ADAI Director Dennis Donovan writes about The Healing of the Canoe: Community Pulling Together curriculum (HOC) in the January 2018 issue of Health News & Notes, a publication from the NW Portland Area Indian Health Board.
HOC is a collaborative project between the Suquamish Tribe, the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, and the UW's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute. It has led to the development and dissemination of the Culturally Grounded Life Skills for Youth curriculum, an evidence-based, strengths-based life skills curriculum for Native youth that uses culture to prevent substance abuse and connect youth to their tribal community and culture. It teaches Native youth the skills they need to navigate their life’s journey without being pulled off course by alcohol or drugs, using tribal values, traditions, and culture both as "a compass to guide them and an anchor to ground them."
To date, HOC has trained a total of 350 participants from 46 tribes and 14 tribal organizations, from as far east as upper New York state, as far north as Fairbanks, Alaska, as far south as Coos Bay, Oregon, and as far west as Neah Bay, on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. HOC provides training to communities and organizations when invited to do so; the training and technical assistance has also been incorporated into the Northwest Addiction Technology Transfer Center, (NWATTC), also housed at the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute.
