” added Mattson, “and thus, these data extend the continuum of effect to include lower levels of exposure. Another important finding is that the effects of alcohol exposure on memory for verbal information were mediated by verbal learning, a finding that has also been documented following higher levels of exposure. This finding is relatively novel in the field and thus the replication in a lower exposed sample suggests that this effect is specific to alcohol exposure.”
Yet another finding concerns growth deficits among those children exposed to light to moderate drinking during gestation. “These findings parallel earlier reports of continued growth deficits among those children exposed to light to moderate drinking during their mothers’ pregnancy,” said Willford. “This shows us that prenatal alcohol exposure can lead to deficits in multiple domains.”
“There is no safe level of drinking during pregnancy and there is no safe time to drink during pregnancy,” said Willford. “Women need this information before pregnancy recognition and their first visit to an obstetrician so that they may make better choices about drinking if they are planning to become, or think that they may be, pregnant.”
Aboriginal families in Ontario caught in red tape – still stuck in mouldy, flood prone homes
By Sue Bailey
Families are still living in mould-contaminated homes more than two months after Health Canada called for immediate repairs on the Fort Albany First Nation in northern Ontario.
At least 14 houses on the remote reserve near the James Bay coast require new drywall, insulation, vapour barriers and outside repairs to stop moisture problems worsened by shoddy construction.
Mould is considered a serious health threat blamed for acute asthma attacks, allergic reactions and a host of other respiratory problems. It’s a problem in homes across Canada on reserve and off, but is rampant in overcrowded, poorly ventilated and flood-prone buildings.
Dr. Murray Trusler of the James Bay General Hospital said of one Fort Albany family: “Their home has leaky basement walls through which mice and insects freely traverse. The floor was wet and mouldy. They should be removed from their home while appropriate renovations are undertaken.”
His report is dated July 24, 2007.
Trusler also examined a three-year-old boy suffering a stubborn, itchy rash over most of his body. Its resistance to treatment “makes one wonder if the mould is partly responsible for its ongoing presence,” Trusler wrote.
Other residents complain of chronic headaches, sore throats, arthritic joints and nose bleeds. The houses were built in 2001 by a Timmins, ON, contractor without so much as basic grading to allow for proper water drainage, says a related report by B.H. Martin Consultants Ltd., a Timmins engineering firm. Construction was financed through a bank loan and overseen by the local Native leadership, said Tony Prudori, a spokesman for the federal Indian Affairs Department. He confirmed that two families “remain in alternate accommodation,” but said repairs haven’t started because the band must submit proper paperwork.
“We have not received any proposal from the First Nation outlining remediation work, next steps, costs and timelines. To this point, we have not received any such proposal from the First Nation.”
The Canadian Press obtained a detailed work plan sent to Indian Affairs from the Mushkegowuk Council, which collectively represents Fort Albany and other regional bands.
The document dated August 7th estimates repairs would cost $2.3 million to fix all 26 homes built in 2001. It also breaks down each phase of the project over a total timeline of six months.
“It is critical that this work start in late August or early September so that all foundation work can be completed prior to the colder weather setting in,” said the document.
A spokesman for Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said the work plan “was not the proper documentation required, nor was it complete.”
The minister is very much aware of the mould issue and is concerned, said Ted Yeomans in an e-mailed response. Strahl will work with the tribal council and “we plan to move forward together when the appropriate and completed documentation is submitted.”
Robert Gabor, another medical doctor who visited Fort Albany last summer, says help is needed now. He recalled the home of a mother and three kids where mould covered every wall almost from floor to ceiling. “I would never move into that house. If it’s substandard for me, why should it be standard for the community? It’s Third World conditions. Account-ability is what’s needed here.''