The answer lies within the communities: expert
FASD researcher says traditional knowledge useful in prevention and intervention
Erin Steele
Northern News Services
Published Monday, March 10, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
There is a wealth of knowledge already existent in Northern communities that can help with prevention of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder - an umbrella term for disabilities related to alcohol consumption while pregnant - according to one researcher.
Marilyn Van Bibber, associate director with the Arctic Institute of Community-Based Research, was in Yellowknife last week for the Canadian Northwest FASD Partnership Symposium and spoke on a panel discussing the incorporation of traditional knowledge and culture in FASD prevention and intervention.
"It's a resource we can all use. It's not just useful for indigenous people in the North. I think it's useful for other people as well," Van Bibber told News/North.
"There are distinct indigenous groups of people (in the North). They each have their own teachings and if they were raised in a traditional way, you would learn all these things. Learn about the land and learn about the underpinning that would guide your behaviour and how you conduct yourself," she said.
Van Bibber was at a cultural camp in the bush not long ago to talk about wellness with the participants and felt first-hand the healing power of the land and community.
"We were all there together and had something to offer. Sometimes in a community that's not picked up as quickly if you're involved in risky behaviour. It was good all around. It showcased that," said Van Bibber.
She says practical solutions must come from the communities themselves.
"The development of traditional knowledge is something that is not going to be dictated from somebody like myself. It's going to be community-driven, community-based. So that knowledge is in the community," she said.
Either way, support is key.
"Across the North we need to have permanent supportive programming that allows for a mentor-type system where somebody can help somebody who has a disability," she said.
"This is a permanent, lifelong disability so the supports need to be permanent and lifelong as well."
Doreen Reid, who works as the FASD consultant and project co-ordinator with the Department of Justice in Yellowknife, suffers from a lifelong brain-based disability herself - cerebral palsy.
Reid says the language around how we talk about disabilities needs to change.
Disorder, damage, retardation, deficiencies - all these words are found in the first paragraph in the introduction of the "consensus statement on legal issues of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder 2013," said Reid.
"How does this make a person feel? You hear all this talk of people with fetal alcohol who have brain damage," she said.
"Somebody with fetal alcohol has brain damage, but somebody like Sydney Crosby who can get shoved against the boards and get a major concussion, he has a brain injury. You see the difference in tone there?" she said.
According to Donna Allen, director of territorial health services with Health and Social Services, the point to the annual symposium is to bring all these different voices together.
"The purposes are to form that coalition to share best practices and learn from each other. To have some common messaging around how FASD can be prevented," she said.
"To bring together, largely, experts in the field but, also, as you
can see here today, people who are living with and supporting people who are living with FASD just to share the kinds of things they've learned, developments, programs that may need to be (available)," said Allen.
