'Healing of the Canoe' Project Featured by CDC and NIH

The Healing of the Canoe, a collaborative project between the UW Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute and the Suquamish and Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribes, is one of 12 successful community engagement projects featured in “Principles of Community Engagement,” a new publication from NIH, CDC, and other federal health agencies.  The manual provides public health professionals, health care providers, researchers, and community-based leaders and organizations with both a science base and practical guidance for engaging partners in projects that may affect them. 

Healing of the Canoe grew out of a culturally grounded curriculum for youth called “Holding Up Our Youth” that incorporated traditional values, practices, teachings, and stories to promote a sense of tribal identity and of belonging in the Suquamish community.  The result was an intervention that uses the canoe journey as a metaphor, providing youth with the skills needed to navigate through life without being pulled off course by alcohol or drugs, with culture and tradition serving as both anchor and compass.