Southern Chiefs’ Organization launches harm reduction campaign

“Asking for help takes courage. We’ll help you find what you need,” reads one billboard. You’ll soon be able to see more messages like this across the province as the Southern Chiefs’ Organization launches their harm reduction campaign this week.

The organization announcing Wednesday the awareness campaign will target primarily First Nations people with printed materials, bus boards, ad space and social media.

Topics range from the importance of carrying naloxone to encouraging testing for HIV and Sexually Transmitted and Blood Borne Infections.

SCO Grand Chief Jerry Daniels says, “Recent data shows disproportionate outcomes of drug poisonings, overdose, concurrent infections, and complications associated with problematic substance use for First Nations people, linked to the ongoing impact of trauma.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by advocates across the country.

“HIV is not the problem. The problem is deeply rooted in colonization, in residential schools and the reports of the murdered and missing indigenous women and girls and two-spirit people,” said Margaret Kisikaw Piyesis, CEO of Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network.

“It’s important to take people on this land that have been presenting to us with HIV or any other diseases in their lives.”

According to a report from 2022 by the Manitoba HIV Program, 7 in 10 people who entered the program identified at Indigenous.

Advocates say, to make progress, any harm-reduction program catering to Indigenous peoples must be culturally sensitive.

“We need to bring forward our Indigenous ways of knowing and doing our own medicines, our own ceremonies, our own practices, our own ways of looking at healing and wellness, specific to the many diverse nations across this land,” said Piyesis.

The campaign is set to run to the end of August in Brandon, Dauphin, Portage la Prairie, Selkirk, and Winnipeg.