As the Southern Chiefs’ Organization starts its third year of harm-reduction outreach, organizers say the stigma of drug use has changed significantly in the communities it represents.
Since its inception in 2022, the program has shifted from SCO staff going to communities and providing harm reduction supplies, to giving health care providers the skills and support to offer the care themselves, said Michelle Monkman, vice-president of health services and programs.
A change in perspective has happened in a short time, she said, noting a recent two-day gathering organized by SCO to discuss problematic substance use in the 34 First Nations communities it represents had 31 of those communities take part.
“That’s a big change. With any public health initiative, it takes quite a number of years before you actually see those outcomes,” she said Monday.
“But the fact that communities are talking about harm reduction and are willing to create and develop harm reduction programming is saying a lot.”
This year, the campaign will use billboards, bus boards, social media posts and other public education tools to encourage acceptance of, and support for, drug users, celebrate two-spirit members of the community and call on people to get tested for sexually transmitted infections and know their HIV status.
SCO’s training includes supply guidelines for communities to order harm-reduction supplies directly through suppliers and Indigenous Services Canada.
The program has provided in excess of 5,700 naloxone kits and has offered support to more than 6,300 people.
Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation is one community that has received that support. Chief Trevor Prince said he’d like to see more treatment centres and called on other Manitoba chiefs to support harm reduction in their communities.
“In my nation, I witness how hundreds of years of colonial oppression, through harmful structures, policies and laws, have resulted in us being disconnected from our lands, culture, medicines, ceremonies, and relations,” he said in a statement.
“Compounded by the residential and days schools, Sixties Scoop, and the child welfare system, this has led to devastating trauma.”
Monkman said the SCO has a unique role in promoting harm reduction in part because provincial health care systems don’t always consider care from an Indigenous-led approach.
That approach puts reducing the harms caused by colonization in the forefront and focuses on traditional methods of healing.
“If you think about with COVID, there was First Nations-led, or Indigenous-led immunization clinics, and they were very, very successful,” she said. “It’s really becoming a leading model of practice.”
SCO receives funding for harm reduction programs through Indigenous Services Canada.
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.