Grant: Operating Grant: Population Health Intervention Research

Children and adults sleeping on mattresses on the floor in living rooms, moldy walls, broken windows, pails instead of toilets and expressions of despair are frequent images in the Canadian media associated with Manitoba First Nations on-reserve housing These conditions contribute to an array of respiratory infections, tuberculosis, chronic illnesses and mental illness. The federal governments response or intervention to the housing crisis in the north was to provide funding to communities who qualify and apply to programs through Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation under Canada's Economic Action Plan. In Manitoba over 30 million dollars flowed through Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation for new constructions on reserve between 2009 to 2011. Now in 2012, one year after this program ended there still is a crisis where inadequate housing seriously burdens the physical, social, spiritual and emotional health of northern FNs. The two Manitoba Dene communities, Northlands Denesuline First Nation and Sayisi Dene First Nation, identified a lack of vision for housing that integrates their cultural and social values, and practical needs with existing housing policies and programs. The communities are prepared to evaluate the impact and relevance of the Canada's Economic Action Plan program for their community and explore how on-reserve housing stock can meet the need to be sustainable, culturally relevant, safe, and function within the Dene traditional lifestyle. The community lead project will tap into the creative energies of the youth to develop a vision to discover, envision and create culturally relevant housing and change policies to better reflect Dene values. The goal of this program is for the Dene communities to take stock of their housing post Canada's Economic Action Plan and to envision culturally relevant housing that promotes health equity, mental health, and a decreased burden of chronic and infectious diseases.