Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thanks for that very much. That was much appreciated. What you weren't able to say, I hope we'll be able to hear, because of the time, through the questions.

We're going to go into a seven-minute round of questions. The first question comes from Mike Bossio, please.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you both so much for being here today. Once again, this adds your personal story to the evidence, as do these programs we're seeing on the ground that are making a difference. I guess that's where I would like to take this.

If there's one thing we've seen in indigenous communities, it's that we really need to look at mental health and health in general from a very different lens, and we're looking at public health typically within the wider communities. Is that happening in B.C.? Is there a concerted effort to view health and mental health through an indigenous lens?

[Gabriella Emery]

I would say that in our organization and in our team, yes. I can't really speak to the broader context. As you'll notice, our project is called the indigenous youth wellness project; it's not called the suicide prevention program. That was the advice from youth; they were not interested in going to a program that had the word “suicide” or “mental health” in it. They wanted the focus to be on wellness.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Does your program employ 100% indigenous peoples?

[Gabriella Emery]

Yes.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's wonderful. In the broader context, what does your program represent within the provincial health authority from a resource standpoint?

[Gabriella Emery]

I'm not sure I fully understand the question.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Your program is specifically focused on indigenous youth wellness. If we look at the investment into resources for indigenous health, are there other provincial health programs that focus on indigenous health in general?

[Gabriella Emery]

Yes, for sure. Provincial Health Services Authority has, I believe, maybe nine or 10 different agencies within it. There's the Chee Mamuk aboriginal health program. There are specific rural and perinatal services. B.C. Women's has a director of indigenous health, as well as aboriginal patient liaisons. They're kind of scattered, but our organization is the core of indigenous health for PHSA. Within that, each agency may have their own area.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Many health care services—counselling, mental health, trauma—are provided. Are they all delivered through an indigenous branch of the health service, or are there just general health branches that serve indigenous and non-indigenous people?

[Gabriella Emery]

Generally, I would say no. Our program doesn't actually do any direct health care service delivery. We have our indigenous youth wellness program and the indigenous cultural safety program. Those are the two branches within our specific part of PHSA.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Specific to the program, how many individuals are locals on-reserve or off-reserve in the urban environment? Do you have resources scattered throughout the province, individuals who are working on the ground, or is this more of a central role that is trying to come up with programs that would then be delivered by other agencies?

[Gabriella Emery]

All our contacts with the indigenous youth wellness program are in Vancouver. They facilitate our gatherings. Going to youth conferences, and stuff like that, is our way to network and grow our network, to find people who are interested in doing work with us, but we aren't—

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

You're not funded to have resources on the ground in the different communities.

[Gabriella Emery]

No, we don't do direct health care delivery in any form in our specific program.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Are you working with those who are providing that direct health care? Are you giving them the sensitivity training to deal with these issues within local reserves or in the urban environment?

[Gabriella Emery]

The indigenous cultural safety program is available for anybody to take in B.C. There is another with specific training for indigenous people on that side, but within our specific work, we usually work with youth workers or health directors...mostly community members who are interested or who sought us out after hearing about our programming.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Okay. I guess I'm trying to get a sense of what kind of sensitivity training is given to counsellors within the health care, mental health, or counselling sectors around delivering services within indigenous communities. This would be training to deal with trauma, to be able to identify at-risk youth, or to identify the markers that suggest someone may be contemplating suicide or may not be in a good place? Does your organization provide any of that kind of sensitivity training to local, on-the-ground health care workers?

[Gabriella Emery]

Anybody can ask to take the indigenous cultural safety program, but our program does upstream suicide prevention. We're not focused on clinical services or crisis situations. That's not where our funding comes from, so I can't really speak to that because that's not what we do.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Okay.

I guess that's it, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

The next questioner is David Yurdiga, please.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for participating in our study here.

My passion is—and I believe the rest of our group is very concerned about—the future of our indigenous youth. I see you have a program called transformation to young warrior. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more?

[Gabriella Emery]

That's the second phase of Cuystwi. That's built off the initial program we started for 10- to 12-year-olds. The communities we worked with said that they wanted some programming for youth who are a little bit older.

As you can see on the slides, it's set up as a quest map so that's what it would look like online if you went into it and logged onto the training. Youth can sign up either themselves or through a youth worker after the community has requested a link. It goes through 24 different lessons on various different topics. There is stuff around colonization, racism, learning about our history, talking about wellness, learning what healthy relationships look like, sexuality, and learning about emotions and self-regulation. It's really an opportunity to start conversations, maybe, on topics that aren't always talked about in our communities or that people aren't necessarily comfortable with, and that's why we also have a facilitator manual that we will provide to the communities as a resource to help their youth go through the training.

But really it's an opportunity for communities to make it their own. There is already a lot of wonderful programming going on in communities, and this is another resource that they can use to support it. We've had our pilot communities run it in on-reserve schools. We've had people do it in youth centres, summer camps, and anywhere that would complement something that was already happening, usually.

Some communities have used it as a reason to gather in the first place so that's what they were going to do, go through the training with their youth. Maybe they would meet once a week or something, and then we really encourage them to bring in elders or people who have specific cultural teachings or values. Some people used it as an opportunity to talk about the content, but also to learn to can fish or to build a smokehouse. We had people who would use it as a way to start a drum group. One of our communities had a very small drum group but, because there was community buy-in and interest, the drum group actually ended up with about 60 members who were showing up every week together, which is pretty amazing.

We have people who used it as an opportunity to put it with some physical activity and started a judo club, and then this was a component of it. It's really meant to be a versatile program that can really just be taken as communities want to use it.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you.

Do you deal with suicide prevention at any level? Obviously it's a cultural identity, so is there any programming that touches that?

[Gabriella Emery]

That talks specifically about suicide?