Harm Reduction As a Tool For Social Change

Brief Report on the 3rd Regional CCC conference, held 14-15 May, 2015 at Selkirk College
Henrik Elzinga
I am currently attending Selkirk College SSW program and my spring practicum program
has been with ANKORS. Through this placement I had the chance to participate in the 3rd
biannual Creating Caring Communities Spring Conference on May 14 and 15th at Selkirk College
Colleges Castlegar campus. This years conference focused on high risk substance use in youth,
after research and anecdotal evidence suggested disturbing trends with increased overdoses and
hospitalizations and new drugs emerging in the community. The just say no approach has
clearly led us to a failed War on Drugs. In response to this reality, this years conference focused
on reevaluating our understanding and approach to addiction.
The conference opened with a drumming circle and smudge, and an acknowledgment that
we were on un-ceded territory, a fitting beginning to a conference focused on cultural issues of
dislocation the idea that most cultures have been domesticated and separated from spiritual or
natural law First Nations blessing and prayer were led by community member Kris Taks.
Kim Haxton was the first of four keynote speakers. She is a member of the Potowatomi
Nation and a skilled facilitator who deals with trauma and healing from a First Nations
perspective. Her presentation focused on Separation from Self as a symptom of modernity and a
precursor to anxiety, depression, and addiction. She traced the abandonment of old ways and
traditions which fostered connection to self, to community and to earth as central to addiction
and to healing. Reconnection, then-- to ourselves, to nature, to culture, and to each other-- must
occur for healing to begin. She emphasized specifically the importance of ceremony, storytelling, and singing as tools to develop these connections.
Bruce Alexander is a psychologist and professor emeritus at Simon Fraser who focusses
on the psychology of addiction. Well known for his pioneering rat park research, Alexander
demonstrated that isolated rats developed self-destructive addictions while their happy and
socialized counterparts did not. This research opened up a new way of looking at addictions,
known as dislocation theory or the idea that addiction is a symptom of a sick society rather than a
problem of the individual. Further, he argues capitalism creates a cycle of dislocation through

fragmenting cultures in favor of consumerism. Alexander offered the promising news that views
are changing: he recounted horror stories from the heyday of the War on Drugs where addicts
and doctors were routinely harassed and entrapped by police, but now he sees a new emphasis on
the recovery movement largely led by First Nations groups and ideology.
Duncan Grady, raised in the Blackfoot tradition, has 35 years of experience in counseling
and psychotherapy in the fields of addiction, trauma, death and dying. His lecture moved inward
from community and culture to ideas about transforming fear within ourselves. Fear, Grady
believes, is the predominant energy of separation. He explained how rites of passage, once a
central part of life, are important in that they involve the process of facing fear and transforming
it into positive and more human experiences. They teach us to remain present through our fear
by trusting ourselves. Without transforming our fear, we remain open to anxiety and addiction.
As Grady points out, what we dont transform, we will certainly transmit.
Amy Bohigan owner and operator of Nelson-based Watershed productions believes in
creating social impact in her work. At the conference, she presented a photo-voice project
Voices from the Margins. The project is a form of storytelling which involved giving cameras
to a group of youth experiencing addictions. By creating a short film using their voices and their
photographs, Bohigan allows the youth to share their own stories in their own words and images.
Following the film, a panel including some of the youth and Bruce Alexander responded to
questions from the audience. Interestingly, a reoccurring question was how the youth would like
to be held or supported by their community. One responded that emotional and spiritual support
are often neglected in favor of practical or medical interventions. All the youth reiterated that
they want to be included in, rather than separated from, the development of programs designed to
serve them.
Robert Aiken is an instructor at VCC (Vancouver Community College) and a doctoral
candidate in Adult Education with a special interest in education and the brain. He claims that we
are wired to connect and that what we learn will be reinforced. When we focus on connection
and compassion, our neurons reinforce these feelings. However when we focus on fear and anger
the same happens. In other words, we have a choice in how we train our brains to perceive
things. He points out that the experience of emotional and physical pain are the same
neurologically and, interestingly, when people are asked to identify the most painful experience

of their lives, most will focus on an emotional event. Thus, he strongly supports the power of
healing through community connection.
For my part, the learning provided by each of the keynote speakers and the presentation
by Amy Bohigan was that, despite the multitude of perspectives provided, a unity and a
connectedness of insight emerged. Each speaker through his or her own lens highlighted how the
loss of connection results in an epidemic of addiction which can be seen in all consumer
cultures. This disconnection from self, from others, from body and from culture leads to far more
problems than addiction itself. Addiction is one of many symptoms of a sick society framed by
colonialism and capitalism, so the solution must address a much larger social change. First we
must reconsider our historical approaches to addiction. The war on drugs has clearly failed and
the medical model falls short by seeing addiction primarily as a physiological condition.
However, harm reduction has made important inroads by shifting the focus to one that supports
humans with compassion and empathy rather than persecution. This opens the door for other
important interventions including the recovery movement which seeks to rebuild and restore
culture and connection that has been lost in modernity.
What is clear is that we need to find new ways to move forward. How can we contribute
to the necessary social change? As individuals, Grady reminds us to be authentic and to
transform fear into positive action. Amy Bohigan and the brave youth remind us to listen to each
others stories while Bruce Alexander and Robert Aiken instruct us to hold the community
accountable to the problem of addiction. Restoring our connections can only happen when we
are open to new ways of viewing the issue of addiction and this conference shows us some of
these ways. Author Jeff Brown sums it up well:
If we want humans to act empathically, we have to model it to them as a society. If we
want humans to stop hurting others, we have to support healthy emotional release so that they
do not accumulate toxic feelings. If we want humans to move from their most heartfelt
authenticity, we have to stop shaming and shunning their genuine expression. If we want humans
to move from love, we must love them first.
Castlegar 4th of June 2015