Okay.
Distinguished leaders, I'm from the village of Kitkatla. I'm from the Eagle Tribe. I'm from the house of Gilaskmx. It's an honour to be here today. I'm especially looking forward to our discussions.
In 2007, in Hazelton, B.C., in Gitxsan territory, the hospital staff recorded 57 suicide-related incidents, including completions. In 2006, I was asked by the First Nations Summit and the children's commission to gather information from youth in Haida, Tsimshian, and Nisga'a territories following a number of suicide completions and attempts in Tsimshian territory. In 2005, matriarchs of Ahousaht directed the hereditary and administrative leadership to address the drug dealers and bootleggers, giving them an ultimatum of treatment or banishment. The chiefs and community set up a six-month treatment and cultural rehabilitation program and 22 of the 23 identified community members chose to attend the community-based treatment program. During the six months—it was a six-month treatment program—there were no suicide attempts in Ahousaht. During the six-month treatment program, the drug dealers and bootleggers disclosed that they had sexually assaulted others. The victims were brought in and included in the healing program.
Mental health services, through non-insured health benefits, has its roots in the Indian problem. The results of that conditioning is the challenge that we, as Canadians and North Americans, need to take on because we are human beings. Suicides in first nations communities are not random acts, but rather, there is a thick line that connects suicide with intergenerational trauma through physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and sexual atrocities and violations against first nations children. Mental health has been described as the scarcity model that focuses on disease rather than historical facts that are now published in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the “Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples”. The scarcity model makes a covert statement that the situation will not change. They are Indians after all. This is a terminal disease. However, we have heard through commissions like this one of violence against first nations in Indian residential schools, federal day schools, Indian hospitals, foster care, the justice system, and through land loss.
The decisions to be united as Canadians must be founded on human values and principles that are the foundations of the First Nations Health Authority, gathered from ancestral law. They include respect, discipline, relationships, fairness, excellence, and honouring our ancestors through following traditional protocol. The strength of first nations people is in the simple fact that we exist today. We live knowing and learning our traditional songs, dances, protocol, art, and understanding the importance of the unity of heart and mind. The First Nations Health Authority is working to respond to the youth, who clearly said at the Prince Rupert gathering in 2006, “We want the abuse, addictions, and violence to stop” in our families and we want culture. Prevention comes through facing facts with compassionate understanding in families, tribes, communities, and nations, with seeing the past clearly, without the distortion of believing we are the Indian problem. This is a Canadian endeavour and requires commitment and unity of all.
In the previous panel I came in near the end and there were discussions around prevention. Prevention comes from a disease model when we look at prevention, and we need to work towards preventing.
If we're looking at families, we'll see that working with families is in itself prevention. When we look at the fact that cultural protocol already exists in the communities, we're not really accessing that yet as first nations people here in British Columbia, for many reasons, but they all relate to our history as Canadians.
Probably one of the biggest issues that we're facing today is sexual abuse; it's intergenerational incest. So, getting to that is not an easy task because, as I mentioned earlier, it's a matter of looking at these facts and how these facts have impacted us as a people.
First, what we're looking at is connecting with the values and principles that come from our ancestral teachings, or what I say is ancestral law. As we do that and follow that, then that's our responsibility as first nations people.
We're looking to our partners, the Ministry of Health, in mental wellness particularly, to be working with us in doing this, not to fit the indigenous protocol into the mental health model, but for us to be working as partners, so that when they come in, they're following cultural protocol, or when we go into a community, we're following cultural protocol.
Here I am. I'm Tsimshian and I'm in Coast Salish territory. I want to recognize that because I'm not from this territory. My last words are for peace in all of the Coast Salish territories here.
Thank you.