People living with HIV/AIDS taking control of own health care through summit

For 23 years, Trevor Stratton of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation has been living with HIV/AIDS.
He has seen incredible struggles, not only in his own life but in the challenges facing Aboriginal people living with HIV/AIDS over that time.
He has also witnessed and been involved in monumental progress in the way Aboriginal people living with HIV/AIDS are treated on and off reserve, and the services available to them.
The efforts that he along with many others are making towards helping Aboriginal people living with HIV/AIDS take control of their situation was vindicated last month with the success of the second annual summit of First Nations and Aboriginal people living with HIV/AIDS, held in North Bay.
“(The summit) was an amazing opportunity,” Stratton told Wawatay News. “In Ontario there is no other venue for Aboriginal people living with HIV/AIDS to get together to talk and figure out what we want to do for ourselves, and what we want the HIV service industry to do for us.”
Stratton, who works for the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network, has been involved with creating the summit from its inception, along with Rene Boucher of Sioux Lookout and other First Nations and Aboriginal people living with HIV/AIDS.
The idea in early days of planning was to bring the issues facing Aboriginal people who suffer from the disease to the forefront, and to work on addressing those issues along with service providers.
“We wanted something for us,” Stratton said of the early days of planning. “Whenever we’d meet at conferences or workshops, in the evenings we’d sit together and make wish lists of what we wanted to have in the future. I feel we’ve accomplished a lot since then.”
One of the big issues was the stigma around HIV/AIDS that forced many people with the illness to live, and sometimes die without ever telling anyone or getting the help they needed.
While the issue remains challenging for many people, especially for people living on reserve, Stratton said headway has been made in eliminating some of the stigma around HIV/AIDS, partially through summits like the one held in North Bay, and also through the strength of others who have come forward and shown that people can live healthy, productive lives despite having HIV/AIDS.
The summit focused on the discontinuity of service between on reserve and off reserve health systems, which often results in difficulties for people leaving their reserve to access health care since the systems are different.
It also looked at what Stratton called the “crisis” in the numbers of Aboriginal people among the new cases of HIV/AIDS in Canada.
“We’re vastly disproportionately represented as Aboriginal people in the stats on HIV/AIDS,” Stratton said. “Our systems to respond to this crisis need to be broad.”
But for Stratton, the highlight of the summit was the steps that were taken to address how people living with HIV/AIDS can be a part of the solution in terms of providing health care as well as information and advocacy on preventing other people from acquiring HIV/AIDS.
“Many times it’s a tokenism,” Stratton said of the involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS in conferences, workshops and public health campaigns. “But it is really important for us to be meaningfully engaged in developing strategies and plans. That’s what we’ve done at the summit.”
“It has to do with being in control of our own policies and own healthcare,” Stratton added. “We’re coming to take our rightful places in our communities. It’s not a terrible disease where people have to hide in the corner. We can be powerful voices, we can be leaders in our communities.”