In this weeks ASTU class, we watched a documentary called Through a Blue Lens. This film depicted the tough lives had by drug addicts in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. The stories were told through the perspectives of the policemen who patrol the area, and interact with the addicts on a daily basis. The point of the film was to show kids what happens when you get addicted to hard drugs. The lives of the addicts were very interesting to me, from an outsider’s perspective, it is hard to imagine how hard it is for them to stop doing drugs altogether and get their lives back on track. However, it is much harder for them to quit than many think. The documentary shows how these drugs have essentially ruined their lives, and each day it is harder and harder to turn back around.

As some of you may know, my mother is a local news anchor at CBS 13 in Portland, Maine, where I am from. A few days ago, a special report of hers aired about addicted babies. When a woman who is addicted to drugs gets pregnant, there is a good chance their baby will be born with that same addiction. This means that the baby has withdrawal symptoms just like the mother would, as the addiction has been passed to them prenatally. This issue has been rising recently, as Tufts University Neonatologist Jonathan Davis points out that the number of babies born addicted to narcotics has “roughly tripled in the past ten years.” The number of babies being tested for addiction has risen at an extremely rapid pace over the past decade. In the case of the woman interviewed in this report, she was previously a heroin addict and was taking an opiate replacement drug, in this case methadone. The baby gets addicted to the methadone through the umbilical cord in the womb, and when the baby is born and the umbilical cord cut, their supply is cut off and they go through withdrawal. To combat withdrawal, doctors essentially put the baby back on the drugs, such as morphine and phebobarbital, and then slowly wean them off. This process can take a week, or it can take over a month; however the treatment does not rid the baby of all withdrawal symptoms. Doctors believe these are the “safest” drugs to give the babies, but that is being studied.

I find this issue interesting as it shows another side of hard drug addiction. This adds to the already harsh image of addicts shown by Through a Blue Lens, and brings to light yet another downside to drug addiction. Some people do not realize how their actions affect others, and in this case the addicted mothers pass that addiction on to their children. There are some people with extreme ideas who say that drug addicts should be sterilized and not allowed to have children. However, a human rights issue arises with that. The addicted babies going through withdrawal is completely the fault of the mother, and the baby does not deserve to go through that torture. But on the other hand, everyone should be able to preserve their rights when it comes to having children. With this I ask: Does a drug addict maintain the right to have children? And if so, should child abusers, alcoholics, etc. also have that right?

Sources: http://www.wgme.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/addicted-babies-treating-growing-problem-maine-21192.shtml#.UxE7YfldWLV

And my Mom.

Earlier this week, our class visited the TRC exhibit at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. While the TRC is a topic we discussed in the beginning of the academic year, it is an entirely different discussion this time around. After learning about marginalized groups and silence, I was able to see the victims of residential schools in a completely different way. The struggles that the students endured while attending residential schools are unimaginable, and the most shocking part about them is that this atrocity is virtually unknown outside of Canada.

While we were at the exhibit, I read a story told by an aboriginal man about his childhood. His older siblings were sent to residential schools when they were very young, and when they were gone his father got sick. Since there was no one else besides the mother, he was forced to become the man of the house and help care for his father and take over his father’s jobs. Eventually, he was sent to a residential school too, away from his family for a very long period of time. His experiences there traumatized him beyond repair, and when he was released he often turned to alcohol to cure his problems. Him and his other friends from residential school became alcoholics, and his alcoholism eventually almost led to his death.

From my understanding, this story seems to be along the lines of the majority of other victims of residential schools. The issue I have is that this happened many decades to over a century ago. Why did the apologies only start coming in the 1990’s? This ties into our learning of marginalized groups. Carter’s article talks about how the powerful often try their best to keep the marginalized groups from having voices in archives (Carter, 222). This can be seen in residential school students being kept silent for so many years, and how there has not been an international outcry. As an American student, it surprised me that I had never heard about residential schools. Canada plays an integral part of our country’s history, and especially as our neighbour one would think American students would learn about this in school. However, it is relatively unknown outside of Canada.

Although the history of residential schools has mostly been silent, the TRC exhibit at the MOA is a great way of breaking that silence and making the voices of the victims heard by a large audience. Former students are finally telling their stories for everyone to understand the trauma these aboriginal people went through as children. The archives are trying to include this marginalized group to preserve their stories for as long as the archives exist.