The federal government confirmed a third year of funding for community-led mental health and wellness programs as part of its effort to reduce the number of suicides in the Northwest Territories.
“Suicide prevention is a critical issue for Indigenous peoples across the country,” MP Michael McLeod said Wednesday.
“We must reach a point where no more young Indigenous lives are lost to suicide.”
Seven programs aimed at Indigenous youth will get a total of $500,000 to continue operations through 2018-19.
The half-million sum rounds out a three-year, $1.25-million commitment from Ottawa to fund community-led mental health and addictions programs in NWT, which began in 2016-17.
It is unclear however, if dollars will continue flowing after this fiscal year.
“There's always hope,” Glen Abernethy, the minister of Health and Social Services, said when asked whether these mental health projects would continue to receive funding in future years.
He said the GNWT gives $1.2 million to Indigenous governments to deliver programs of their choosing and they may decided to fund these programs with that money.
McLeod said programs designed by and for Indigenous peoples typically have strong land and cultural components and can help young people heal from intergenerational trauma.
It is widely accepted that Canada's long history of forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples and repudiation of Aboriginal rights, the brutal residential school system and the rampant apprehension of children from their parents and communities, amounted to a cultural genocide and caused intergenerational trauma.
Abernethy said suicide rates vary across the territory, but rates in the Beaufort-Delta region are on par with those in Nunavut, “which are some of the highest rates in the country.”
“As we come down the valley they get a little less,” he said, “but they're still higher than we'd see in southern Canada.”
According to the most recent data available from the NWT Bureau of Statistics, of the 208 deaths in 2015, nine (four per cent) were suicides.
Suicides have accounted for between three and 5.5 per cent of deaths in the territory each year since 2011.
McLeod said the most effective mental wellness programs involve elders, experienced hunters and people with knowledge of the land.
These programs “allow the youth to become very proud of their heritage, their history and develop skills at the same time,” he said.
Abernethy said that right now there is no way of evaluating how well these programs are working, because each one is different.
He said the government is working on an “evaluation mechanism” for on the land programming.
Anecdotally, said Abernethy, participants have expressed getting “significant value” out of these programs.
The following are projects getting federal funding:
Ecole St. Patrick's coming of age camps;
Deh Gah Got'ie First Nation's Mentoring Youth on the Land program;
K'asho Got'in Charter Community's Back to the Land Cultural Camp;
Woods Homes' Finding Balance program, a cultural camp for youth and families in treatment;
Deninu Kue First Nation's Youth Healing on the Land program;
the Tlicho government's program for youth who are not in school or working in which they harvest food and distribute it to elders;
and the Tlicho government's Healing Program in Wekweeti.
Of the $1.25 million, said Abernethy, $900,000 went to programming, $150,000 went to administrative costs and $200,000 was used for promotions, travel and meetings with community leaders and project organizers.
He said there is an opportunity to fund a couple more projects this year in addition to the seven listed.