We did a bit of a literature review looking at better or promising practices in indigenous populations and communities, broadly with the objective of working with men to reduce violence. We narrowed it down to about 10 practices we thought were promising. One was the I Am A Kind Man program that's run by the Ontario friendship centre association.
We always work with an advisory committee that's regionally representative. We're working specifically with two Inuit men's groups: one in Nunavik, northern Quebec; and one in Nunavut. There aren't a lot of organized Inuit men's groups. We discussed with our advisory committee some of the elements of each of the programs that they thought would work, what needed to be changed to be Inuit-specific, and then we started drafting materials for dealing with past abuse. There's a great need for healing for men. As I mentioned earlier, men have also been victims of violence and abuse as children. We won't go into residential schools and all of that, but we know. Literally, we're writing drafts. For example, if a men's group in a community wanted to have a program over six weeks, what might the modules of that program be? How could it be broken up?
A lot of people find activities on the the land very effective: being out of town, going hunting, and returning to more traditional practices that are being lost somewhat with the wage economy and very rapid cultural shifts. Those are the things we have tried to develop, based on our other work.
We keep taking it back to our advisory committee, the men's groups, and as I say, my colleague is in Rankin Inlet today, going through what we hope will become a final draft, so there'll be tools, resources, exercises, and techniques for men to work with men, primarily on their own healing but with the broader objective of reducing violence.