Community Research Unit

For over 100 years the government of Canada operated residential schools for Aboriginal children that required children be taken out of their homes and educated away from their families. These schools became sites of widespread abuse, the legacy of which continues to influence the lives of those who attended and the generations that followed. As Canada moves through a reconciliation process that includes reparation payments, official apologies, and Truth Commissions, this article considers other modalities that happen in the space between the expected flow from apology to reconciliation and resolution. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, this article considers the ways in which a community crime prevention workshop is transformed into a different type of work space as participants engage in problem solving by discussing the role of residential schools in daily life. They do so in meetings with police officers who represent one of the branches of government associated to the enforcement of this colonial policy. By considering these situated practices, this chapter will consider alternate modalities that must reckon with the legacy of residential schools.

Focusing on a police program in Canada called the School Action for Emergency (SAFE), this article discusses the labor practices required to create a virtual object—an augmented map that police are meant to use to effectively respond to school-based emergencies. Focus is placed on the production of the police officer as an authority figure through the deployment of these police aids. Drawing on Marxist and feminist theory alongside Science and Technology Studies literature, the article focuses on labor practices necessary to create this map and illustrate how these labor practices are erased when the map appears to run smoothly.

Summary: This article discusses some of the challenges frontline police encounter when working with someone who has FASD, highlighting some areas where changes can, and are, being made to help bring about better justice outcomes for individuals with FASD.
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The goal of this article is to offer a snapshot of the challenges frontline police officers face when working with individuals with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). The piece is co-authored by Sgt. Donna Hassman, who has been in policing for 15 years in Regina, and Michelle Stewart, who conducts research about FASD focusing on frontline workers and the criminal justice system. All examples and references to policy and practices are particular to Canada, with implications in other locations.

Executive Summary:

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is an umbrella term used to describe the range of disorders that may result from the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. As FASD is a brain injury, this often-invisible disorder may cause numerous problems associated with cognitive and executive functioning. Individuals with FASD may experience more problems at school, additional mental health problems, increased need for social services and foster homes, and higher contact rates with the criminal justice system than unaffected individuals. In 2014, the Canada FASD Research Network stated that an estimated 5% of the population may be affected by FASD, which translated to 55,708 individuals in Saskatchewan alone.

As FASD affects so many, there is a growing need to increase conversations about this disability. To address this need, events were held in Regina, SK on April 22 and 23, 2014 to encourage conversation, networking, and strategizing. Included in these events was a training session during the afternoon of April 22. The goal of this event was to give participants a baseline understanding of FASD prior to the full-day workshop. On April 23, there was a full-day workshop with front-line workers from across the province. The goal of the event was to bring together justice, social services, community organizations, and policy-makers to learn about innovative programs inside and outside of the province while also providing a space to network and collaborate. This workshop included front-line workers and policy-makers from the justice and health sectors as well as community agencies and social services who met to discuss challenges in delivering effective supports and programs, concerns about over-representation of individuals with FASD in the justice system, and innovative approaches to working with clients. The intent was to facilitate knowledge transfer by examining existing practices across Canada. This report will focus primarily on outcomes of the full-day workshop.

The workshop included 17 presentations from police, probation officers, social workers, and judges, as well as from community representatives, Children’s Advocate offices in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health. Two facilitated group discussion sessions were held throughout the day to allow participants the opportunity to discuss innovative strategies and associated challenges that arise when working on the front lines. The sessions were first selected based on sector (justice, community-based organizations, and social work), and then by region (Regina and Area, Saskatoon and Area, and Rural and Northern). The workshop also offered lengthy breaks, and a tabletop discussion to encourage networking and resource/strategy sharing. There were over 200 participants.

Feedback was collected throughout the day via notes from the tabletop discussion, two participant surveys, as well as notes collected during facilitated group discussions. From this feedback, four key findings were identified and nine recommendations are being put forward.

Based on the event FASD at the Frontline - held at the University of Regina in April 2014 - this policy document presents four Key Findings and nine recommendations. These findings and recommendations are taken from comments and discussion with over 200 participants that attended the one-day workshop that focused on the perspectives of frontline workers from the fields of health, social work, justice and community organizations that work with clients that have FASD.

This article is about the challenges of doing anti-oppressive education in a post-secondary context with a community of interdisciplinary colleagues. Critical examination of an anti-oppressive workshop, and subsequent focus group, reveals how good intentions can nevertheless reproduce the conditions we seek to challenge. To make sense of the challenges of doing this work, the authors offer three different analyses of the feedback received in the focus group. Drawing on literature from anti-oppressive education, feminist and critical theory, the authors focus on the role of engagement and recognition to highlight the power that underlies participation. By analyzing key insights from a focus group discussion, the authors seek to disrupt the relationship between identities rooted in goodness and efforts to do anti-oppressive work. Anti-oppressive work must grapple with the lived political, everyday realities we inhabit. This necessarily involves actively challenging the structural conditions that facilitate oppression.

This Issue Paper includes background on FASD, issues about FASD and the justice system along with key recommendations. This piece was authored by Courtney R. Green, Jocelynn L. Cook, Michelle Stewart, Amy Salmon of the Canada FASD Research Network. For more information and access to additional FASD information and issue papers: http://www.canfasd.ca/

The following is comprised of submissions by those affiliated with the Canada FASD Research Network—a network comprised of researchers, clinicians and families who are working collaborative to advance knowledge about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. 

As the Standing Committee has been receiving expert testimony on the key issues associated to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, the following document is meant as a supplemental contribution to those briefs and testimonies. Rather than rehearsing key elements of FASD that have been discussed in other briefs, this document will instead present additional information for consideration as it blends the knowledge of FASD researchers with the hands-on experiences of parents.  This submission reflects current research in the field, key issues that are being taken up in justice sectors, and the lived experiences of parents raising children with FASD.

Submitted by:
Ray Marnoch, Chair, Family Advisory Committee, Canada FASD Research Network

Dr. Mansfield Mela, MBBS, FWACP, MRC (Psych), MSc, FRCPC; University of Saskatchewan, Canada FASD Research Network

Dorothy Reid, Co-Chair, Family Advisory Committee, Canada FASD Research Network

Dr. Michelle Stewart, Strategic Lead for Justice Interventions with Canada FASD Research Network; Department of Justice Studies, University of Regina

This will be the first in a series of blogs by Michelle Stewart who will be exploring the issues raised in this blog by thinking about the anthropology of policing in the context of a settler state. Michelle is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Justice Studies at the University of Regina where she teaches the social justice stream and investigates health disparities, often racialized, in relationship to the justice system and the state.
To see post visit: http://anthropoliteia.net/2014/10/31/thinking-about-tina-fontaine-murders-the-role-of-the-police-inquiries-and-settlers-in-canada/

This blog entry was part of the "#BlackLivesMatter: Anti-Black Racism, Police Violence, and Resistance" Hot Spot that was edited by Bianca Williams and published through Cultural Anthropology in June 2015.
To access this entry click here: http://culanth.org/fieldsights/693-rethinking-the-call-the-limits-of-cameras-and-training.

This article reports on a workshop that was held with frontline workers in Canada and discusses the role of anthropological sensibilities as they inform research, community engagement
and policy outcomes. The workshop brought together frontline workers to discuss foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, a complex and lifelong disability – one that often raises social-justice concerns. The goal was to facilitate a space in which participants could share their experiences and potentially bring about better outcomes for people living with this disability. The article focuses on the workshop in relationship to anthropological sensibilities, anchored in lateral research practices, with attention to poly-vocality and relational ways of understanding, all of which inform our practice and potential impacts. This article critically analyses the role of applied research as it is informed by other disciplines and concurrently constrained by different forces.

This environmental scan will examine FASD and justice programs across Canada with attention to both youth and adult programs.  This environmental scan is a working document that aims to engage with the youth and adult justice sectors to facilitate understandings of programs and practices, and is the first step in formulating a comprehensive summary of FASD and the justice system across Canada.  This scan will outline external and internal factors when considering FASD and from that will highlight areas of strength and weakness when thinking about FASD programming in the justice system.  Research indicates that a disproportionate number of people involved in the justice system have FASD (diagnosed, suspected or otherwise) which places pressure on this system to address the needs of these clients—and raises questions about where needs can be best met.  While individuals with FASD can experience the justice system as witnesses, victims and offenders, this report will focus on specific programs for youth and adults who are living with FASD and encounter the justice system as offenders.  The scan includes appendices with inventories of programs and practices including diagnostic capacity and justice-specific programs for youth and adults.

Although FASD is first and foremost a health issue, it is a consideration in the justice system because individuals with FASD have contact as victims, witnesses and offenders. This chapter will draw on research with justice professionals to argue that there is an ethical need, and indeed an obligation, for appropriate training to better prepare police to work with clients that have FASD. By illustrating the ways in which many frontline workers misunderstand FASD, coupled with the stigma associated to FASD, this chapter argues that individuals with FASD have unique needs and the stakes in the justice system are simply too high to not have appropriate training in place to meet those needs.

This article starts with a question: what sociopolitical and/or sociocultural factors are flattened in prevention narratives? Focusing on the case of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and drawing on narratives and practices that argue FASD is 100% preventable—this article argues these fictions of prevention strip the very context within which a particular medical phenomenon is occurring. Focusing on legislation in Alaska and proposed amendments to the Criminal Code in Canada that target FASD, layered with interview material, the article analyzes policy and practices that could impact women's reproductive health through troublesome frameworks of cost and responsibility. The article illustrates the potentially negative impact of policies and discourses that frame FASD as 100% preventable. The article argues that overly simplistic, or purposefully simplistic, understandings of the condition serve to mask the broader structural issues that demand attention including legacies of colonialism and structural inequality. In so doing, this article illustrates the ways in which prevention practices have implications in the areas of women's reproductive health, law and policy, social justice, and welfare.

This infographic was released to coincide with International FASD Awareness Day in 2016. The infographic offers an overview of a multi-disciplinary pilot project that blends community-based arts practices with social science methods to investigate the lived experience(s) of those that have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). FASD is a complex and lifelong disability. The pilot project used improv as a method to explore strengths and challenges facing those that are living with FASD. The project focused on a strengths-based approach to research that was both community-based and collaborative.  Preliminary findings will be released in Fall 2016 along with tools developed in the workshop. The infographic indicates that the preliminary research indicates the capacity for the workshop to assist with relaxation and community-building. The PIs for this research project are based at the University of Regina. Dr. Michelle Stewart is an applied anthropologist and Dr. Rebecca Caines is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar. Infographic designed by Alexandra Johnson.