Anishinabek leaders advocate for greater accessibility to resources

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY — Fort William Chief Michele Solomon, Long Lake #58 Chief Judy Desmoulin, and Pays Plat’s Chris Mushquash were featured on the first day of the NNADAP Conference 2024, held Nov. 5-7 in Thunder Bay. Hosted by the Ontario Regional Addictions Partnership Committee, the NNADAP (National Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program) conference also featured a range of workshops and presentations at the Best Western Plus NorWester Hotel and Conference Centre.

“I was excited to have the opportunity to give welcoming at the NNADAP conference — it’s kind of like a coming home for me because I spent most of my career working an a NNADAP treatment centre, Dilico,” Chief Solomon says. “I have a very heartfelt connection to that treatment centre because my mother, Rochelle Johnson, was very instrumental in the development of the treatment centre. So I have a very deep connection to the NNADAP conference and all that NNADAP is.”

Chief Solomon says there was a time when she knew all the NNADAP workers across the province.

“If anybody had their finger to the pulse of what was happening in treatment for Indigenous people, it was NNADAP workers,” Chief Solomon says. “You could call any of them and they really knew what the resources were out there and it was really a network of helpers for our community, a network of people who could get people to the right place to get help.”

Chief Desmoulin delivered a Healing with Strategy presentation at the conference, where she stressed that there has always been an attack on First Nations children and families.

“Healthy and strong children and families are the reason different races of people survive and thrive, so my talk today is based on strategies, but I just want to stress that government had a strategy as well to try and make us disappear,” Chief Desmoulin says. “They had their strategies through powers and procedures, laws, but obviously that didn’t work, we’re still here, we’re still sitting here and learning from each other, sharing with one another and just motivating each other to keep inspiring one another to keep going.”

Chief Desmoulin says the whole purpose of the government’s strategy with the Indian Residential Schools was to take the Indian out of the child.

“The government had a strategy to try and get rid of us, so I thought, OK, we need strategies to get out of this as well,” Chief Desmoulin says. “We need plans in how we’re going to get back on track and go past that period of time where we were taken off our healthy road.”

Chief Desmoulin says she recently met with a youth who had not used any drugs or alcohol for nine weeks after participating in Long Lake #58’s Better Together Wellness Strategy.

“He said, ‘One of things that you guys talked about [during the Better Together Wellness Strategy sessions] was you need to change your friends, you need to change some of your environment,’” Chief Desmoulin says. “‘I really did it,’ he said, ‘I changed my friends, I didn’t answer their texts anymore, I didn’t respond to their invites to come out and do those things. For the first few weeks, I just hung out with my mom.’ He said, ‘I’ve got my part-time job now, I just come to my job, do my [job] and go home and find ways to keep busy.’ And he said, ‘Give me a few more weeks and I’ll be able to come and be on your team to help.’”

Mushquash, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Mental Health and Addiction, professor at Lakehead University and Northern Ontario School of Medicine University and clinical psychologist at Dilico Anishinabek Family Care, delivered a Trauma Informed Care and Intergenerational Trauma presentation during the conference.

“It’s important that we look very carefully at these questions of intergenerational trauma and how to be trauma-informed but also really look to the strengths and knowledge inherent within our communities and within our cultures to address the challenges that we have and continue to have the belief in our ability to work on that together,” Mushquash says.

Mushquash says during his presentation that he tries to use some of the stories he has heard from others as well as those he has experienced himself to organize his thinking.

“I always say that if you’re paying attention to your culture, if you’re paying attention to who you are, to what your responsibilities are, if you understand your identity, you know what your role is, the universe shows things to you,” Mushquash says. “It reminds you of those things, it helps you understand them in a new way sometimes when you need those lessons at the very moment.”