Alan Lore: Men, Mentors and Mental Health

Part 10 of the “Made on Haida Gwaii” Series
June 2012
By April Diamond Dutheil

The Made on Haida Gwaii series tells the stories of fifty talented young people who call Haida Gwaii home. In this vast country, our major urban centres tend to soak up most of the attention. This collection of success stories, about young people living on these beautiful but remote islands off the Pacific coast, aims to disrupt the dominant myths of what it means to grow up in Canada’s North.

June 2012- Alan Lore in Tlell, British Columbia. Photo credit: Patrick Shannon.

“We breed a different kind of young people,” replies Alan Lore, a response to the question if growing up on Haida Gwaii limits opportunity for young people. He goes on to explain, “It’s a special place for a special people. Lots of the kids who are born here will leave and never come back. But for the ones that do come back, they will understand what makes this place a little bit different.”

Alan, who grew up on the islands, attended the College of New Caledonia and the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. He now works with the Haida Family and Child Services Society (HFCSS) to counsel and mentor island youth.

His passion for this work stems from the positive impact that local role models had on him while growing up. “I’d like to be one of those people who has a huge impact on a kid’s life,” he says, “When they look back when they’re 20, 30, and 40, I want to be one of those people where they’re like ‘man, I’m glad that guy was there.’ ”

When asked what he’s working on now, Alan replies, “I’m working on everything right now.” And he’s right. In addition to working with HFCSS he’s organizing rugby twice a week for the Haida Gwaii Rec After School Sport Initiative, operating a seven-bed hostel in the heart of Port Clements, developing an outdoors camp concept for island youth, and somehow amongst all of this, still finds time to play soccer and go surfing.

Alan wears many hats in the community, which he admits can have repercussions, both good and bad, in small communities. When working on Haida Gwaii, “Your social life and your work life are the same thing. Your family life, it’s the same thing. And that’s a very interesting aspect,” he says, “If you’re a good person, people will see that in everything that you do. If you’re a bad person people will see that in everything that you do.”

Perhaps young people in small communities are held to a higher standard, given the number of social contracts they’re pressured to fulfill, from their professional, family, and peer circles.

An example of this lies close to home for Alan. Working with youth has shifted the way in which he lives his life. “I definitely have a different lifestyle than when I was attending university,” he says, “I feel that I have to be a role model a lot more…That’s a good side about working this job. You have to think about how everyone is viewing you and what you’re doing and what shape you’re in.”

This is an important message to hear, especially here where alcoholism and substance abuse is high and it’s effects multiplied in a small knit community.

“More young people here need not to be on the booze,” says Alan. “It’s not really helping anybody and the kids need to see that it’s not ok. You know, find some anti-drug. Start doing sports, start hiking, start writing, start singing, whatever, just find other things to do,” he says.

Alan envisions a future where more is invested in mental health and wellness for youth. He would like to continue working with youth and thinks that bridging the fields of mental health, sustainability, and skills-based training would be an interesting way to achieve this.

Alan also advocates for men’s mental wellness. “There’s a piece of me that is pulling me towards helping men, there’s a problem here with violence and alcoholism and substance abuse with young and old men alike,” he says. In the North, general mental health programming is lacking. This means that men’s specific mental health services are limited and in most cases, completely absent. “There’s no men’s centre here,” says Alan, “I could see a men’s centre being very useful here.”

Age: 24
Location: Port Clements
Personal philosophy: “You can only become a better person by helping someone else to become a better person.”

Hear more stories by joining ProjectGwaii.ca. Follow Project Gwaii on Twitter and Facebook today!

Erica Ryan-Gagne: How Dancing at the 2010 Olympics Catalyzed Entrepreneurial Vision

“Made on Haida Gwaii” Series, Part 9

July 17, 2012
By April Diamond Dutheil

The Made on Haida Gwaii series tells the stories of fifty talented young people who call Haida Gwaii home. In this vast country, our major urban centres tend to soak up most of the attention. This collection of success stories, about young people living on these beautiful but remote islands off the Pacific coast, aims to disrupt the dominant myths of what it means to grow up in Canada’s North.

Skidegate, British Columbia- Erica Ryan-Gagne displays Eri-Cut & Nailed signage outside of her new salon location. Photo credit: Evil Patrick Shannon.

Winning double gold medals in hockey was a prominent memory from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. But Erica Ryan-Gagne remembers the Olympics differently than most Canadians. For her the 2010 Olympics catalyzed an entrepreneurial vision, one that she has turned into reality and continues to iterate upon.

Erica, who is of Haida heritage, was invited to perform along with over 300 Indigenous Canadians at the 2010 Olympic ceremonies in Vancouver. In addition to performing, Erica was introduced to a series of workshops and speakers organized for Indigenous performers. One topic was on entrepreneurship.

For Erica this introduction to entrepreneurship was timely, “I was finally ready to hear it,” she says, “It just sunk in and planted the seed.” Equipped with inspiration, Erica returned home and took the next step. “I asked myself, what are some of the demands in my community and how can I fill that demand,” she says.

In October 2010 Erica launched her first enterprise, Eri-Cut & Nailed, a one stop salon providing manicure, pedicure, and hair cutting services to the residents of Haida Gwaii.

Filling a niche, Erica provides a much-needed service to people of Haida Gwaii who prior to Eri-Cut & Nailed despaired over dry cuticles and disproportionate nails until their bi-annual trip to Vancouver. She also provides scissor and clipper haircut services for men.

Not limited to cosmetic incentives, Erica notes the therapeutic benefits of her services, “Eri-cut & Nailed provides a get away for people to relax, if only for an hour,” she says.

From a purely economic analysis, the northwest is depressed and unemployment and underemployment is high. Providing low cost and healthy ways for people to feel good about themselves makes good business and social sense.

Nearly two years from the launch of Eri-Cut & Nailed, Erica and her husband, Joshua Gagne, are finishing renovations on a new space. With plans for a grand opening in the near future, Erica describes her new salon as “clean, relaxed, funky and professional.”

This is exactly how Erica pictured her vision, “The business was a way for me to live my life the way I saw it, I wanted to have kids and I wanted to be mom but I didn’t want to entirely give up working I just didn’t see it that way,” she says, “It’s great that I can do both and make that happen.”

However, the road to where Erica is today, as for most, was not a path of linearity or planned prescriptiveness, “I kind of wandered and did a lot of random jobs, worked really hard for a lot of other people,” she says.

Erica hopes that the story of her journey can be conveyed to young people facing similar questions about what to do next, “When I get my hands on young people I just encourage them to look to that same route that I took.” It’s possible to discover what you love, be happy and to make money doing it she says.

Erica was named Young Female Entrepreneur of the Year by the BC Achievement Foundation and is a recipient of the New Relationship Trust’s Young Entrepreneurs Symposium travel scholarship, the Hollyhock Social Venture Institute scholarship, Haida Gwaii Community Futures small business loan, and the Northern Savings Credit Union Be Remarkable Micro-Loan.

She is a graduate of the Aboriginal BEST program and the Marvel College Cosmetology School and Hair Salon.

Matching personal with professional growth, Erica and her husband recently welcomed a new baby girl into the world.

Age 28
Location: Skidegate
Philosophy: When you do what you love it doesn’t really feel like work in the end.

Hear more stories by joining Project Gwaii at ProjectGwaii.ca
Follow us @ProjectGwaii on Twitter and Facebook.

How history makes a better future for Inuit youth

Inuit youth attending schools of the Canadian Arctic are likely to learn more about the American Revolution than their own history. Inuit comprise about 85% of Nunavut’s population. While Inuit culture, artwork, clothing and lifestyles are romanticized around the world, few schools in Nunavut, Canada’s youngest territory, teach the history of Canadian Inuit.

Amy Owingayak, youth researcher, models traditional Inuit clothing in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut. Photo: Becky Qilavvaq.

This creates problems for Inuit youth and southerners trying to create positive social change. How can Inuit youth affect the Arctic’s future without knowing and learning from its past? Climate change and proposals to develop the North’s resources make daily headlines. Understanding traditional practices and the importance of cultural and historical relations to land and resources are important to dealing with these changes.

Inuit youth under 24 are 56% of the approximately 55,000 Inuit occupying the Canadian Arctic. It’s a figure that has more in common with South countries than the rest of Canada. Arviat, an Inuit community on the west coast of Hudson Bay, has the highest birth rate in the country, and one of the highest in the world.  Inuit youth live in territories dominated by persistent problems with housing, health, food security, young Inuit suicide, unemployment and family problems—often rooted in a history of residential schooling. Young Inuit suicide is eight times the Canadian national rate. Young males in the Baffin Region have the highest suicide rate in the world.  At the same time, mental health services in many communities are inadequate, unimaginative and unable to cope with present-day realities.

Graveyard crosses in Arviat, Nunavut. Photo: Frank Tester. 

The context for these disturbing facts as well as the strength to deal with them are found in the details of Inuit social history.

In the period after the Second World War Inuit underwent one of the most rapid transformations of any cultural group in the world. From scattered hunting camps they relocated to settlements along the Arctic coast and the logic of Canadian industrial society. The transformation was dramatic and often traumatic. Inuit were relocated to parts of the Arctic they had never seen before. They experienced periods of hunger and even starvation. In some communities their sled dogs, seen as a menace, were slaughtered. They were sent to residential schools. They confronted foreign ways of living, rules, regulations and norms. Inuit journeyed from igloos and skin tents to microwaves and iPhones in a generation.  They survived and thrived, the creation of Nunavut being a testament to their courage and perseverance.

Understanding this history is essential to appreciating current social realities and the challenges facing Inuit youth. These including climate change as well as the social relations and difficulties found in many Inuit communities. Appreciating the origins of these challenges equips Inuit youth with the insights needed to address them.

Unfortunately, it is a historical record with which many Inuit youth are unfamiliar. Elders often find the past a painful record, hard to discuss. Nunavut teachers, many of them from southern Canada, know little or nothing about Inuit historical experience.

To tackle this, the Nanisiniq: Arviat History Project, a two multi-media history project led by the University of British Columbia School of Social Work and the Sivulinuut Elders Society in Arviat Nunavut, worked with Inuit youth to help them research and rediscover Inuit social history. Using this knowledge, Arviat young people are re-telling their history and culture using social media, filmmaking, graphic design, and community radio—all from an Inuit perspective.

 

Youth researchers and filmmakers of the Nanisiniq: Arviat History Project. Photo: April Dutheil. 

Exploring and appreciating one’s history is an investment in one’s capacity as a young person and future contributor to Nunavut. The results are note-worthy.  

Using the past to make sense of the present. Amy Owingayak, young Inuk researcher from the project says:

…the more you learn about your history, the more you know about your identity. Before I was a part of the Nanisiniq History Project, I did not know about relocations, health or [that Inuit were sent] away for work. I did not learn about Inuit history in high school, nor did I ask my elders about it…The project helped me to grow and develop an inner sense of self.

 

Amy Owingayak at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, Ontario. Photo: Frank Tester.

Bridging the intergenerational gap between Elders with youth.

“…Inuit elders that have a lot of knowledge about Inuit history and Inuit culture. They are so rich with the traditional practices and are full of knowledge that I think are very important and useful for the future Inuit…we are losing a great amount of knowledge when we lose one elder.”

- Jordan Konek, young Inuk researcher.

 

Jordan Konek. Photo: Frank Tester.

Providing opportunities to learn employable skills in documentary filmmaking, research, communications, and social media. The team’s documentary film on the project is scheduled to launch in early 2013.

Curtis Konek interviews Inuit Elder Phillip Kigusiutnak outside of Arviat, Nunavut while Jordan Konek films. Photo: April Dutheil.

Taught southerners about Inuit history through the use of social media, like the Project’s blogsite.

What’s next? According to the project’s director, University of British Columbia Professor, Frank Tester, this initiative has implications for introducing Inuit youth to the importance of their own history and culture in tackling contemporary social and environmental issues. “There are lessons here that can help strengthen Nunavut’s education system at all levels,” he notes.

Developing a sense of pride and cultural identity is important to the mental health and well-being of all of us. Inuit youth are no exception. Without these strengths, their capacity to participate and to address contemporary issues from climate change to industrial development is limited. What the future looks like has implications for Inuit health and well-being. With a sense of their own history and culture, Inuit youth will be in a better position to deal with these pressing and important issues.  The Arctic is at the centre of global change. A strong and healthy future depends on Inuit and southern Canadians using the wisdom gained from a thoughtful appreciation of Inuit culture and history.

By April Dutheil, Nanisiniq Arviat History Project

Learn more about Inuit history on Twitter at @NanisiniqArviat and Facebook.

Prince George, A City on the Move

These are the experiences and observations of April Dutheil while living and working in Prince George, a resource transportation hub with a population of 76,000 in northern British Columbia, Canada. Born and raised in the North, April is drawn to discovering and documenting stories from northern Canadian communities. 

Prince George is a driving culture, a moving city, it’s always moving. I hated Prince George because to me it was everything that I felt was wrong.

It was moving again to somewhere I didn’t want to be, away from the people who I wanted to be with. It was an unsettling experience, this moving and changing and swaying from inconvenient to inconsistent to isolated, to not my thing. If there was ever such a place, Prince George was not mine. 

Yes, Prince George had more Starbucks than I remembered during family road trips from Haida Gwaii to Vancouver. But I was never one to derive pleasure from the name brand and number of nearby franchise establishments.

I doubt that the number of Starbucks in Prince George enticed many to the area, but were rather a service for those who were already there and needed a place to spend their disposable income. The thought of investing locally, in commercial retail or other financial opportunities, was second to the imagination of being elsewhere.

For this reason, many long term employees living in Prince George have invested in and established homes elsewhere. The highly sought-after vacation getaways in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Cancun all placed owners as far away as possible from Prince George.

I’m from the North and love many places in it, but am also aware of the destruction of the North, its environment, economy and social relationships, resulting from the demand of the resource-based economy. Developing our natural resources is a constant back and forth pull of moving and edging and straining and changing. To take the oil out of the ground, the minerals out of the ground and the trees out of the ground requires considerable moving and removing.

We move the oil, minerals and trees from the ground into trucks. We move big machinery to the land to take the resources out of the ground. We move people, mostly men, from their communities, friends and family to isolated workspaces where they become the movers of these resources. Then we ship the resources away. In northern British Columbia, we move these resources along roads and rail and soon pipe to transportation hubs to usher these resources to the global economy. 

The resources, then traded in exchange for wealth, become currency and move into all aspects of our life. The symbol for these transformed resources, money, make their way into our wallets, bank accounts, governments, schools and health care system.

With all of this moving in and within and throughout, there’s no wonder that I was feeling removed in Prince George. 

As I stood on the side of the road to catch the city bus, the reminder of this movement surrounded me. Pickup trucks of brand new Fords, Dodges and Chevrolets passed me by. The drivers stared at me from their cockpit-like position. They drove above me, moved faster than me and expelled curious, confused, pitied and pornographic, longer-than-comfortable gazes towards me. 

“Why was I standing on the side of the road? Who was I? What was I doing?” echoed their collective narratives, which flowed faster through me than the wind created by the speed of their engines.

Prince George has a moving culture, a going forward culture, a driving culture. It doesn’t wait for those who are not moving at the same speed. 

I stood there waiting for the bus as each driver and mover of pickup trucks to tow trucks to heavy duty machinery trailers to dump trucks to logging trucks gawked at me.

“Was it because I was a woman? Blonde? White? Young? On the street? Was it because my hair was short?” All of these questions pestered me as I waited each day for the bus.

These people, driving their trucks to transport resources, would later use their income derived from these activities to purchase pickup trucks to continue the moving and staring on their days-off. 

I was stared at because I wasn’t driving, I wasn’t moving and there was something wrong with that. The power differential was established. I was not a mover and they were. They were moving and I was only removed. I was removed from their attainment of wealth, system of extraction and culture of movement. I was traveling at a different pace. 

The context of why so many women have gone missing on the Highway of Tears near Prince George requires more complex and considerate care than my reasoning here.

However, in our focus on natural resources and how we can move them, we’ve neglected the women and their struggles to move and exist in this system. We’ve made them invisible by investing in systems for resource extraction, instead of systems foundational to a healthy society. We’ve removed women from our focus, from our financial budgets, from our press conferences and our headlines. We’ve removed them with our negligence and misplaced focus as to where the real value of our society lies.

Prince George, a city on the move, is home to a moving culture. Those who don’t move with it are simply removed

American Express and Ashoka announce Top Emerging Innovators from Canada, Mexico and United States

The American Express Emerging Innovators Leadership Boot Camp brings together top innovators from Canada, Mexico and the US to discuss leadership challenges and opportunities for today’s young social entrepreneurs.

I’ve had the privilege of supporting this initiative over the past few months and have to say that I’m blown away at the talent! Learn more about this initiative and the American Express Emerging Innovators in our latest news release.  

Good News Stories about the North Reaches over 50,000 Households

Check out Northern Development’s May edition of the Building a Stronger North newsletter.

Authored and researched by yours truly, this month includes stories on the strength of the nonprofit industry in northern British Columbia and profiles the work of Wells, B.C., a community investing in an arts-based approach to economic development.

Read the full newsletter at northerndevelopment.bc.ca!

Portfolio Images: Becoming Arctic

I am who I am because of my community

Read my Ashoka Changemakers BC Ideas blog, “Haida Gwaii, Community of Creativity” @ bcideas.ca 

Photo: Jags Beanstalk