Presented By:

Bo Pelech

Carol Teal ArtsCan Circle Executive Director

ArtsCan Circle sends teams of musicians and artists to remote Canadian Indigenous communities and links creative artists with Indigenous youth at risk.

The teams conduct hands-on workshops in playing instruments, songwriting, singing, drama and visual arts to build self-esteem amongst native youth and encourage positive outlets for self expression through the arts.

ArtsCan also delivers donated musical instruments to each participating community to ensure access to instruments on an on-going basis

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/documentary+Free+Preview/ID/2590881936/

Build totems, perform rituals, give gifts and try to become the most respected member of your clan by being the most generous player.

The facts:

Source : Assembly of First Nations

The facts:Infant mortality rates are more than double the

Canadian rate (17 compared to 8 per 100).Violent deaths in First Nation communities are nearly

3 times the national average (157 compared to 54 per 100,000 population).

Over-crowding in reserve homes (about 30%) has risen to 16 times the Canadian rate (1.8%).

Nearly 40% of reserve homes have no central heating, compared to only 5% of Canadian homes.

Source : Assembly of First Nations

“ Government welfare cheques instill in their recipients a false sense of entitlement. The results are a perverse psychology marked by inferiority complex, victim thinking, lack of confidence, learned helplessness, inability to cope with adversity, an absence of self-responsibility and accountability, and ultimately an inability to feel the empowerment that self-sufficiency can bring. Worse, such attitudes are passed on from generation to generation until too often they become normalized.”

Calvin Helin

“History tells us the most successful cures for poverty come from within...no empowerment is as effective as self empowerment”.

David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

``As free beings admiring, learning, and observing...we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaningful, then we are engaged in art.``

Albert Einstein