Catch da Flava - Indigenous Communities Dealing with Mental Health

For this edition of Health Talks Radio, we extended our conversation about the Indigenous community and discussed issues on how to support our Indigenous community in the struggles they face that range from emotional, psychological, and even around food scarcity and water supplies. Hosted by Gisela, we talked about how the Indigenous community continues to face struggles, such as the issue with water scarcity. In many reserves, the Indigenous community still has to rely on bringing in bottled water for everyday use including cooking, cleaning, drinking, and bathing. Water is so polluted and undrinkable and unhealthy for the community that they have to search outward for their solution. Growing up in these conditions, it would be easy for youth to think that this is normal and not realize that the resources are not as adequate as most developed communities, affecting their emotional and psychological health.

Other topics we explored is the ways in which the Indigenous community has experienced disadvantages in their community. Discrimination has been widely asserted by the Canadian government, with its historical use of the residential schools that took young Indigenous youth away from their families to eliminate their culture and heritage and forcibly assimilating them into Canadian culture. Another act of oppression is the 60s Scoop, when there was government policies enacted that allowed the government to take away children from their homes without argument, often by force. A lasting and continual legacy is the reservations that the government allots to the Indigenous community that is often under-resourced in various ways including lack of education, job prospects, food options, and cleaning drinking water. The Canadian government still enacts The Indian Act which sets out legal guidelines on who is considered an “Indian” under the eyes of the law.

We’d like to thank our host Gisela Torres and our panelists Beverly, Judy and Travis for being on air to talk about the important topic of uplifting the Indigenous community.