Siblings start campaign against suicide
Online efforts launched to support indigenous youth
Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Monday, October 31, 2016
HAY RIVER
Two former residents of Hay River - Kelvin Redvers and his sister Tunchai Redvers - have just launched an online campaign to combat suicide among indigenous youth.
The campaign, which began on Oct. 18, is called We Matter.
"It's a simple idea," said Kelvin in a phone interview. "We Matter is about gathering short messages from people across the country that can communicate with indigenous youth that no matter how hopeless things can feel that there is always a way forward."
Because some youth face addiction and depression, and some take their own lives, Kelvin said he and his sister felt it was time to come at the issue in a way that was grounded, hopeful and positive, and comes from the community.
"It's based on the It Gets Better project in the U.S. which was specifically for LGBT youth," he said, noting some LGBT teenagers were taking their lives in high school.
We Matter will offer personal and direct messages of support to young people.
"We started with 20 and the idea is from now on people everywhere can upload their own message, they're own little voice that they think can help people whether it's one minute or two minutes or three minutes," Kelvin said.
"And if we can get messages from every community across Canada, then any youth that's going through a hard time will have somebody that they can relate to sharing a bit of hope and that they matter."
The first 20 videos featured messages from role models such as the music group A Tribe Called Red, author Joseph Boyden and children's advocate Cindy Blackstock, along with youth and ordinary people. One of the messages is from Fort Resolution elder Violet Beaulieu.
"We wanted to get the ball rolling so people could see the sort of messages that are out there, and to us it was important to get a mix," said Kelvin.
Eventually, he hopes that We Matter will have hundreds of video messages.
"I think it's important to have a diverse set of voices so that someone in a specific community like someone in Fort Simpson could find a Fort Simpson voice," he said.
Kelvin Redvers, who now lives in Vancouver, is a filmmaker.
His sister is studying for her master's degree in social work at Wilfred Laurier University in Ontario.
Tunchai Redvers said the idea for We Matter was influenced by her and her brother growing up in Hay River.
"We have experience with many issues that a lot of indigenous youth face, like intergenerational trauma, bullying, feelings of hopelessness and loneliness, isolation," she said.
"We've been there. We've also seen it quite a bit in the communities in the North and we're also very overwhelmed and tired of hearing about aboriginal youth across Canada taking their lives, especially within the past year it's been really bad. And we wanted to do something."
Tunchai said they wanted to approach the problem with hope and positivity.
Speaking to News/North after the campaign's launch, she noted We Matter had already received tremendous support and had many video views and shares on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
"Our hope is that people from across the country will upload their own videos and it will grow into just a library of positive messages of hope and resilience," she said.
Kelvin noted that We Matter had 12,000 views on Facebook in the campaign's first couple of days.
"It's been overwhelmingly positive," he said.
Kelvin and Tunchai Redvers are members of Deninu Ku'e First Nation.
They co-founded We Matter as a registered not-for-profit organization.
The Royal Bank of Canada was the campaign's founding partner, and it also received some support from the GNWT's Department of Health and Social Services and the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation.
Kelvin said the plan is to make We Matter a permanent online campaign, adding, "Our goal is for it to continue to grow."
