Glen Vienneau
Northern News Services

Rae/Edzo (Oct 09/00) - A region-wide effort to battle alcohol and drug addiction has brought together people from throughout the Dogrib communities.

It started last week as 30 professionals, including nurses, teachers, social workers and addiction counsellors, began a year-long training program.

"The first thing they needed to do was to build a foundation of trained people in every community who understood addictions, who understood what addictions do to families and to the communities," said Jim Martin, chief executive officer of the Dogrib Community Services Board.

It's part of an overall strategy that Martin believes goes beyond anything that has ever been done in the territory in the past.

"The only answer that Northern communities have ever come up about alcohol is prohibition," said Martin.

The Dogrib plan calls for building stronger communities.

"Hopefully through this, the family will be stronger at staying sober together and working together as a whole family team," said Cecillia Zoe-Martin, Addictions Strategy Steering Committee member.

The idea came out of 'For the Sake of Our Children,' a strategy adopted by the Dogrib First Nations two years ago.

One of the first steps was to train professionals to deal with alcohol and drug addictions in the communities. The community services board received $568,000 in August from the Dogrib Treaty 11 council to begin the training.

They went looking for the best help they could, and hired the Alberta-based Nechi Institute on Alcohol and Drug Education to train the steering committee members as drug and alcohol counsellors.

By the end of the program, which started in September, the steering committee members will have earned aboriginal alcohol and drug counselling certificates.

Zoe-Martin said one of the solutions is to help those fighting their addictions to return from a healing program and enter a new home environment as well.

The strategy includes plans to train students as peer counsellors and get more funding for land camps where people with alcohol and drug problems can take part in traditional healing programs.

Recently, the board received $150,000 from Aboriginal Healing Foundation in Ottawa for land healing programs.

These efforts will not solve the communities' drug and alcohol problems overnight, noted Zoe-Martin.

Martin estimates that 95 per cent of the social, health, legal, family problems are related to alcohol, drugs and gambling.

It results in people being charged for assaults and impaired driving.