Behind the Pandemic in Aboriginal Communities - Interagency ...

Family LevelIndividual LevelFamily LevelFred’s StoryFred lives in a rooming house in a small city. His doctor put him on anti-retroviral therapy a fewmonths ago. Fred is too scared to ask the doctor to repeat the instructions about when and how oftenhe is supposed to take his medication, so he relies on what he remembers from that day. He doesn’twant to ask any of the other roomers for help because then they will know he can’t read and that heis HIV positive. On top of this, he needs to figure out how to keep his medication cool now that theweather is warming up. The room he rents doesn’t have a fridge so he’s kept his medications justoutside his window.JP’s StoryWhen Jean-Pierre (JP) became a ward of the courts, he lived in a series of foster homes until he wasten. He was adopted by a white couple after all avenues to place him with his own relatives wereexhausted.Things went well until JP became a teen and started to feel alienated from his adopted family and hiscommunity where he was the only Aboriginal kid. He loved his adopted family, but he felt that theyjust didn’t understand what it was like for him to be the only brown one in the family and the onlybrown face at school. He started to skip school and talk back to his mom. JP ended up getting kickedout of the house when he got into a big fight with his dad about the hard rules his parents wanted himto follow. He couch surfed for a while thinking he would eventually return home, but his adopted dadwouldn’t let him come back, so he hitchhiked to the city. He hasn’t talked to his adopted family since.Mark’s StoryLately, all the talk about the Truth and Reconciliation process has stirred things up at Mark’s house. Heknows that his dad went to residential school for over ten years, but his dad never talks about it. Oneday a worker from the community centre came by and asked his dad to attend an information sessionand, boy, was that a mistake. Mark’s dad got really mad, kicked the worker out and yelled at Mark forletting the worker in. After that, his dad started drinking again, so Mark took off to his auntie’s place.But it was no better there. Mark’s auntie had gone to the residential school too. Mark knows that hisfamily had a bad time in the school; he just wishes they could get over it. He feels like he can’t talk tohis family about his own struggles with school or his dreams of going to university. He doesn’t want tohurt their feelings or set them off again.31