‘I’m confident we will see progress’; Overdose Awareness Day in Kamloops

KAMLOOPS — The overdose crisis unrelentingly takes lives around the world, while at home in British Columbia, the death toll has surpassed 10,000 since 2016, with 1,327 being Indigenous.

Wednesday (Aug. 31) marks World Overdose Awareness Day. On Wednesday Q’wemtsin Health Society held an event in the community to raise awareness.

Survivor-turned-advocate Rocker Brady shared his story at the event today as a way to continue the conversation and raise awareness.

“These events are really important just because of our history as Indigenous people. The effect of the residential school, inter-generational trauma, and most recently the 215 that we found here,” said event organizer Bobbi Sasakamoose.

“Our people sometimes struggle and I think it’s important that we stick together, maintain that connection and hopefully help our people work forward in a positive way,” said Sasakamoose.

The event held in the Tk’emlúps community will hopefully break down the stigma around drug use.

“We need to wake up and realize this pandemic is killing our people. First Nations people are being impacted throughout Turtle Island. We need to understand this isn’t getting any better, it’s getting worse and we need to address it at a national level,” said Dave Manuel, Band Councillor.

“It’s a day to day thing. It’s not 8:00 to 4:30, it’s 24-7, 365 days a year. We need to fight against this because we are losing people left and right,” added Morgan Christopher from Secwe’pemc Health Caucus.

Diena Jules is an elder and Secwe´pemc Museum & Heritage Park Administrator. She said that the Kamloops band has seen addictions take a toll.

“We’ve had a lot of our members still struggling with drug and alcohol addictions. This past year we have had 20 people die and about four of them are from overdoses and that just from the past year,” said Jules.

Sasakamoose said that progress on the overdose crisis has been slowed in recent years as the world and band have tackled new issues.

“Just because of the impacts of COVID, everything shutting down, people using in isolation. It was a really difficult time. And then again with the 215, we saw people kind of regress a little bit,” said Sasakamoose.

“But the way the communities came together was really inspirational. I’m confident we will see progress,” said Sasakamoose.

Provincially, work is being done to address the crisis, with the federal government recently announcing the decriminalization of small amounts of small amounts of illicit substances in B.C.