Current ads
Jobs
Tenders
Notices
General

Click below

Inuit addiction centre opens for Ontario Inuit

Ottawa centre helps Inuit strung out on booze, crack-cocaine and pot

Ginette Chouinard and Reepa Evic-Carleton are running an alcohol and drug addictions centre for Inuit living in Ottawa.

---

(PHOTO BY DENISE RIDEOUT)

---

DENISE RIDEOUT

OTTAWA—Tungasuvvingat Inuit, Ontario’s Inuit community centre, is running a first-of-its-kind treatment program for Inuit addicted to drugs and alcohol.

The treatment program, which got off the ground in mid-September, now has 11 Inuit clients, many of whom have lived away from Nunavut and Nunavik for more than five years.

A three-storey, century-old brick house in Ottawa serves as the addictions centre’s base and is staffed by one full-time and one part-time addictions counsellor. It’s a day program that can take up to a dozen clients.

Tungasuvvingat Inuit’s new program isn’t a detox centre, but a full-fledged program aimed at weaning addicts off their drug and alcohol habits, Ginette Chouinard, the program’s co-ordinator, said in an interview at the Ottawa-based facility.

It’s a far cry from the situation in Nunavut, where Inuit addicts have no treatment programs at all. The territory’s last treatment centre, a 14-bed facility located in Apex that served the Baffin region, closed down in 1998.

Tungasuvvingat Inuit recognized a need for addictions treatment in Ottawa, where about 900 Inuit live. Through 13 years of running outreach programs for the homeless, a soup kitchen and employment counselling, it noticed that many of the Inuit who use their services have drug and alcohol problems.

"The drugs of choice are alcohol, crack-cocaine, and pot. If mushrooms are available they’ll take them," Chouinard said.

Earlier this year Tungasuvvingat Inuit asked a consulting firm to study four existing treatment programs for aboriginals to help model its own program.

The Inuit community centre wanted to craft a unique treatment regime that would incorporate Inuit values and culture. They want to bring in elders to help counsel the addicts, take clients out on the land and have Inuktitut-speaking staff on hand.

Outside the house where the treatment program runs, a inuksuk stands in a garden and caribou antlers hang from the roof. Inside, the house’s walls are adorned with Inuit art.

Reepa Evic-Carleton, an Inuk who has worked as a counsellor at Tungasuvvingat Inuit since 1991, is responsible for the cultural side of the addictions treatment program.

"One of things we’ll be doing in the group sessions is lighting the qulliq, which is very traditional. Down the road we’ll try to do healing circles," Evic-Carleton said, sitting in the centre’s pale yellow living room.

Because Evic-Carleton isn’t a certified addictions counsellor, unlike Chouinard, she’ll team up with Chouinard to help out, especially with unilingual Inuit.

So far, many of the pair’s clients are women. Some have enrolled in the program to prevent Children’s Aid Services from taking away their children, while others are required to be there by the courts. But a few, Chouinard said, have come on their own.

The program is treatment oriented. Unlike some programs that simply offer support to addicts, Tungasuvvingat’s approach is to make the addict work at kicking their habit.

Each client is assessed when they come through the door. The addictions workers ask detailed questions about the person’s drug and alcohol use, health, sexual history, and family history.

Almost all the Inuit in the program attribute their addiction to having been beaten or sexually abused as children. Homelessness and poverty are also to blame, Chouinard.

A key piece of information she asks the addict is if they’re ready to tackle their problems. "It’s treatment where people have to work at it," Chouinard said.

Right now, Chouinard and Evic-Carleton are focused on helping Inuit beat their addictions. Later on, they’d like to start up an after-care program, which would help clients stay sober and drug-free.

Advertising
Specs, rates,
& maps
Multi-paper
buying services
About the market
E-mail ad dept

More Information