Boy, have you ever touched on something really important. We have some creative solutions. Yukon University is doing some excellent community-based training and preparation. The minister can probably tell us way more about that than I know.
My university, the University of Saskatchewan, has nursing programs that are based in the community. Community members work and get their whole nursing degree while they're in that town. They stay home and they stay there to work afterwards. The retention rate is much higher.
The other part that's really interesting is that we haven't really.... The vice-chief mentioned this in his comments. There is a healing and redemptive power in connecting with the land. When we go through the whole impact of colonization, school systems and everything else, one of the things that's happened is that many young indigenous people, even in the north, are not well connected to the land. They just don't have enough time to get out there. We need to reinvent education and let indigenous people reinvent education for their own purposes.
On the mental health side, there are two things I would add. One of them is that the elders are, perhaps, the most potent medicine that the communities have available to them, if you can use them constructively and collaboratively.
However, we are discovering some interesting things to do with new technologies. Some of the better suicide prevention strategies in North America use cellphones, which is disconcerting on one level—I'm not a fan of social media. They're using cellphones to stay in touch with people. They monitor young people's activities and can notice the signs of depression and suicidal thoughts by sites they're visiting and things they're saying to each other and their friends. You can do great preventative health.
The vice-chief might want to speak to this, but I think there is a sadness among young people in the north. It is because of the absence of clear job paths and career opportunities. The good news is that young indigenous women are doing really quite well, and better all the time. Young indigenous men are doing less well all the time.
The vice-chief made a comment, almost in passing, about the high suicide rates. Every one of those is a community tragedy of the highest proportions. You all know that.
How do we stop that? How do we get them on a positive track and give young people the hope and sense of optimism that they deserve? All Canadians deserve that, and indigenous people in the north deserve it every bit as much as anybody else.