NATIVE TEACHING TOUTED TO FIGHT DRUGS

Native culture and ceremony may be tools aboriginal communities can
use in future to combat epidemic illicit drug use among Canadian first
nations communities, aboriginal leaders said Monday.

Chief Wayne Christian of the Splats'in First Nation near Enderby and
Kevin Barlow, executive director of the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS
Network, told the 17th annual International Conference on the
Reduction of Drug Related Harm that drug use, particularly among young
aboriginals, is rising and that native leaders don't know how to deal
with it.

"The numbers are growing, and we're still struggling to get hold of
the situation," Barlow said.

In Splats'in, as many as 40 of the community's 400 residents are
regular drug users, Christian said.

"We had two fatal overdoses in the last two months, and another
near-overdose," he told reporters.

Crystal meth, crack and injection drugs were cited as the drugs of
choice.

Christian and Barlow say that while the provincial and federal
governments must do their part in combating the crisis, aboriginal
communities need to recognize the importance of culture and ceremony
in restoring a young drug user's spiritual health.

"When people are active in addiction, they're not allowed to
participate in ceremonies because they're supposed to be free of
addiction," Barlow said. "But maybe that needs to change."

He and Christian say government displacement of aboriginal people and,
until recently, the crushing of their traditions, has resulted in
chronic material and spiritual poverty which, in turn, has led to drug
addiction.

Now that traditional aboriginal practices, such as the potlatch and
sweat lodges, are permitted and even encouraged, they hope they can
play a part in dealing with the drug crisis.

"You have to provide [young people] with ceremony and at least some
spiritual teaching," Barlow said.

Christian also says talking to elders may help. "Young people are
beginning to connect with elders and to understand the pain they went
through," he says.

More than 80 per cent of aboriginal community leaders told an NNADAP
survey in 1998, the most recent to date, that the effect of drug use
on native communities is a "constant" or "frequent" concern.

Christian and Barlow said that apart from a few casual needle-exchange
programs, there are no formal harm-reduction programs in aboriginal
communities because the concept is still new to them.