Retracing Our Paths

In January 2007, an eighteen-year-old Indigenous youth named Robyn Harper arrived in Thunder Bay to continue her high school education. Robyn came from Keewaywin First Nation, which only offered education up to grade 8. However, within days, Robyn passed away from acute alcohol poisoning, left to die on the hallway floor of her boarding home. Robyn’s death is not an isolated incident; she is one of the seven Indigenous youths whose deaths were documented in Seven Fallen Feathers, a book written by award-winning Anishinaabe journalist and author Tanya Talaga. Robyn represents thousands of Indigenous youths who suffer from alcohol and substance abuse across Canada. Indigenous youths are disproportionately affected by substance abuse. A Government of Canada study found that Indigenous youths have five times higher odds of being smokers and significantly higher rates of marijuana use than their non-Indigenous peers. To avoid any more “Fallen Feathers,” the Canadian government must move on from using generic, non-specific policies and start implementing interventions specific to Indigenous communities under the guidance of Indigenous partners. I write this as a non-Indigenous student — not to speak for Indigenous communities, but to amplify what Indigenous leaders, scholars, and writers have already said about what healing requires.

The substance abuse crisis is a tragic yet predictable outcome of Canada’s colonial past. An article written by award-winning Sagamok Anishnawbek author Peter Menzies illustrates how intergenerational trauma resulting from colonial policies such as the residential school system and the mass removal of Indigenous children during the Sixties Scoop render Indigenous youths unable to develop appropriate coping strategies to deal with life stressors. The story of Owen Pelletier, a member of Cowessess First Nation, serves as an illustration of the modern impacts of intergenerational trauma. As a “little Indian foster kid,” he was abandoned by parents who struggled with addiction themselves. Lacking healthy coping mechanisms, youths like Pelletier turned to substances and gangs to find belonging. Jennifer Lavalley, a Métis scholar writing for the Canadian Medical Association Journal, reinforces the link between colonial trauma and addiction. She states that “Canada’s drug overdose crisis disproportionately affects Indigenous peoples differently owing to a legacy of colonialism, racism and intergenerational trauma.” It is evident that any government solutions that want to effectively address the substance abuse crisis amongst Indigenous youths must address the intergenerational trauma inflicted by Canada’s colonial policies.

To resolve the substance abuse crisis, the provincial government of British Columbia launched a drug-decriminalization program. Edzi’u Loverin, a member of the Tahltan Nation, published an article on CBC News outlining the ambitious three-year pilot project. Launched on Jan. 21, 2023, the initiative allows people aged 18 and over to possess up to 2.5 grams of illicit substances for personal use. This initiative is supported by Lavalley, who states that “drug decriminalization must be central to the Government of Canada’s reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples” and “while drugs remain criminalized, strides toward addressing the overdose epidemic among Indigenous people who use drugs will remain futile.” Nadine Yousif, a senior Canada reporter from BBC News, echoes Lavalley, noting that “Decriminalisation is based on the argument that the war on drugs has failed — that arresting people with severe addiction and seizing their drugs could increase their likelihood of overdose by forcing them to find other drugs that may be lethal. A criminal record may also bar them from finding a stable job, reducing the chance of recovery.”

The program has seen some successes since its launch: Yousif acknowledges that there has been a 76% decrease in drug possession charges in the first year of the policy, and the number of people seeking support has increased — a sign that demand for help exists, even if the right kind of help does not. However, the shortcomings of the program are also evident. While acknowledging the benefits of the program, Yousif also concedes that the number of deaths related to drug use has increased by 5 percent. The CBC article also illustrates the many concerns experts hold regarding the program, including that of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), which states that “the province failed to support the drug decriminalization project by not investing in other models of care, such as prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery support.” This healthcare gap matters the most for the population hit the hardest by the drug-abuse crisis. Although First Nations only make up 3.4% of British Columbia’s population, the First Nations Health Authority reports that they accounted for nearly 19% of drug-related deaths in 2024 and died at 6.7 times the rate of other residents. Nearly half of those deaths involve people under 40, yet BC released no decriminalization data specifically about Indigenous people; therefore, there is no evidence it improved outcomes for the very population it most needed to reach. The central barrier holding the youths back from healing is not the justice system, but rather the lack of support systems and the intergenerational trauma inflicted by an unempathetic colonial government. This is backed up by Dr. Nel Wieman, the First Nations Health Authority’s deputy Chief Medical Officer, who states that First Nations lives are saved through connection, culture, and programs that are community led — not through the removal of legal penalties alone. Drug decriminalization fails because it leaves Indigenous youths in a vacuum where support is minimal, and trauma still unresolved, a gap that can only be filled by programs specifically designed for Indigenous recovery.

A more effective alternative for bettering the widespread Indigenous youth drug abuse crisis is the use of Evidence Based Programs (EBPs). Assistant professor Jarreed D. Ivanich from the University of Colorado explains in his research paper that EBPs involve taking interventions with proven success in one demographic and adapting them to meet the needs of another; in this context, Indigenous ones. An article published by the Public Health Agency of Canada states that many EBPs are funded by the Canadian government through the Youth Substance Use Prevention Program to help build community-driven evidence-based programs. The programs are not without challenges, however.

One concern that Ivanich brings up is how well such programs are adapted to Indigenous communities. Talaga’s Seven Fallen Feathers illustrates the unique understandings Indigenous people have of the world, meaning that they need very different approaches to healing. Without proper adaptation, an evidence-based program can be easily rejected by an Indigenous community because it does not resonate with their worldviews. This is supported by an article from the Canadian Child Welfare Research Portal, led by Dr. Genevieve Sansone of the University of Toronto’s Fraser Mustard Institute, which states: “Some key findings that emerged included the importance of culture as part of a holistic approach to treatment and recovery and the value of integrating Western treatment methods with traditional Indigenous approaches to healing and wellness to better meet the needs of FNMI clients.” Another concern outlined in Ivanich’s paper is on ensuring that the programs are adapted for Indigenous contexts while maintaining the core components that made the original intervention effective; if the program gets altered too much, it is hard to guarantee that it will produce the results anticipated.

Before introducing the potential solutions to the above concerns, it is important to address a case study introduced by Ivanich. The program “Bii-Zin-Da-De-Dah” (BZDDD), the adapted evidence-based program at the center of this case study, is funded by the IRINAH initiative (Intervention Research to Improve Native American Health); it involved seven small Indigenous communities in the upper Midwest and Canada. BZDDD is adapted from the Iowa State Strengthening Families Program for Parents and Youths 10–14, a substance-use prevention program designed to reduce teen drug and alcohol use by strengthening family connection and parenting skills. The original program utilized group meals, separate youth and adult sessions, and video-based discussions. Games and activities were also used to foster interaction and provide opportunities to practice skills.

BZDDD addresses two central concerns. On the first concern of adaptability, BZDDD consulted many Indigenous community members in their adaptations and took into consideration their wants and needs. Ivanich stated that from the start, “it became abundantly clear that the community did not want a dominant culture prevention program but one that reflected the cultural strengths of their families and culturally specific protective factors.” The importance of listening to community feedback is amplified by Talaga’s Seven Fallen Feathers, as we see most of the progress made towards resolving the education disparities faced by Indigenous youths being made by Indigenous communities; when government interventions failed, the Indigenous communities and leaders were the ones who established somewhat-successful educational programs, such as the Wahsa Distance Education Center in 1991, and the boarding program which enabled students from faraway Indigenous communities to study in Thunder Bay. BZDDD and the Wahsa Distance Education Center were imperfect, yet they were far more effective than the federal and provincial interventions that preceded them. Consulting Indigenous voices is crucial for successful EBP adaptations.

On the second concern regarding securing the balance between adapting the programs for Indigenous contexts and maintaining the core components that make EBPs effective, Ivanich suggests that the “best practices to date include cultural relevance, including top-down core components of the original program and bottom-up components derived from cultural practice and teachings.” In this approach, the EBP maintains the general elements making the original program effective, while filling it up with specific Indigenous traditions and practices. To exemplify this, BZDDD kept the core themes of the original program (i.e., family and community) while adapting it by re-shooting some of the program videos with Indigenous actors and community-developed scenarios. Seven Fallen Feathers offers a comparable, if informal, illustration of the same principle. To help students cope with the death of Reggie Bushie, Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School took the scientific skeleton of “crisis intervention via counseling” and integrated it with Indigenous practices like holding ceremonies, drumming, and offering prayers and tobacco. BZDDD has shown some great progress: “findings from the first iteration of BZDDD showed positive changes in family communication, child anger management, children’s perception of parental monitoring…” EBPs efficiently combine scientifically proven methods of healing with Indigenous values specific to different Indigenous communities, thus being a great tool for resolving the substance-abuse epidemic plaguing Indigenous youths.

Ultimately, EBPs offer the active support that decriminalization lacks. While decriminalization removes the very limited legal threats against Indigenous youths, it does not provide tools for recovery. Although Yousif suggests that decriminalization increases the number of people seeking help, it is not enough. As Métis journalist Jacky McKay reports for the CBC, former youth addict Avis O’Brien found that even though mainstream addiction services were available, they were not culturally specific, stating: “There was no access to elders, there was no cultural teachings, no land-based healing.” EBPs fix this lack of effective and culturally-specific treatment. Under the supervision and guidance of Indigenous partners and leaders, communities can take the general elements of models proven to be effective like the Matrix Model — an evidence-based treatment program recognized by the Government of Canada — and reshape them for Indigenous communities. This addresses the problems of intergenerational trauma and the lack of modes of care mentioned by Lavalley and UBCIC: EBPs rebuild the coping strategies disturbed by Canada’s colonial policies by integrating Indigenous traditions, communities, and cultural teachings into established interventions. Together with their communities, Indigenous youths can restore identity, belonging, and support systems that have been weakened. Skeptics raise a fair concern: EBPs like BZDDD have only been measured through their early iterations, with their long-term effectiveness remaining unproven; altering an already-established intervention also risks damaging the components that made it work in the first place. But that calls for continuous community-led refinements, not a retreat to the blanket policies that have already failed. A program still being corrected is far more promising than one which offers no pathway of recovery at all. Canada can finally follow the paths Indigenous communities have already charted, and move towards the culturally-specific interventions Indigenous youths need. Some histories are inherited without our choosing; but what we do with them is for us to decide. The Seven Fires teaching calls for a new generation to retrace its trail and reclaim its wisdom. You are that generation, the readers who will become the teachers, lawmakers, neighbours, and allies who will decide which kind of country Canada becomes. No matter who you are and where your family’s story begins, to live in Canada is to be shaped by its past; this shared inheritance makes reconciliation a responsibility that we all carry. The eighth fire is not lit, and that work begins with you.