Northern bands aim to become model for healthy eating

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Eight First Nations in the Treaty 8 region are collaborating in a two-year-plus project to research, document and share their patterns of consumption of traditional and non-traditional foods. The first phase involves mapping the locations where people hunt and fish. The second phase will focus on community members, especially youth, to find out what they eat throughout the seasons and what levels of contaminants they are ingesting.

The participating bands were selected because they are widely dispersed over Treaty 8 territory, therefore they can be viewed realistically to represent the region. Other reasons are that they have a high Aboriginal population compared to the rest of Treaty 8, and they are located near the larger rivers and lakes.

The Northern River Basins Food Consumption Survey, begun in March 1998, is a combined effort of Treaty 8 Health Authority, the Medical Services Branch of Health Canada and the following bands and interviewers: Sturgeon Lake (Nancy Goodswimmer); Fox Lake (Colleen Nanooch, Fern Dor and Pauline John); Sucker Creek-Driftpile-Swan River (Florence Willier and George Chalifoux); Bigstone (Clara Yellowknee, Linda Gladue and Albert Gladue); Whitefish (Gail Thunder and Debra Anderson); and Fort Chipewyan (Paulette Whitehead and Freda Fraser).

Project manager is Darrell "Osaw Maskwa" Gerrits who works for the Alberta Treaty 8 Health Authority.

Gerrits added that the survey is being conducted randomly. Community members' names were entered by age groups and sex into a database and the computer picked them. That way no bias will be reflected in the survey outcome.

"The idea is that we will get more accurate information and it is a process that is inclusive of everybody in the community; therefore, it will benefit all community members," Gerrits said.

He said they are a little behind in their data collection, but they are aiming to finish approximately in May this year.

"We want to know the general diet of the people, not just if they're eating traditional food," he said.

Once the groundwork is completed, the communities will undertake testing to find out the amounts of pollutants or contaminants in their traditional foods. The eventual goal is to prepare a software package that anybody in the communities can easily use to obtain information about the kinds and amounts of traditional foods they can safely eat.

At first, Gerrits said, they thought a survey of traditional food would only cover fish, but they realized fish did not represent most of the traditional food in their diet so they added wild meats.

Gerrits is clear that the survey is merely a stepping stone for the Treaty 8 bands to launch themselves deeper into improving the nutritional and environmental aspects of their lives. For instance, he says they need to consider "how important it would be to us as Aboriginal people if the game disappeared completely," and they had to rely on non-traditional food sources exclusively. He says there is evidence that young people are less and less inclined to fish, hunt and trap for the staples of their diet. Coupled with that, there has been evidence of contaminants in the wildlife for about 10 years in their region. So it's not impossible that traditional food consumption could disappear from their way of life.

"If traditional food became unavailable, providing people with non-traditional diet information can help the people decide on healthy choices," Gerrits said. "A lot of our people don't know about the five healthy food groups in the Western diet."

He said there is a lot more their communities need to do to help people inform themselves and reduce the number of people who get diet-related illnesses such as diabetes. One example of what he suggests is doing food cost comparisons in their communities and examining ways to get better foods more economically than now. Especially in the more remote places such as Fort Chipewyan and Fox Lake, where food is "very expensive."

Politics shouln't be left out of the healthy community equation either, Gerrits indicated. For example, there are "isolation factors" to consider for people on social assistance. He says the communities need to research and record differences in the cost of obtaining health foods so their leadership will have facts to back them up when they are going after social assistance dollars. Better food will mean healthier people, more workforce participation and lower health care costs.

But even now, Gerrits says they are working with resource people, such as a nutritionist from Quebec, who have a lot of experience working with Aboriginal people and the issues of traditional food consumption. Other sources of help include local nutritionists, environmental health officers and the federal environmental contaminants researcher, for example.

Gerrits says when they get to seasonal testing, if they can't do it themselves Medical Services Branch could subcontract the testing out but they would try to get Native people to do the work.

In the long term, Gerrits hopes the survey and related activities will interest more Aboriginal youth in environmental health education and other environmental careers.

"Not enough Aboriginal kids are interested in the environment now," he said.

The idea to do the present study came from a 1997 chiefs' summit in Fort McMurray. The chiefs and Elders were concerned about declining quality in their fish, moose, deer and other animals, which they believe is related to activities such as oil and gas exploration, logging and pulp mill operation.