La Loche social worker fundraising for Indigenous youth

A high school social worker from La Loche is taking steps to support Indigenous youth in the village, and has already made waves with an online fundraising campaign.

Holly Toulejour was inspired to take action in reducing suicide rates among youth after a series of traumatic incidents in the community. She said the idea to create cultural camps sparked after reading about a British Columbia community which has significantly helped youth with mental health issues.

The holistic programming in Bella Bella, B.C. focuses on using the land, as well as language, traditional song and dance, the history of the Heiltsuk Nations, and preparing traditional food.

The GoFundMe page was started a week ago, and as of July 5, it is sitting at nearly 80 per cent of its $5,000 goal. This campaign’s intention is to help send six teen girls from the ages of 12 to 14 to the Heiltsuk First Nation camps, where they will learn holistic skills and also do presentations of their own Dene language, culture and the history of La Loche. The young people have been part of Toulejour’s girls group at school this past year.

Last fall, Toulejour travelled to the coast to research the camps in person.

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“I got to find out information about the camp, how it all started, who is running the camp,” she said. “[I thought] what an awesome thing to have up North where our culture should be our greatest resource.”

In her research, Toulejour said she saw many parallels between Bella Bella and La Loche, both culturally and historically. In the last year alone, there have been several suicides in Northern Saskatchewan. La Loche’s most recent incident took place only a couple weeks ago, according to Toulejour.

“People always want to look elsewhere for support, when really maybe they just need to be outside more, have less screen time, and be around Elders,” she said. “I want La Loche youth to be proud of where they come from despite the challenges, instead of wishing they were Kardashians.”

The eventual hope is a similar style of camp could be started in La Loche as soon as next year, Toulejour said.

“I’m hoping once we go to this camp, the kids can help so that we can start our own here in La Loche next summer,” she said. “We [will] find out from the pros really, because they’ve been having these camps for over 20 years, they haven’t had a suicide in 16 years. I hope I can live to see the day that we can say [La Loche hasn’t] had a suicide in over 20 years.”

Toulejour said she is elated by the support the campaign has received thus far. If the fundraising goal is raised soon, she hopes the teens can travel to Bella Bella earlier than planned, in late July instead of August.

“I’m so overwhelmed with the support within such a short amount of time,” she said. “I was hoping people would see the value, and that’s what we’ve gotten so far. People are donating from their own pockets, [we] don’t even know who some of them are. We’re going to make sure that people will know how this trip went, it’s not just a one-time thing; we want to build something from this.”
 

kathy.gallant@jpbg.ca

On Twitter @ReporterKath