CamBay students talk about living the good life

As part of National Aboriginal Addictions Awareness Week, the Cambridge Bay Wellness Centre organized workshops for students around the week’s theme of “living the good life.” (FILE PHOTO)

Wind chills held the temperature close to -40 C in Cambridge Bay this past week.

But the Cambridge Bay Wellness Centre helped keep the Elders Palace cozy by hosting workshops on “living the good life” for students from Kiilinik High School.

That’s the same theme behind this year’s National Aboriginal Addictions Awareness week, Nov. 13 to 19.

During day-long workshops, led by counsellor Terry Garchinski, students from Grades 7 to 9 talked about making choices — “what helps you live the good life.”

The sessions focused “on addictions in the larger context, the choices we can make to live the good life.”

That’s an approach Garchinski likes to take when discussing addictions because “it shows us we have choices,” he said.

“Choosing gambling or drinking or drugs, that’s just one of many choices we make,” he said.

Asking students to think about what choices they want to make helps them to be more aware and see they can make positive choices, he said.

Kids know what those choices are, things like sports, friends, going on the land, music, video games and fishing.

But a big part of the workshop is encouraging them to think about what blocks them from getting what they want, issues like poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, bullying and overcrowding.

They’re familiar with those because they’ve seen these “in their families and in their community,” Garchinski said.

“They are so aware. They know the negative impacts [of poor choices] and they know the risks,” he said.

The challenge is for kids like these to see how they can get over those blocks — something the Kiilinik students were eager to talk about during the workshop.

“We’re being realistic,” Garchinski said. “We’re not saying life is going to change for every student because of it, but hopefully every student puts a foot forward in a direction he or she can feel confident in.”

Students had no problem sharing, he said.

Their only frustration was that the workshops ended too quickly.

“I thought it would be boring, but it was fun because we did a lot and talked. I love going to workshops like this,” was one participant’s comment.