Program is still cultural pride in Native youth

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When Karen Furniss first met her, the 16-year-old girl denied she was Native.

She was in a group home, where she had been placed because she was in trouble with her family.

Now she was in trouble at the group home. She had tried to slash someone, and her social worker's patience was wearing thin. Furniss knew the teen needed more help than her workers could provide. If she could get Maryanne (not her real name) to Keewatin meetings, she was sure the girl would come around. Her problems, Furniss said, stemmed from a lack of self-worth and pride in her Native heritage.

"I gave her everything," Furniss said of her efforts to get Maryanne to join the Keewatin program.

"Even though she lived across town, I said, "I'll pick you up. If you only want to stay 10 minutes, I'll leave and drive you home'." Hesitant and shy, Maryanne agreed to try it out, but only, she said, if she could leave if she didn't like it.

Now an eight-month veteran, Maryanne loves coming to the Keewatin Youth Program meetings. Drumming is her favorite activity. But she also takes part in dancing and crafts such as beadwork.

She has developed such a sense of self and pride in her abilities that she convinced her social worker she is capable of functioning within a family.

Recently, Maryanne moved out of the group home and now lives with an aunt.

Today, she coaxes shyer and more hesitant program members along in the drumming exercises. Coming to Keewatin meetings, she said, is "way better than going on the street or in the arcades. I make lots of friends".

Maryanne is typical of the youth Keewatin was developed to help, said program founder Karen Furniss. The new Keewatin member may know nothing about being Native except the sense of shame instilled in her by the ignorant and cruel. She may have been isolated from other Native people and raised in non-Native surroundings.

Her defense is to deny she is Native and refuse to co-operate with her family, her school and finally, her case workers. She may be in trouble with the law, may have had a stint on the streets.

But she is not bad, said Furniss.

Furniss, a graduate of the Necchi Institute, was convinced much of what she saw in troubled Native youth was because of a lack of understanding of aboriginal culture among social services agencies.

"We were meeting their physical needs, but there was no cultural component, no training in how to work with them."

Furniss put together a proposal for the Keewatin program for Native youth and the companion training program, Four Winds Listen, for child care workers involved with Native youth. With guidance from an advisory committee composed "about 80 per cent" of Native people, the youth program kicked off last September with one-year funding from the Wild Rose Foundation.

Response to the Keewatin club has been overwhelming. There are 45-60 teens enrolled, and since May 15, Furniss has received 53 more agency requests for placements.

The teens meet in groups of 15, once a week, for education sessions on Native art, dance and culture. On weekends, Furniss, so far the only worker, takes her groups to Native events and centres around town where they meet other Native people.

Some non-Natives attend the program. Anyone can come, said Hugh Nicholson, adding he and Furniss hopes to expose as many non-Native youth to the program as possible.

"With that appreciation we might then be able to address discrimination issues." Both Furniss and Hugh Nicholson, executive director of McMan Youth Services, which operates the Keewatin program, wish the Four Winds Listen training program for child centre workers dealing with Native teens was as successful as the youth component.

Although McMan will make the Four Winds Listen curriculum available to any agency wishing to train their workers in Native culture, none have requested it to date, said Furniss. the agencies balk at spending $450 per worker or the time involved to train their people.

McMan tested the program on their own an interested other staff from social agencies in High Level and Lethbridge. They took the workers out to sweat lodges, showed them proper protocol for visiting a reserve, taught them how to fill out forms to get a child's Treaty status. It was wholeheartedly acclaimed, said Furniss, even though at first some workers greeted it with skepticism.

Once workers were presented with cultural-based explanation for such behavior as lack of eye-contact in their teen, for example, the results were different - what they had misinterpreted as sullenness and a refusal to co-operate was mere shyness, a common Native behavioral trait, said Furniss.

"Then they would go on something of a guilt trip and say things like 'Oh, I wish I had known that 10 years ago.'"

Keewatin may be closed this July unless the program can find other sources of funding. The original grant from the Alberta Wild Rose Foundation is running out and can't be renewed for another three years.

If Keewatin is cancelled, said Furniss, it won't only be young people like Maryanne who will lose.

"It will be people like you and me. We'll be back to the public outcry about problems with too many urban Native kids. Taking away a program that is a success

will just put us all back where we were."