The vision of this work was born from the passing of Tamika Mountain. Tamika was an 18 year old Namgis youth that passed away from suicide in the spring of 2021.  She is one of our fallen warriors. 

We want to honour her life by developing this program in the hope that this work will help other young people who are navigating the the spirit of suicide. Providing youth with tools and resources to utilize during times of crisis are aptly demonstrated through our program.

Noticeably, most suicide prevention work is geared towards how to talk to someone who is suicidal rather than how to resist giving into the spirit of suicide within ourselves. Our program is specifically designed to work towards resisting the spirit of suicide within Indigenous youth.

In this initiative,  suicidality is looked at from an Indigenous social justice lens, stemming from the wounds of colonization. Colonial pathologies are often internalized. By healing these traumas, Indigenous people are able reclaim the teachings, wisdom, and connection to land and culture that was there prior to contact. That is always there. This anecdote aptly conveys the current repercussions Indigenous people face. In moving away from programming that looks at suicidality as an individual problem, one founded on individualized responsibility versus institutional responsibility, we aim to address Indigenous trauma as a societally collective problem.