PHASE II SUMMARY (July 2008 – Feb 2013)
The following is a summary of the work that the Healing of the Canoe Project completed during Phase II of the project, which was a collaborative project between ADAI, the Suquamish Tribe and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe.
There were three general overall goals for Phase II:
- Continue to use the CBPR/TPR process to further refine and implement this community-based and culturally relevant substance abuse prevention intervention among Suquamish tribal youth
- Extend and replicate this process and developmental model with the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, using the same methods established during Phase I with the Suquamish Tribe (e.g., Tribal Council approval of partnership, memoranda of understanding, hiring tribal members as project staff, weekly local and monthly joint staff meetings, community meetings, information in tribal newsletters, key stakeholder interviews, focus groups, community advisory board, community-based curriculum review and adaptation group, Tribal Council review, etc) to adapt the curriculum to be specific to its culture, traditions and values.
- Implement and evaluate the effectiveness of the curricula more rigorously.
These goals were accomplished through the following steps.
- The summer school and after-school venues in which the Suquamish curriculum was originally implemented were not feasible for a number of reasons. The Tribe had recently opened a tribal high school and the HOC project team was invited to expand the curriculum from 11 sessions to a full semester-long daily class, which was later extended to the full academic year. Project staff served as instructors, using the expanded curriculum, and tribal Elders and other community members served as guests to share their experiences and tribal traditions, values, and activities. The class was well received by tribal students, who were able to receive credit from both the high school and the local community college.
- Working with the Chi-e-chee Network (which is the Port gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s Alcohol and Other Drugs task force and which oversees cultural prevention programming) as its Community Advisory Board and with a community-level work group, the HOC team developed an 11 session, tribally specific adaptation of the curriculum. While containing the same primary social skills training components as the curriculum in Suquamish, the “Navigating Life the S’Klallam Way” curriculum has been tailored to reflect Port gamble S’Klallam traditions, values and culture.
- The Suquamish tribal high school closed for an academic year as it “retooled” its programs. This required the HOC team to consider alternative ways to deliver the curriculum. At the same time, the Port Gamble S’Klallam team was also beginning to explore methods for delivering its newly developed curriculum. Together, they chose to develop an intensive, multi-session workshop format. Arrangements were made by both Tribes with the local school district to allow tribal high school students to be absent from school in order to attend the workshops, and to receive credit for their involvement. The workshops consisted of three 2.5- 3 day sessions held off the reservations.
- The workshop format was felt to be an effective delivery method by the facilitators and was both well accepted and received by the students. The results of a quasi-experimental design analysis indicated that during the course of the approximately 3 months over which the workshops took place, there was an increase in a sense of optimism and self-efficacy, and a decrease of substance use among the participants.
- The process of development and delivery has resulted in multiple versions of the curricula, including versions that have been used with middle school children, a year-long curriculum that has been integrated into a tribal high school setting as a stand-alone class, and curricula that can be used in a multi-session, intensive workshop format. In addition, having the youth develop Digital Stories as a part of their participation in the intervention is now an important component of HOC.