As the toxic drug crisis continues to plague communities across northwestern Ontario, First Nations are training community members in best practices for working with those experiencing addiction.
The Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority (SLFNHA) provides services to members of 33 First Nations, 28 of which are remote.
In 2021, the organization says SLFNHA band members were hospitalized for mental health and addictions issues at six times the provincial rate.
As well, between 2011 and 2021, more than 13 per cent of unnatural deaths reported in SLFNHA’s catchment area were linked to alcohol and drug-related causes.
“Addiction is a lifetime struggle for a lot of people,” said Janet Gordon, SLFNHA’s vice president of community health.
Last week, SLFNHA released a new Opioid Use Disorder Guide for community members and local service providers.
The goal is to educate people about opioid use disorder, the effects of opioid consumption and risks of poisonings and overdoses, and options for treatment and harm reduction services.
“It’s important to know the people that you’re dealing with, what the struggles are, what those terms mean, terminology and just being aware of, I think, signs and symptoms or behaviour of people,” Gordon said.
“If they have that knowledge, they’re able to make decisions that are safe for their clients and are also safe for them.”
The rate of opioid-related deaths for First Nations people in the province tripled between 2019 and 2022, according to a report co-authored by researchers at Chiefs of Ontario and the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network, released in October.
“In 2022, First Nations people were dying at a rate nine times higher than for non-First Nations — 12.8 deaths per 10,000 people compared to 1.4 per 10,000,” Chiefs of Ontario said.
While SLFNHA’s guide serves as a useful tool at the community level, “we need way more than that.”
“We need to be able to have the facilities to support this work. We need ongoing long-term recovery supports,” said Gordon.
SLFNHA’s guide explains how addiction is a chronic disease influenced by a number of factors, such as mental health, genetics and one’s living conditions.
“For many First Nations people, the roots of addiction are linked to colonization, including the loss of language, culture, and family through systems like residential schools and child welfare systems,” the guide says.
The guide includes information about local options for opioid agonist therapy (OAT), such as suboxone or sublocade, as well as harm reduction tools like naloxone kits, which can be used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
“We want to support this treatment program [OAT] but we also want to support harm reduction,” Gordon said.
For instance, SLFNHA communities have seen a rise in infections like Hepatitis C due to drug use. This prompted the health authority to launch a needle exchange program to encourage people to use new drug equipment and prevent the spread of bloodborne illnesses.
Meanwhile, the guide also encourages something known as two-eyed seeing, which means addressing addiction through both Western science and Indigenous knowledge “to support people in a more holistic way.”
Though the primary goal is sharing knowledge locally, Gordon said she hopes the guide also helps spread awareness about the need for long-term resources in remote communities.
“People are in different stages of recovery, right? Not everybody is in the same place, so we have to be aware of that as well,” she said.
“We also wanted to [encourage] prevention so people don’t start doing drugs, right? So that’s part of our work as well.”
