First Nations need to find own solutions
Plan of action would be to establish a ‘values circle’
Dr. Richard Thatcher has spent a lifetime dealing with First Nations issues of the kind that most likely had at least something to do with last month’s tragedy in La Loche.
And like many who acquire vast knowledge, the social and community health planning consultant’s solutions can be as complex as the problems themselves. This is especially true in remote First Nations communities like La Loche that are isolated from economic opportunity and have seen despair fill the void that opportunity has vacated.
But while Thatcher loathes the simplistic, knee-jerk responses he has heard in the wake of the La Loche tragedy — from abandoning the community to throwing more money at the issue — he does think the start of the solution is rather simple: First Nations community leaders need to establish a “values circle” where they, themselves, define their problems and needs and decide how to address them.
“In these circles, they have to make choices,” Thatcher said in an interview. “They have to discuss and they have to decide themselves what they are willing to do ...
“Until they work through this they aren’t going to address the problems.”
If anything good is to come out of this tragedy, it may be finding ways to address the patterns and multiple factors that have led to “social pathologies in those communities,” he said.
By way of background, Thatcher has worked for various governments, universities and First Nations communities in his area of expertise. He is also author of the book Fighting Firewater Fictions — Moving Beyond the Disease Model of Alcoholism in First Nations in which he argues that alcoholism is wrongly attributed as a weakness and source of First Nations problems when really it’s just one of the many factors that lead to an array of problems in such communities.
Low levels of education, unemployment, inter-generational social assistance dependency and long-term dependency on public housing produce disproportionate alcoholism, drug abuse, family violence, child neglect, child abuse, broken homes and high incarceration rates, Thatcher said.
“These are standard outcomes for impoverished concentrations of populations that have been separated from their traditional economic base, and displacement of traditional patterns of living, beliefs and social norms,” according to the sociologist. “This is true whether such circumstances adhere in La Loche or Buffalo Narrows, north Winnipeg or inner-city areas of Detroit, Baltimore or the Bantustans of South Africa.”
But the primary causes of such poverty and social upheaval is the isolation from market opportunities, he said. “These communities are essentially left stranded outside the modern marketplace and for the most part forgotten by the outside world.”
Due to a lack of economic opportunity and purpose, self-medication through alcohol and drugs becomes a predictable outcome for men in particular, Thatcher said. And this lack of identity then becomes expressed in violence both inside and outside the family — violence that often extends to family breakdown and high youth suicide rates, child abuse and homicide.
Thatcher said the only way to change the reality is for society to address the two elephants in the room: Local economies “that can’t keep up with growing aboriginal populations and social assistance dependency” and “the anti-social and suicidal behaviour patterns associated with binge drinking and other forms of substance abuse.”
What is now needed is a vehicle — a values circle — in which First Nations community leaders and elders identify the problems themselves and set out a path to solutions, he said. They need to lean on traditional values and economies but they should also be able to “cherry pick” the best from the modern economy. “Maybe they will have to look further than the little patch of land they are on.”
It may take a decade or longer to produce results. But if there is any good to come out of the La Loche tragedy, it will be First Nations communities taking a look at how they should solve their problems themselves.