Posted: May 02, 2021 8:00 AM PT | Last Updated: May 2
Lexi Fisher, a social worker, works at Kilala Lelum Health Centre in Vancouver s Downtown Eastside. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
Indigenous advocates and front-line workers are pushing to include more traditional ways of healing conversing with elders, smudging, sweat lodges and drum circles into substance abuse treatment.
According to the First Nations Health Authority, Indigenous people are five times more likely to experience an overdose than non-Indigenous people. Advocates and experts say this is because they face past and continuing colonial trauma. And reconnecting to culture long suppressed by governments, schools and churches is crucial to turning the situation around.
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Left: Workers posing outside the Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre. Top Right: Norm Leech, executive director, Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre. Bottom Left: The logo of the Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre. (all submitted)
In what has been a bleak year for Vancouver’s overdose crisis, seven community-led initiatives have received $100,000 in funding to further support their vital cause in the city’s hardest-hit neighbourhoods.
The projects are being undertaken by the Vancouver Community Action Team, a group of representatives from over 25 organizations working to combat the overdose emergency. The Vancouver CAT is co-chaired by the City of Vancouver, Vancouver Coastal Health, several Indigenous organizations, local non-profits, medical professionals, and people with lived experience.