Teacher’s guide / family violence / suicide prevention – Healthy Aboriginal Network

Healthy Aboriginal Network
Greetings. Long time no rant. Here is an update on what we’re working on this spring and summer:

Residential school teacher’s guide – evaluation
We have been funded by the Anglican Church of Canada to create a teacher’s guide on our graphic novel, Lost Innocence, a residential school story. If you are interested in providing feedback please let me know and I’ll send you the guide and a PDF of the book. As usual, we are not asking prescribed questions; we just want to know what you think about the resource and how we could make it better. There may be instances where our evaluator might want to contact you for more information. Something to consider.

For those of you in the education field, we invite you to go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZW8GNVY to complete an evaluation of the guide. I still need you to contact me first though, so I can send you the PDF and guide beforehand. In both instances, we’d like to hear from you as soon as possible.

Family violence poster
We continue to work on a family violence project for the Legal Services Society (LegalAid BC). We are now onto a poster to entice young Aboriginal women (late teens to twenties) to read the comic book and watch the animated short we created for them. If you are interested in this subject and wish to help evaluate a series of posters it would be great to hear from you. Please contact me at at sean@thehealthyaboriginal.net and I’ll send you the posters by email.

Suicide prevention comic book
Our license for Darkness Calls has long since expired and the book is no longer in print. But we still get requests for a resource on suicide prevention, and even though we don’t have funding for the project, we think the demand necessitates the creation. If you’re a suicide prevention professional, or you work with youth that struggle with depression, please consider sending me 3 – 5 points you think the story has to contain. I can be reached at sean@thehealthyaboriginal.net.

Violence against women comic book
We started testing our draft this spring but quickly found the story too drawn out for younger youth. We re-cut it and would like to test it again. The target audience for the book is boys and girls aged 10 – 13 (we know you’re a bit older but value your opinion anyway. :-)). The focus group short can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=67AUrb3JjXM. Please email all feedback to me at sean@thehealthyaboriginal.net.

Canadian Museum for Human Rights
We don’t usually toot anyone else’s horn but our own, but I recently breezed through Winnipeg and had the chance to tour the CMHR. I highly recommend it; even if it’s a special trip to Wpg. Excellent use of technology and narratives, visually stunning and a decent black eye for the Canadian government’s past policies. Put it on your list.

We hope you continue to find us relevant to youth’s needs,

Sean Muir
Executive Director