So let me, let me put you through a little bit of a test here. Let's
think about your, let's think about this on your own lives for a minute.
How resilient are we? Here's a series of questions to ask yourself.
We can, we have more sophisticated resilience measures, for those of you
who actually want to do research on this. We have very sophisticated, a child and
youth resilience measure, a 12-item battery, a protocol and a 28-item protocol. It's
available for free. We give it away. You can go on my website
resilienceresearch.org. You can find it there, under the tool basket...but in a more
popular conversational way, let me ask you these questions. How resilient, in a
sense, are we? How would you answer these questions? Could you complete these questions?
There are people in my life who expect me to blank. Can you finish that sentence? Do you
have somebody who expects you to do something? Like before you left home
today, your spouse...maybe they expect you to actually do something, like empty the
dishwasher or take out the garbage or something like that, right? Consequences:
When I don't meet expectations, I know that blank will happen. Relationships: I
can reach out to my blank to get help when I need it. Is that part of your
life? Do you have that? Keep going. I feel respected for what's special
about me when I'm with or at or doing. Is that part of you, you know, is it predictable?
I don't care what someone's disability, disadvantage is, usually those kinds of
questions can be answered. Power and control: In my blank I get to participate
in making decisions that affect my blank. Again, do you have that? Do you
have a sense that you can make those decisions somewhere in life? Belonging or
Spirituality (sense of cohesion, culture): At my blank, people,
excuse me, miss me when I'm not there. Do people know you're not at work today?
Is anybody kind of noticing that? Sense of Culture: There are places such as
blank where I can celebrate my culture and my beliefs.
I love the study, again on the West coast of Canada that was done with some
of our, some of the Indigenous bands, some of the Indigenous communities by Chris
Lalonde and Mike Chandler, in which they actually looked at what
distinguished...of the 192 different Indigenous bands, tribal
groups out in B.C., some have epidemically high proportions of
suicide amongst their their kids. Absolutely, it's truly a tragedy on an unparalleled scale
in this country...but the interesting thing was about half of the communities
had no suicide over the last 14 years. Some had astronomical levels some had
absolutely none, but fully half of the communities on on the West coast had
no suicide in their community. How could you, how could that be such a spread? How
can you have like 14 or 10 suicides a year and none a year when
they're matched almost culturally, they experience much of the same exclusion
and everything else, how did that happen? And what they identified was a set of
factors such as: Were women involved in the governance of the band? Was there a
cultural space in the community that people used, not a gymnasium that was
converted, but actually a space to celebrate culture? They did other
things like, was there a volunteer fire department in the community? Any of
you live in communities where there's a volunteer fire department? If you do, you
know why that would be significant because you have to have a certain level
of social cohesion. A sense of 'mwe', if you want to come back to Dan's term this
morning. That notion of otherness, that sense of cohesion in your life
to sustain that. All to say is what they concluded, I think, being young and an
Indigenous person in Canada is not a risk for suicide. Let me repeat that.
Being young and Indigenous is not a risk for suicide. Being young, Indigenous and
living in a community without adequate control, where your identity is
excluded, where you experience racial bias, where your land claims aren't being
settled, where all these social factors are failing you IS a risk for suicide.
And thus, what I'm coming around to is understanding that we fundamentally need
to begin to think about the building blocks of creating this more integrative
holistic sense of ourselves...and these questions are basically...l'll keep
going here. When I'm with others at my blank, am I
treated fairly? Again thinking about your own experience.
Safety...or when I'm with others, I am responsible for myself or someone else.
That genuine sense of responsibility that brings with it all kinds of
advantages. I'm well cared for by and I feel safe when I'm with or at ______. Now if you
can answer those questions, that is going to just be so, so profound in your in
your life. What I'm trying to say is, if you're thinking about it, if people who
raise their hand at seven, eight, nine of those things, when we hit a speed bump
we're going to be able to withstand the stress much better because we have this
collection of things around us. And again if I add to that then the cognitive
practices, then we seem to really be able to withstand stressors...but it's this
combination of this environment bringing out the best in me that actually makes
it possible for me to survive and thrive.