The mental health concerns of Aboriginal people and organizations include substance abuse, depression, family breakdown, and suicide. Governments must provide adequate resources to deal with the causes and effects of these problems.

One approach that has gained support has been to set up inter-agency committees consisting of professional workers such as community workers, police, guidance counselors, addictions counselors and health workers. The members of such committees have the opportunity to discuss problems and determine the programs and interventions for specific situations.
It has been pointed out that punishing people by putting them in jail does not solve the problems underlying dysfunctional and dangerous behaviour. People need to deal with their inner feelings and motivations. There must be services such as residential treatment programs, or programs that incorporate going out to live on the land, directed at people who commit offences. In cases of abuse, this would also help make the situation more secure for victims.

Schools should be encouraged to use positive role models for young people, such as respected Elders. This type of initiative can be further supported through the development of peer counseling programs within guidance studies courses. Aboriginal dancing and stress management techniques could also be introduced into the health and physical education curriculum.

Teacher training programs should include courses on sexuality, nutrition, alcohol and drug abuse, and other significant community health issues. There should also be public awareness programs on such matters as child abuse, sexual abuse, and so on.

There must also be community resources such as safe houses, abuser retreats and support services for mentally ill individuals and their families. A safe house provides support, sponsorship and accommodation for child and adult survivors until their own housing situation is safe. An abuser retreat provides a place where abusers can be temporarily isolated from their families or survivors and receive intensive, culturally sensitive, holistic-milieu treatment. Support services for mentally ill persons and their families would consist of facilities where the afflicted individuals could get temporary shelter in order to provide relief to their families.

Solutions to mental health problems in Aboriginal communities must come from a joint effort from both community members and health care and social work professionals. The responsibility cannot be assumed by only one or the other. Community workers are often overworked, are expected to be on call at all hours of the day, and must sometimes deal with threatening situations. Community workers often feel overwhelmed by the challenges they face and their difficult situation can lead to burnout if they do not have sufficient support within their community.

The following are programs and
services already in existence in Canada:

The band membership of Six Nations totals approximately 20,000 individuals, making it the largest First Nations community in Canada. Six Nations Mental Health Services is a community mental health clinic, which opened for service in June 1997 on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory reserve in southwestern Ontario. It is the first mental health clinic of its kind in Canada, being staffed by four mental health nurses, one mental health outreach worker, one counsellor and two psychiatrists – all, with the exception of the child psychiatrist, being of Aboriginal ancestry.

The nurses participate in the psychiatric consultation and follow-up processes as well as providing intensive case management for individuals with serious mental illnesses. The most common problems have been depression, suicidal thoughts and anxiety.

The clinic holds public education workshops twice a year to coincide with the national mental health awareness weeks. Clinic staff submit regular columns dealing with a variety of mental health issues to the two community newspapers. They also participate in a phone-in show on the community radio station every two to three months.

Prior to the clinic opening, there was a lack of mental health services, which resulted in the ‘revolving door’ syndrome. An individual who was perceived to have a mental health problem was sent to hospital psychiatric units in the city and then later discharged without any follow-up services being available in the community. As a result, the individual often deteriorated, which led to readmission to the hospital, and so on. In those years, 17
individuals accounted for 54 separate admissions to hospital. It is a measure of the success of Six Nations Mental Health Services that during their first year of operation, there were only three individuals who accounted for five admissions to hospital.
Two important goals of the Six Nations Mental Health Services are: (1) to get rid of the stigma of mental illness, and (2) to improve access.

(2)Waseskun House Program

Waseskun House, located in Montreal, was founded in 1988 as a private, non-profit, Native-owned and operated organization devoted to the healing of Aboriginal male, federal and provincial ex-offenders. Since the Native perspective on healing is a holistic one, including the offender, the victim, the families and the community, the Waseskun vision includes training for
community workers, an Internet support network, and plans for a larger and more integrated Healing and Development Centre in a rural setting.

The Waseskun House Program is rooted in an inclusive approach to Native cultural tradition and a here-and-now awareness of current global realities. It takes an active and responsible approach towards re-integrating male ex-offenders into their communities of origin. Using the symbolism of the Medicine Wheel as a model for the developmental journey, and the balance of the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of human nature as a tool for individual integration, community members are encouraged to examine their personal life experiences in the context of the principles fundamental to a traditional Native understanding of Reality. Vision questing
(a ceremony where a person goes out into the woods to seek answers and guidance) is encouraged to prepare and assist the client in assuming a future role as an integrated and contributing member of his community of origin.

Waseskun House group sessions provide a supportive environment wherein participants have the opportunity to develop and examine the processes and skills involved in the creation of functional community.

Group interaction helps the individual healing process. Clients are given the opportunity to re-experience the depths of personal trauma and to appropriately grieve the losses specific to contemporary Native experience. This uniquely structured program, especially sensitive to individuals with a history of drug and alcohol abuse, includes: individual counselling; group counselling; Native family systems awareness; human
sexuality; men’s issues; conflict resolution; life skills; First Nations addictions awareness; anger management; physical balance; healing circles; cleansing ceremonies; sweat lodges; traditional teaching from Elders; and traditional feasts. During the summer months, residents and, where appropriate, their
families are given the opportunity to participate in intensive camp healing sessions in a secluded environment.

Participatory ceremonies and interactive experiential exercises are designed to help individuals move toward emotional, physical, mental and spiritual wellness, as well as identify and release the emotional and psychological blocks that prevent this process from taking place. Members of the Waseskun community are encouraged to integrate traditional values in the building of healthy relationships with each other and with the
natural environment, which is understood to be part of the Self. Deeper aspects of the healing process involve such things as:
(a) grieving the various losses coming from an unhealthy past; (b) letting go of artificial substitutes (e.g. alcohol) for genuine self-care; and (c) learning to express outrage and anger in safe and constructive ways. The program ends with a commitment to both the willingness to forgive and to directing legitimate
anger towards improving conditions in aboriginal communities.

(3) Hollow Water Community Healing

The Hollow Water Community Healing program in Manitoba is a model of the contemporary blending of traditional and modern approaches to health and ‘healing’. It is a blend that is determined and driven by the Anishnawbe Seven Sacred Teachings and healing customs. The Hollow Water Community Healing program for dealing with the problem of first-time sexual abuse offenders has a reputation of having had tremendous success, and has received significant interest from Canadian and international health and social service professionals. Unique to this program is the integration of treatment of the offender with that of their victim(s), their respective families, and the entire community. The following discussion lists selected key characteristics of the success of this program.

The success of the Hollow Water approach is seen as revolutionary by a number of health and social service professional observers, inside and outside of Canada. For example, Canadian psychologist and internationally recognized authority on sex offender treatment, Dr. W. Marshall, describes the significant success of the program as follows: “The real advantage of the Hollow Water program is that it is holistic in the sense of integrating treatment of the offender and the victim, their families, and the whole community … most non-Aboriginal people are hostile to the reintegration of sexual offenders … non-Aboriginal people can learn from Aboriginal approaches rather than our traditional strategy of attempting to foist our ways on other people…” (Marshall, 1997)

The Hollow Water Community Healing program is revolutionary for several reasons:
-The program successfully maintains a deeply rooted sense of the individual in connection with the complex dynamic that makes up the self-family-community triad.
-The program successfully facilitates and ensures that both victim and victimizer proceed at their own pace in learning
accountability to self, and to family and community. It also
successfully assists victimizers in taking responsibility for their
actions and in making amends to the community. The program
successfully facilitates victim and victimizer in learning to deal with shame, and in learning to forgive self and others.
-Within the program, victimizer and victim are not labeled or blamed, but are treated as equals whose spirits remain essentially whole, but who have temporarily become unbalanced.

(4) Putting in Place an Integrated System for Persons with Severe and Persistent Mental Problems

This pilot project tackled growing problems and high suicide rates in Nunavik by housing, supporting, and employing people suffering from severe and chronic mental health problems who might otherwise be sent to Montréal.

During the first nine months of the centre’s operation, 12 clients were served and achieved greater independence. The majority managed to deal effectively with their addiction problems; only one client was hospitalized during the program. As a result of this project, there is now a new resource in Inukjuak, and the study concludes that the materials developed by the project might be useful in other isolated communities.

(5) The Stoney in Alberta

The Stoney in Alberta introduced a program called “Self-Improvement Through Empowerment” or S.I.T.E. The four steps in the S.I.T.E. program are: (1) healing, (2) life skills,
3) upgrading, and (4) work placement and employment.
The healing component of S.I.T.E. is composed of personal growth workshops, which include learning to explore and rebalance personal medicine wheels; learning to build strong spiritual relationships; taking care of the body; rational and positive thinking; and releasing old pains and expressing feelings in a healthy manner.

(6) Mheccu (The Mental Health Evaluation and Community Consultation Unit)

Mheccu’s purpose is to improve mental health outcomes for British Columbians and for Canadians in general by linking
research, education and policy making at the community, clinical, administrative and broader systems levels.

Mheccu provides the following services in the area of mental health:

-Mheccu’s Aboriginal Mental Health Advisory Committee
Based in Vancouver, Mheccu’s Aboriginal Mental Health Advisory Committee has been meeting regularly since July 1999. The Advisory Committee was formed in response to concerns that mental health service delivery, including the field of community psychiatry, did not adequately - or appropriately - deal with the needs of Aboriginal people. Funding to
support the Advisory Group is provided by Adult Mental Health Services, Ministry of Health and administered by Mheccu.

-Emergency Mental Health Services
The primary goal of the Emergency Mental Health Services initiative has been to improve the crisis response/emergency psychiatry capacity in rural and remote communities in the province of British Columbia. One manner of achieving this goal was to provide education, training, and evaluation to support hospital-based emergency mental health care in communities lacking in-patient psychiatric services. Mheccu received one-time funding from the Ministry of Health and Ministry Responsible for Seniors in 1999-2000 and one-time funding again in 2000-2001.

-Suicide Prevention
Key activities of the Suicide Prevention component of Mheccu include the development of user-friendly resource materials based on research literature, distribution of up-to-date suicide data, and the facilitation of connections and links between communities.

-Centre for TeleHealth at Mheccu
Mheccu received one-time funding from the Ministry of Health and Ministry Responsible for Seniors to provide under-serviced communities with increased access to mental health consultations and distance education through the use of interactive video-teleconferencing technology. The Centre for Tele-mental Health at Mheccu has since expanded its operations with support from individual health regions and Health Canada.

(7) Training of Community Wellness Workers at Yellowquill College

This Diploma program resulted from a partnership between the University of Manitoba, Yellowquill College, and First
Nations stakeholders: the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, the Medical Services Branch and the Manitoba Community Wellness Working Group.
This Diploma was developed to provide First Nations with Community Wellness Workers who would have accredited post-secondary education that is responsive to the mental health/wellness education needs and priorities identified by First Nations. The Diploma is also an appropriate post-secondary education opportunity for other First Nations health and social service providers. It offers a challenging program of studies in the field of mental health wellness for First Nations community and regional health services.

The curriculum consists of 16 three-credit-hours (48 credit-hours), and 2 six-credit-hours (12 credit-hours) of existing faculty courses from the faculties of Social Work, Arts, Nursing and Pharmacy. The 60 credit-hours of courses are fully transferable to the Bachelor of Social Work degree. The program will also provide 33 credit-hours applicable to an Arts degree, and will fulfill the elective requirements for a Nursing degree (27 or 30 credit-hours), for students who choose to proceed towards completion of a baccalaureate degree in these faculties.

(8) Institute for Aboriginal Health (University of British Columbia)

The First Nations Health Careers Program is a division in the Office of the Coordinator of Health Sciences but is located in the First Nations House of Learning (FNHL). Being based in the First Nations House of Learning allows First Nations health, research and training to be rooted in academia while being responsive to important health concerns expressed through linkages with indigenous communities in British Columbia, Canada and abroad.

The current program is sponsored by the division of First Nations Health Careers through the First Nations House of Learning, the Office of the Coordinator of Health Sciences and in collaboration with the Faculty of Science and the School of Nursing. The Division of First Nations Health Careers has developed and offered the following courses:

-Biology 448, Section 212: Contemporary First Nations
-Health Issues and Traditional Healing
-Biology 448, Section 212
-Ethno-biology Nursing 490: Issues in Native Health
-Social Work 425: First Nations Social Issues

A Native Health Awareness day is held annually for the benefit of health sciences students and faculty with presentations and displays on Aboriginal health issues. This has come to be called The Gathering, is held in February and attended by more than 200 students in health programs throughout the University.
Summer Health Institutes have been held annually since 1995. The goal of these institutes is to provide training and information on issues identified by Aboriginal communities. These institutes have been successful and cost-efficient. In 1997, the topic of the one-week institute was Diabetes in First Nations Populations.

Division of First Nations Health Careers
The goal of the Division is to increase the number of First Nations health care professionals. This includes:

-Recruiting and improving access
to health and human service programs at UBC;
-Providing support services for First Nations students enrolled in these programs;
-Collaborating with health and human service faculties, departments and schools in developing courses and seminars relevant to Aboriginal health needs;
-Creating cultural awareness among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal health and human service students, staff and faculty;
-Communicating with health and human service professional associations, and encouraging interest in the health care professions at the high school level.

For information about health and human service programs at UBC, please call or write to:

Rosalyn Ing, B.S.W., M.Ed., Ph.D.
Institute for Aboriginal Health
Division of First Nations Health Careers
UBC Longhouse
188 - 1985 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Phone: (604) 822-5613
Fax: (604) 822-8944
Secretary’s e-mail: dmhughes@interchange.ubc.ca

Division of Community Liaison
The Division is focused on Aboriginal Communities in urban and rural environments, and extends to secondary and post-secondary institutions. The Division:

-Enhances and maintains close links with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal front-line health and human service professionals who work with bands and tribal councils, and urban and rural health organizations;
-Helps create ‘laddering’ processes from either high school or college to the University by developing curriculum transfer courses, access initiatives, or programs with other post-secondary institutions and
on-reserve programs.
-Promotes health professions and health issues via summer youth programs and the Summer Health Institute.

If you are a health care worker (Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal working with Aboriginal people) and have concerns about Aboriginal health issues, please call or write to:

Heidi Verburg, M.S.W.
Institute for Aboriginal Health
Division of Community Liaison
UBC College of Health Disciplines
408 - 2194 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3
Phone: (604) 822-5677
Fax: (604) 822-2495
E-mail: hverburg@interchange.ubc.ca

(9) Miyupimaatisiiuwin Wellness Curriculum

The Miyupimaatisiiuwin Wellness Curriculum presents a comprehensive school-based approach to health promotion and, by extension, to long-term suicide prevention. It has been developed for the Cree Public Health Module to be used in the James Bay region.

The general features of a suicide prevention strategy, as set out in the guidelines section of this report, are present in the curriculum. Briefly, these include:

-suicide prevention being taken on as the responsibility of the entire community;
-a focus on children and young people;
-a holistic approach reflecting the complex nature of the problem;
-a comprehensive approach, including long-term approaches and interventions;
-evaluation viewed as essential;
-cultural ownership.

The curriculum planning initially involved extensive consultation with the Cree community and included input from the Cree Board of Education. The Miyupimaatisiiuwin Wellness Curriculum is comprehensive, covering a wide range of wellness issues in a practical, teacher-friendly format, including ready-to-use lessons and preparatory material. It is a preventive program with an emphasis on wellness through health promotion for kindergarten to grade 8. As such, it provides long-term support to children, while the information also reaches parents through a planned parental informed consent component built into each lesson. Relevant issues are extended and developed through the grade levels in a spiral manner, as opposed to isolated presentations, with issues reappearing at each level in more complex form.

For more information:
Barbara Reney
SWEN Productions
3622 rue De Bullion #2, Montréal, QC H2X 3A3
Phone: (514) 849-8478
Fax: (514) 849-2580
Email: reneyb@colba.net

(10) Let’s Live!

Let’s Live! is an example of a school-based awareness and intervention program that meets some of the RCAP (1995) general guidelines for suicide prevention approaches. The student program is taught in grades 8-12 using five theme-driven lesson plans. The British Columbia Council for Families, which developed the program in 1992, provides this overview in the Inservice Guide:
“The purpose of this Inservice Guide is to provide you with the guidance and support you need to initiate and maintain a suicide awareness and intervention program in your school. It contains information on teaching an inservice workshop to heighten educators’ knowledge of the factors contributing to and affecting teenage suicide, and to familiarize school staff with the Let’s Live! program. It also provides specific direction for dealing with crisis situations.”
(p. iii)

The program guide covers the inservice workshop and provides the content and procedures for two sessions. Resources and materials, including handouts and a teacher’s manual, are followed by theme-based lessons for students, covering the following topics: What is Suicide? How Can I Tell if Someone is Suicidal? Why Do Teenagers Attempt Suicide? How Can I Help Someone Who is Suicidal? and How Can I Get the Most Out of My Life?

Designed to educate students about suicide by promoting self-awareness, self-esteem, and a sense of personal power, the problem of teen suicide is acknowledged, and efforts to understand and do something concrete about it are encouraged. The teacher’s manual provides advice on creating “a classroom environment that promotes compassion, empathetic listening, and friendship” (p. iii).

The evaluation of this program included pilot testing in the spring of 1992. Let’s Live! was pilot tested in School District #43 (Coquitlam, B.C.) at four secondary or junior high schools.
Successful implementation of the program was attributed, amongst other things, to a successful peer counselling program, and highly trained and skilled guidance counsellors.

For more information or to order manual:
Cheryl Haw
Director, Publications Department
B.C. Council for Families
204-2590 Granville Street,
Vancouver, BC V6H 3H1
Phone: (604) 660-0675
Fax: (604) 732-4813
Email: bccf@istar.ca
Website: www.bccf.bc.ca

(11) First Nations National Telehealth Research Project

This project studied how telehealth might improve the access to health services in isolated rural communities – terms that describe a third of all First Nations and Inuit communities. Five First Nations communities were chosen to pilot this 2.5-year telehealth project. The goals were for families to “visit” distant hospitalized patients via video-conferencing, for patients to be treated in their communities through electronic connections with health experts, and for isolated health staff to access training, information, and expertise.

Costs were incurred through the introduction of technology and the need to service that technology (infrastructure costs averaged $245,000 to $305,000 per community). The technology raised legal and technical challenges regarding privacy and confidentiality, and it also introduced a need for training and technical support.

(12) Native Parenting Program

This is a 12-week course, run twice a year for 15-20 participants, that starts with the Nobody’s Perfect parenting program (combined with the Native Kisewatotatowin Parenting Classes) and is followed by a Native Cultural Program. Most of the participants are of Aboriginal ancestry. The goals of the Native Parenting Program are to engage people in speaking about their own experiences, help participants gain a deeper understanding of their emotions and anger, examine Native customs and parenting skills, increase cultural pride and self-esteem, promote recognition of risk factors, and increase knowledge of the resources available and how to access them.
Nobody’s Perfect is an education program designed for parents of young children (0-5 years), and has been implemented in 10 provinces and the Northwest Territories (these sites include a number of Native communities). The program uses easy-to-read materials, and relies heavily on group support and adult education techniques to help parents recognize and build on their own strengths. An informal, non-lecture style is used and the program is suitable for parents who have few resources available to them. It is not, however, intended for families in crisis or those with serious problems. The content includes child health and safety, emotional health and behaviour of children, problem solving, and uses five core books (at home) that address the body (health and illness), safety, mind (child development), behaviour, and needs of parents. All resource materials are practical, easy to use and can be purchased from Canada Communication Group. This program is also available in French, as Y’a personne de parfait.

This program is suitable for individuals with a limited educational background. The Native Parenting Program sessions always open with Native ceremonies such as burning sweetgrass and sage and talking circles. The activities offered as part of the Native Cultural Program include Native crafts and a food resource class in which nutritious and inexpensive meals are prepared. Participants can also apply for a leadership training course. Various incentives are offered to encourage and enable people to take part; daycare and transportation assistance is provided. The Native Parenting Program is fairly inexpensive as it only requires space (e.g. in someone’s home or at a community centre), a group facilitator willing to learn the course material (a volunteer, nurse, or community worker), and some volunteers to keep young children occupied or provide transportation.

For more information:
Louise McKinney
Native Health Worker and Parent Educator
Westside Community Clinic,
631 20th Street West, Saskatoon, SK S7M 0X8
Phone: (306) 664-4310

For more information about Kisewatotatowin Parenting Classes:
SkyBlue Mary Morin
c/o Saskatoon Aboriginal Parenting Project
P.O. Box 8552, Saskatoon, SK S7K 6K6

For more information about Nobody’s Perfect:
Fearon Blair
B.C. Council for Families
Phone: (250) 372-1873

To order Nobody’s Perfect Resource Book for Facilitators:
Emily Franco
B.C. Council for Families
204-2590 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC V6H 3H1
Phone: (604) 660-0675
or (604) 732-4813
Email: bccf@istar.ca
This resource book can be purchased for $25.

To order Nobody’s Perfect resource materials:
Canada Communication
Group-Publishing
Ottawa, ON K1A 0S9
Phone: 1-800-561-4334
These materials include an administrative manual, flip chart, leader’s guide, parent resource kit, promotional brochures (100), promotional posters (10), training manual, and VHS video.

(13) Family Workshop: Parents and Problems Parenting Program

The Family Workshop: Parents and Problems Parenting Program, developed in the U.S., has been implemented in the First Nations community of Big Cove, New Brunswick. Each of the seven sessions of the program is carefully designed to foster discussion and interaction among the adults and their adolescent children. The goals are to enable parents to better understand their own behaviour towards each other and their adolescent(s), how adolescents perceive the behaviour of their parents, and what makes adolescents behave as they do. In this way, the program aims to prevent mental health problems, drug and alcohol abuse, and criminal activity among adolescents. Both the parent(s) and the adolescent(s) are encouraged to participate in the workshops.

The number of participants varies from 9-14 (that is, a maximum of three or four families). The workshop leaders need not be therapists or experts in family dynamics, but concerned community members willing to be trained in how to facilitate the sessions. This training takes place in Big Cove, with follow-up telephone and fax contact. It is preferable to involve two facilitators in the sessions. The group meets weekly to cover the following topics: Through the Eyes of Youth. Do Adults Understand Me? Do My Parents Love Me? But They’re My Friends! Adolescent Sexuality, and Why Can’t I Do It My Way? The last session, I Don’t Have Two Parents, addresses the unique issues of single parenting and an adolescent’s behaviour in this context.

Each session (about three hours in length) generally starts with a discussion of the previous week, a review of the new session material, and then group discussion and exercises. Reading materials (at the junior high school level) are distributed for the following session. The program materials include a leader’s manual, seven Parents and Problems pamphlets for each family, and exercise materials for each participant.

For more information:
Harry Sock
Director, Child and Family Services
Big Cove Indian Band
Site 11, Box 1, Big Cove, NB E0A 2L0

(14) An Evaluation of Integrated Services for Families of Aggressive School-Aged Children

This project in Battlefords Health District, Saskatchewan, provided mental health services to aggressive school-aged children by moving those services from institutions to schools, homes, and the community. In doing so, it hoped to integrate services and reach children who are usually overlooked. The study involved 13 children from “multi-problem” families; the majority were of First Nations ancestry, male, and living in single-parent families or extended families. Most lived in lower-income households, all exhibited aggressive or defiant behaviour, and many were felt to be at risk for criminal conduct. Mental health professionals and social workers involved teachers, school administrators and families, and services were provided after hours.

(15) Child and Family Resource Centre

This program, operating in Cranberry, Manitoba, involves varied activities including: a community kitchen, a family literacy program, an Aboriginal culture component teaching children Cree story-telling and crafts, a lending library (for books, toys), a monthly newsletter written by parents and distributed to the community, and resources and parenting courses for high-risk parents. The goals are to support/empower children (0-6 years old), provide services for pregnant women at risk, promote healthy living and parenting, and create supportive environments for mutual aid and learning. Resources required are a community worker or professional to give parenting courses and a supervisory board. An evaluation was carried out by interviewing staff and participants, attending board meetings and reviewing the strategic plans (no other information available). Parents provide ongoing feedback.

For more information:
Wendy Trylinski, Program Coordinator
Child and Family Resource Centre
Box 212, Cranberry Portage, MB
R0B 0H0
Phone: (204) 472-3671
Fax: (204) 472-3714
Email: childfam@mb.sympatico.ca

(16) Kishawehotesewin: A Native Parenting Approach

This seven-session program developed by Jocelyne Bruyere in 1993 (Nee-Nah-Win Project) has been used in Alberta for First Nations parents and expecting parents, and follows the seven traditional Native teachings. The sessions can be presented weekly or as a three-day workshop.

Activities include sharing in a circle, readings, videos, role-playing, discussion and assignments. The program assists and supports parents in identifying and realizing their goals, helps them listen to their children, encourages them to share their knowledge about Native traditions, provides general information on resources, allows parents to reconsider their parenting styles and situations, and provides culturally relevant materials. The only resource required is a trained facilitator. The manual can be purchased for $6.50 (English only). The materials have been presented in Native languages with the use of a translator.

To order manual:
Human Resource Centre, CPHA
1565 Carling Avenue, Suite 400, Ottawa, ON K1Z 8R1
Phone: (613) 725-3769
Fax: (613) 725-9826

(17) Northwest Territories School Health Program

This seven-unit school education program was developed in the NWT in the late 1980s for kindergarten to grade 9 students. It is a required curriculum that is user-friendly and all-inclusive. Its goal is to prevent or reduce health problems by encouraging individuals to be responsible for their health, facilitate the development of skills and positive attitudes, and create a supportive environment in the schools. The recommended time allocation is 60 hours per year and the content includes family life, alcohol and other drugs, nutrition, safety/first aid, dental health, growth/development, and mental and emotional
well-being (as the central unit).

The lessons involve objectives, teacher background information, student activities, and teacher notes, and incorporate small group discussion, brainstorming, role-playing, and a “question box.” Resources required are teacher training with the curriculum. A territory-wide teacher survey was carried out in 1991 to find out the extent to which the program was being used and whether the teachers were getting help from others to deliver it (e.g., nurses, Elders). A high rate of use of the program was reported and about 40 per cent of teachers were using others for the more sensitive topics such as mental health and family issues. A new survey is being considered.

For more information:
Barbara Hall (barbara_hall@ece.learnnet.nt.ca)
Department of Education, Culture and Employment, Government of the NWT
Box 1350, Yellowknife, NWT
X1A 2L9
Phone: (867) 873-7678
Fax: (867) 873-0109

(18) Seniors Group

This program, operating at the Portage Friendship Centre, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, has Elders working with children (0-5 years old) on a weekly basis to pass on language skills, teachings, and legends. The goals are to restore the self-esteem and self-confidence of Elders, teach the children about their culture and identity, and build cultural pride. Outcomes of the project have been a book profiling the Elders and a colouring book of the stories and legends. Resources required are a program coordinator and Elder volunteers. Observations from the centre show that the program has been very successful for the children and the Elders.

For more information:
Garda Sinclair Moran
Executive Director
Portage Friendship Centre
20 3rd Street NW, Portage la Prairie, MB R1N 1N4
Phone: (204) 239-6333
Fax: (204) 239-6634
Email: portagfc@portage.net