U of G alumna among the founding members of the We Matter campaign
Earlier this year, the Attawapiskat suicide crisis saw a total of 11 First Nations youth attempting to take their own lives, all in a 24-hour period. According to CBC News, Attawapiskat hospital staff were overwhelmed as seven children were brought in at once in the early hours of April 10 for drug overdoses.
In response, siblings Kelvin and Tunchai Redvers from Hay River, N.W.T., have created a new online campaign called We Matter that seeks to prevent and address youth suicide while promoting mental health awareness through a multimedia platform.
“What We Matter does is provide video messages from Indigenous role models, community members, and other youth who have gone through their own hardships and troubles. But they are speaking directly to youth, and offering them messages of support, hope, love, and resilience, and telling youth their life matters and there is a way forward,” said Tunchai Redvers, a University of Guelph alumna, in an interview with The Ontarion.
Suicide and self-inflicting injuries are the leading cause of death for First Nations youth and adults up to the age of 44.
The We Matter campaign was conceived in March and officially launched on October 18. It was modelled after the online campaign It Gets Better, which provides a platform for LGBTQ+ youth to tell their stories and offer messages of support to fellow youth going through high school bullying and personal hardships.
Before the launch, We Matter reached out to Indigenous role models and First Nations public figures for an initial 22 videos available at the launch date. Electronic music group A Tribe Called Red, writer Joseph Boyden, comedian Don Burnstick, and the National Minister of Indigenous Affairs Carolyn Bennett all submitted videos to the We Matter campaign.
“As an adolescent, everything gets so magnified. My addictions, my pain, break ups, my childhood pain. I ended up on a chair with a rope around my neck,” Burnstick said on his video uploaded to the We Matter website. “I imagine if I had done that I would’ve been another statistic. Another cross in the ground on my [reservation]. None of this life would have happened for me.”
The We Matter campaign hopes to have a video uploaded from every reservation across Canada so that every youth going through hardships has someone immediate to connect with.Another goal for the campaign is to deliver USB sticks directly to First Nations communities that lack internet access. The USB sticks would be preloaded with all the content found on the We Matter website.
“The goal of We Matter is to communicate to youth that no matter how hopeless things are, there is a way forward. And to look at the systemic issues from a place of hope, positivity, life promotion, and prevention instead of waiting for a crisis,” Redvers explained. “If we can prevent just one person from taking their own life, then that’s okay, that’s what we want to do.”
The campaign hopes to open up the dialogue and to talk about the difficult issues and hardships revolving around the mental health of First Nations youth.
“A kid might be going through something and feel like they’re completely alone and feel like they’re the only one going through what they are going through, like bullying or family violence, but we want to be able to put a name to that,” said Redvers.
Although the We Matter campaign centers around Indigenous voices, non-Aboriginal people can also upload videos. However, the campaign asks for non-Aboriginal folk to “be very mindful of why it is they are sharing.”
Image courtesy of Kelvin Redvers.