Drugs, AIDS take toll on marginalized people

I produced a documentary in 2007 about the extent of HIV/AIDS in the aboriginal community. My research findings so astonished me that I called the documentary The Hidden Plague.

AIDS is rampant in the aboriginal community and it’s growing. The root cause lies in the high-risk lifestyle of many of our people. Drug addiction and needle sharing have become the highway that transports the AIDS virus among our people.

One of the subjects I interviewed was Billy Dreaver, who admitted to me that he’d had a drug problem since he was a teenager. He was doing cocaine at age 14 and was running heroin on the streets of Vancouver at 15 years.

He was in his late 40s when I met him, but his face revealed the hard life of drug addiction and the growing ravages of AIDS. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome is a slowmotion disease, where the virus weakens the immune system. Over the years a person’s resistance to disease gradually wears off, and the individual’s health suffers.

Sadly, Billy died last week. He had suffered from lung infection for some time and eventually it got the better of him. For many people who passed him on the sidewalk, he was just another Indian living on the street. But those of us who knew him understood that he was bright and talented.

Early in his life he had lots of potential, but drugs became his priority. He was an artist who never had the opportunity to grow his work beyond the early stages. I’m sure that if he had been given the opportunity, Billy could have been a very talented artist.

HIV/AIDS is robbing us of many of our people, but the enormity of the problem continues to fly under the radar. Saskatchewan in 2010 reported the highest rate of HIV in Canada, at almost three times the national average. Of all the newly reported cases that year, 73 per cent involved aboriginal persons — consistent with previous years, when twothirds or more of new cases were aboriginal people.

On a positive side, the rate of HIV infection has dropped 14 per cent compared to 2009. This is the first reduction since monitoring began in 1984.

The statistics are one thing, but it is unknown how many cases go unreported. Because of the high-risk lifestyle of many drug addicts, they tend to ignore warning signs and seek help only when it is too late. Their deaths may be misdiagnosed as pneumonia or some other infection, and an AIDS statistic is missed.

I had another friend, Billy Brass, who died some time ago. He, too, was a talented artist and had severe addiction issues. The only time he could paint was when he was behind bars, which was often.

The last time I saw him he was headed back to his reserve to attend a funeral. He looked in rough shape, and I “lent” him some money for the trip. A few months later I heard that he had died, and the cause was a heart attack. I knew that years of hard living had precipitated the attack and it really didn’t come as a surprise.

I spoke to a mutual friend about him, who agreed that Brass had great talent and could have accomplished more, but the trauma of boarding school and his subsequent addictions had made it impossible.

“He was too smart to be an Indian,” my friend said. I thought about it and it made sense.

In a world that sees limited value in our people, welfare and grunt work have become the lifestyle options. Talent and brains can be a liability. Sensitive, thinking individuals suffered the most in the boarding school experience. Underachieving is a frustrating way to go through life, and drugs and alcohol ease the pain.

I have another friend in the pipeline. He once showed talent as a writer, but an upbringing in foster homes and subsequent time in jail took their toll. His life was outside the law, ruled by drugs. He has contracted AIDS, and the prognosis is that he won’t survive the year. He has basically given up, and decided to leave this world high.

Throughout their lives all these men and others were ignored or shunned by society, had doors slammed in their face and were stereotyped as addicts and worthless. But they all had friends and family, and people who loved and respected them. They are the collateral casualties of colonialism, and they are missed.

Discounting people reduces us all.