In the year or so that she’s worked with Nishnawbe Aski Nation’s Choose Life program, Constance Lake First Nation member Mallory Solomon has “seen a lot of good progress within my community.”
“Now there’s a place where you can go hang out and do activities – there’s a safe space in my community that Choose Life was able to establish, a place where you can just hang out, chill on the couch,” Solomon said from Niagara Falls, where NAN Choose Life is holding its annual general meeting.
The clinical psychology student said they appreciate how Choose Life has established safe places where First Nation youth “can be themselves.”
“And especially I think it’s important that we build more spaces for our two-spirit LGBTQ+ kinship as well, which I see a lack of in communities,” they added. “I think that’s a gap that needs to be addressed.”
Choose Life was created to ensure that none of NAN’s 49 First Nation communities would be denied programming for the mental, emotional and behavioural well-being of youth.
It provides immediate funding relief for youth at risk of suicide by fast-tracking proposals for mental health and prevention programs and services.
Its website says “NAN Choose Life is working to create a database of Cultural Helpers – individuals willing to share cultural or land-based knowledge to further promote wellness of participants of Choose Life programming.”
Andrea Yesno-Linklater, from Eabametoong (Fort Hope) First Nation, said she firmly believes Choose Life “is really important to our youth.
“I think that’s been vocalized a lot, not just at this gathering but at any community event that I’ve attended,” she said.
“The Choose Life initiative has saved many lives of our youth.”
Yesno-Linklater said there’s “a responsibility to provide (NAN youth) with the safe spaces to grow and live in an environment where they have the capacity to just be themselves.”
Choose Life facilitates and delivers valuable programming, she said, “and all of it is community-based, community-dependent. It’s what the community wants. It’s what the youth and community want, and that’s where the priority lies.”
She said Indigenous youth in the north are often “in crisis mode, and the Choose Life program is able to provide that opportunity for them to do what it is that they want and they feel helps them with their day-to-day life.”
Her own home community is “is actually in crisis right now since the loss of our school in January of this year,” she said.
“So we have had a lot of crisis teams up in community in the last few months. A lot of our youth are really struggling.
“So, the Choose Life program has worked really hard in trying to listen to those youth and what it is exactly that they need to help them in their day-to-day life with the loss of the school, but also just with dealing with the day-to-day life and community without that infrastructure,” Yesno-Linklater said.
“I know that the Choose Life program has been able to save the lives of youth across NAN territory, and I think it’s essential that this continues to support our youth with their day-to-day life.”
For that reason, she said, it is crucial that Choose Life continue to receive the funding it needs to stay alive.
