My name is Warner Adam. I'm a member of the Lake Babing Nation in northwest British Columbia.
I come from the Bear Clant and I am currently the Chief Executive Officer of Carousel County
Family Services. My other job includes being on the National Collaborating Centre for
Aboriginal Health as an advisory committee member, as well as the Deputy Chair of the
BC First Nations Health Council. Since I was a young lad, my grandmother's brother
pulled me aside and basically explained to me that as I grew older, my job would be to
walk into cultures. And at that time I thought, hmm, I wonder what he's talking about. And
as I grew older into the positions that I've assumed, it became clear to me that by walking
into cultures, meaning that I have to embrace the teachings of my elders in my community
and make sure that I use those as a foundation to move forward, to walk with other cultures,
to first advance the plight of my people, but also to educate both my people and non-First
Nations people about who we are and what we stand for in society.
While Canada is reconciling with Aboriginal people, much more needs to be done. I find
that in working in this field for 30 years, we move 10 steps ahead and then comes elections.
There's a new order in government, we move 10 steps back. And I call that kind of a jagged
kind of healthcare, particularly in the Family and Child Services, where many of our children
still remain in care at its ultimate high. We have structures in places in our community
to ensure that we can take care of our children better. However, we do not get the proper
resources, financial resources or the infrastructure to build safe homes in our communities and
to also bring back the traditions of taking care of children and making sure children
are the center of our communities. So much more work needs to be done and I think government
really needs to open their minds in terms of who it is that we are and how we sustain
ourselves as a community and really take advantage of the resilience we've had and
demonstrate and continue to demonstrate to move forward. An example for British Columbia,
we've worked for 10 years working with chiefs with our health leads to assist the government
of Canada to vacate the field of health, transfer all the resources including financial resources,
human resources and the infrastructure that Health Canada maintained to deliver health
services to First Nations. That is now transferred to a First Nations health authority. It's
the first of its kind in Canada. Hopefully it becomes a model for the rest of Canada
but abroad. The reason why I say that is that many Indigenous people face the same challenges
that we do here in Canada. Issues related to poverty, issues related to disintegration
of culture through policy and right now there's a resurgence of Indigenous people reconstructing
and rebuilding their own institutions based on their traditions, their culture and their
history. So I believe there's a wave of excitement, a wave of camaraderie among Indigenous people
to share stories and to share best practices to move forward for the best outcomes for
children because I think it is our responsibility to ensure that a child remains a child for
all generations and for any culture whether you're black, white, yellow or brown. My mother
was a traditional medicine woman and she taught a lot to me about the importance of the plants
and how to use the plants to heal oneself around whatever illnesses that you may have.
She was also a herbologist dealing with herbs and she was able to mix the herbs and provide
some remedies for the common coal or rashes, etc. And she learned that from my grandmother.
So to me I think it's really important to go back to the simple things that come from
the earth and teaching the younger generation the importance of that because it not only
provides us with the medicine, it also provides us with an opportunity to transfer the culture
from one generation to the next generation. I think we need to pay more attention to our
Indigenous ways of knowing and legitimize our way and practices of healing. Sometimes
I think we put too much energies in the Western methods and based on statistics many of our
people are using too many prescription drugs that sometimes they don't know if it's even
effective. I think it's also important that a balanced diet based on our plants and animals
is the best medicine to move forward and sometimes we lose that perspective in moving forward
in this fast growing technological age and we need just again being basic and living
off the land and respecting that.
