What is currently offered is ‘not enough,’ says Cloy-e-iis Judith Sayers.

The Tyee: The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council has declared a state of emergency in all 14 Nuu-chah-nulth nations due to the devastating loss of life caused by the unregulated toxic drug supply.

More funding is needed from the province and federal governments so communities along the west coast of Vancouver Island can provide their members with timely and appropriate care, without having to send people away from their community, said Cloy-e-iis Judith Sayers, president of the council, at a press conference last week.

“We need everybody to be here as we wage this war against all our lives that are being taken,” Cloy-e-iis said.

The Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions says it is funding eight First Nations treatment centre projects, which will replace six existing treatment facilities and build two new facilities in the Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Salish region. The First Nations Health Authority is also building 13 First Nations primary care centres with 10 centres set to open this fall, including the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations Primary Care Centre.

What is currently offered is “not enough,” Cloy-e-iis said, and that’s playing out in painful ways.

“You have to be almost like a lotto winner to be able to get in” to existing programs, said Les Doiron, vice-president of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council.

The council said they wanted to be able to provide detox and recovery services in their communities so that people wouldn’t need to leave to get help. This would also help others in their communities see and “normalize” the recovery process, they said.

‘I can’t afford to lose one person’

Seven pictures of community members who recently died due to toxic drugs were placed on the table at the press conference.

“My nephew is in one of the pictures. I’m kind of afraid to walk around and look at it,” Doiron said. “He died for a couple of reasons. One of them was he detoxed himself because there was no detox facility he could jump into.”

Port Alberni has a large urban First Nations population and has the second-highest toxic drug death rate in B.C. after Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Cloy-e-iis said. She pointed to reporting by the BC Coroners Service that says more than 15,200 people have died due to toxic drugs in the eight years since the province declared a public health emergency.

Cloy-e-iis said the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council is asking for funding to “devise our own solutions and lead our own strategies on mental health and toxic drugs.”

“We need to have this before we lose any more people,” she said.

The declaration of the state of emergency comes after multiple fatalities in the Ahousaht First Nation and builds into the larger staggering trend of how First Nations people make up less than four per cent of B.C.’s population but almost 20 per cent of the toxic drug deaths, which is six times the death rate of the general population.

“Have you ever heard the cry of a mother and a father who have lost their loved one?” asked waamiiš Ken Watts, Elected Chief councillor of the Tseshaht First Nation. He spoke of 11 families who have recently lost “mother, fathers, sons, daughters, cousins, nieces, nephews and best friends,” while community members, standing behind him at the press conference, held one another and wept.

“I come from a small nation of 170 people,” said Nuchatlaht councillor and council representative chair Archie Little. “I can’t afford to lose one person.”

These lives are not lost simply because of drugs and alcohol, said Naasathluk John Rampanen, Ahousaht First Nation Elected Chief councillor.

“There’s deeper-seated aspects that are within our communities and within our nations that go back generations that need to be properly addressed,” Naasathluk said.

As examples he pointed to colonial practices that were meant to destroy family and community ties, such as residential schools, and colonial policies that limited and underfunded housing, education and health services and impacted First Nations efforts for land stewardship, and language and culture restoration and revitalization.

The state of emergency was declared at Caldwell Hall in Port Alberni, which used to be part of the former Alberni Indian Residential School.

“Every one of the nations you see up here had families that went to the ‘school’ and we’re all suffering from the intergenerational trauma that happened right here, right in this very building we’re standing in,” waamiiš said.

The building is set to be destroyed, and a new structure will be built in a different location, as the current one sits in a tsunami zone.

Support to make meaningful change

The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council is asking for support to reclaim its agency and ability to be the “author” of its own health and well-being strategy, Naasathluk said.

To do this, the council is asking the B.C. government, Island Health, the First Nations Health Authority and the federal government to fund mental health and crisis supports as well as the development and implementation of toxic poisoned drug and mental health strategies.

Providing support services for its communities falls under the jurisdiction of the council, but it is not currently adequately equipped to make meaningful change, it said in a press release.

The Tyee approached Premier David Eby after his speech at the Union of BC Municipalities conference last week. When asked what supports the province was ready to provide the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, Eby pointed to funding provided through the First Nations Health Authority “to ensure Indigenous communities that are struggling have a place where people can go, that’s culturally appropriate, feels safe and welcoming and that they’re going to be able to get the care that they need.”

However, he said there was more work to do and that he’s “keen to sit down with Nuu-chah-nulth and talk about their proposal for how we can provide better care in their communities that have been so badly hit.”

BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau told The Tyee that when Indigenous communities guide and lead treatment, “we see much better results.”

To get out of the toxic drug crisis, Furstenau said, the province also needs to regulate the addictions treatment industry, regulate counsellors and therapists to ensure someone has adequate training if they’re using that title, and invest in housing to end homelessness.

Michelle Gamage, The Tyee

Michelle Gamage is The Tyee’s health reporter. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.