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A city Native agency is among the groups who will benefit from the sales of the Toronto Maple Leafs' official calendar this season.

The National Hockey League club has hooked up with the pharmacy chain Shoppers Drug Mart to produce a rather unique calendar.

Instead of on-ice action shots of its players, the Maple Leafs' calendar features its members in various superhero cartoon costumes.

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REVIEW

Prison Writings:

My Life Is My Sun Dance

By Leonard Peltier

St. Martin's Press, New York

256 pages, $22.95 (sc)

"When the oppressors succeed with their illegal thefts and depredations, its called colonialism. When their efforts to colonize indigenous peoples are met with resistance or anything but abject surrender, it's called war. When the colonized peoples attempt to resist their oppression and defend themselves, we're called criminals."

Leonard Peltier

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Lenore Richardson, program supervisor at Native Addictions Services in Calgary, Alta., says she previously acquired some academic background for her profession at Mount Royal College, but it's Nechi's hands-on approach to training that's really helped her to help her clients.

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Brenda Daily, a consultant for Nechi Institute who moved to Kamloops, B.C., a year ago, wore many hats in 14 years of working in the Nechi fold. She was a trainer-educator, a curriculum developer, and was one of the people they called on for critical incident intervention.

Daily says "Nechi's about a movement; it's not just about a place or an organization." For her, the best thing about Nechi "is that everything did begin from a place of spirit."

She was hired initially to work on a special project that was focused on family violence.

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Greg Krivda, from Thompson, Man., is an experienced counsellor who works with youth at the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre in Yellowknife, a city of about 18,000 people. He's also a walking advertisement for Nechi.

Krivda has taken four Nechi courses: "I think I crammed five years into two years," he said. These were Community Addictions Training; Advanced Counsellor Training; Native Addictions Worker Program; and finally Program Management Training. "I did my practicum while I was taking it - here in Yellowknife, at the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre," he adds.

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Harold Tookenay is Nechi Institute's senior trainer and has been involved with both Nechi and Poundmaker's Lodge since 1983 in the roles of counsellor, trainer, senior trainer and more. Back and forth between the two - working, learning, listening, sharing -Tookenay appreciates the intertwining of the two organizations with a similar philosophy of commitment to addictions-free lifestyles.

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Judy Blackburn, executive assistant to Nechi's CEO, Ruth Morin, is an enthusiastic spokeswoman for the institute, both its people and programs.

She says the glue that holds Nechi together is the bonding that occurs between staff and students, volunteers, board members and everyone else who comes into the mix, which results in friendships and professional relationships continuing long after people complete their training programs.

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Lloyd Auger is one of the longest-serving members of Nechi, proud to contribute as secretary/treasurer on the Institute's board of directors. He's been associated with the Institute for 25 years, from the earliest days.

"Lot's of people from Saddle Lake [First Nation] are involved, have been involved," said Auger.

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As the CEO of Nechi Training, Research and Health Promotions Institute, on the forefront of holistic healing and addictions-free lifestyles, you might think Ruth Morin would be too busy doing her job to talk about it. But she took time out anyway, to share with Windspeaker how she got into her role and the future of Nechi.

Morin was employed at Saddle Lake Counselling Services, in the NAADAP program, when she enrolled as a trainee in Nechi's pilot program management series, around 1983. A couple of years later, the Institute hired her as a trainer.

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Nechi Training, Research and Health Promotions Institute, usually just called Nechi, identifies itself and its mission as "an Aboriginal movement committed to holistic healing and healthy, addictions-free lifestyles."

The most recent statistics, covering the 1998-99 fiscal year, highlight success and progress in many areas: