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Focus on alcohol

Teacher at Chief Atahm School brings powerful book on alcohol to class as link to other issues.
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Craig Duckchief has chosen is the book, Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours), by Cree author Harold Johnson as part of a unique alcohol education program.

Shining a light on the issue of alcohol.

That illumination is taking place in a Grade 8/9 classroom at the Adams Lake Band’s Chief Atahm School.

Teacher Craig Duckchief explains that although there are many different issues in First Nations communities, alcohol is one of the threads that ties all the issues together.

“When you bring light to an area, you can dissolve its power, metaphorically speaking.”

The vehicle Duckchief has chosen is the book, Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours), by Cree author Harold Johnson.

The course has been made possible by a grant from the MacQuarrie Institute.

An Internet promo describes the book this way.

“A passionate call to action, Firewater examines alcohol—its history, the myths surrounding it, and its devastating impact on Indigenous people.

“Drawing on his years of experience as a Crown Prosecutor in Treaty 6 territory, Harold Johnson challenges readers to change the story we tell ourselves about the drink that goes by many names—booze, hooch, spirits, sauce, and the evocative ‘firewater.’

“Confronting the harmful stereotype of the “lazy, drunken Indian,” and rejecting medical, social and psychological explanations of the roots of alcoholism, Johnson cries out for solutions, not diagnoses, and shows how alcohol continues to kill so many.”

As well as reading it themselves, Chief Atahm students gave their books to a parent or a grandparent to read at home. A powerful part of the course was having the author interact directly with the class via Skype. Johnson was in Saskatchewan while the students and some parents were in the classroom.

“It worked out very well,” Duckchief says.

Johnson informed the class that his younger brother died at age 11, a death related to alcohol. To make the connection to his brother’s young age, he wrote the book at a young reading level, explained Duckchief.

Johnson said that in 35 to 38 per cent of communities, adults live a sober life.

“Whereas maybe somewhere around 70 to 72 per cent will have different levels of alcohol use. That includes the people who probably drink every day and those who drink now and then,” Duckchief recounted.

Yet Johnson found as a Crown prosecutor that 95 per cent of the issues First Nations face, such as over-representation in Corrections, involve alcohol.

Johnson emphasized alcohol is not youths’ problem to solve.

“He wanted to be clear,” said Duckchief. “It’s us as adults who have to initiate the change.”

One solution Johnson talked about is having treatment centres within communities, so returning home is not such a shock and a disruption, and supports exist.

“He was talking about a family in Saskatchewan of 20 people living in a single house. When they came back from a rehabilitation centre, they came back into a house of 20, where not everyone had stopped using alcohol. Putting them back in the situation, it’s a very hard road for them to traverse.”

Stories figured prominently in Johnson’s talk.

“That’s pretty much the premise of the novel, we’re trying to tell each other different stories,” Duckchief recounts. “Loggers have a story of being hard, red neck. Or an Alberta oil rigger… We need to change those stories we tell ourselves.”

The need for changing stories applies to all Canadians, he said.

“We tell ourselves we’re reliant on oil, yet we only have a limited number of natural resources. We will have to change our story.”

Duckchief emphasizes change can’t happen if people pretend the problem of alcohol doesn’t exist.

“We need significant change, not only for ourselves in First Nations communities, it’s totally applicable to other cultures… Being able to shine a light on it and having the courage for a community to begin to have discussions on that one topic and related to that. But we have to start somewhere.”



Martha Wickett

About the Author: Martha Wickett

came to Salmon Arm in May of 2004 to work at the Observer. I was looking for a change from the hustle and bustle of the Lower Mainland, where I had spent more than a decade working in community newspapers.
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