Canada's first Indigenous reporting class at the University of British Columbia has set out to prove the story of Aboriginal health issues in Canada isn't all doom and gloom statistics with the release feature stories on Aboriginal health issues--and solutions--and a series of radio pieces running on CBC this week.

Officially launched this January, 15 students in the UBC School of Journalism's Reporting in Indigenous Communities class worked in teams to produce eight feature-length stories on Aboriginal health issues in the Lower Mainland. But instead of picking their topic independently, the students met with partner First Nation communities on an ongoing basis to find health issues important to the community.

"Everybody knows the statistics are shameful, that Aboriginal people lag behind other Canadians in almost every health indicator, and we wanted to try and put some faces to those statistics and to have this be solutions-oriented reporting, where Aboriginal people themselves were involved in the solutions rather than just being victims of the ill health," explains course instructor Duncan McCue, a CBC-TV reporter and member of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) Nation.

Students worked with four First Nations communities in the Lower Mainland that partnered with the school on this course: the Squamish Nation; Tsleil-Waututh First Nation; Tsawwassen First Nation; Sto:lo Tribal Council; and the Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council, who provided a perspective of the urban Aboriginal community.

Some of the topics covered are straight up health issues like diabetes, grandparents raising grandchildren with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and suicide prevention. But others take a broader view of health, such as a First Nations court in North Vancouver that offers "holistic sentencing," and a Tsleil-Waututh First Nation that teaches the Hǝn̓q̓ǝmin̓ǝm̓ to preschool aged children as part of a cultural healing process after residential schools.

Students Kendall Walters and Lucas Powers pushed to cover the Tsleil-Waututh language story because it was an issue that was continually raised whenever the students spoke to members of the community.

"We thought the point of the class is to actually really listen to our sources and do a story that is important to them and that just seemed to be this thing. They had this program at the preschool where they were teaching little three and four year-olds the Hǝn̓q̓ǝmin̓ǝm̓ language and we thought that's perfect, a great entry point into that story," Walters told The Tyee.

In addition to writing features for the class, the students worked with CBC Vancouver to produce radio pieces on their topics, which air this week on the Early Edition, Daybreak North, Daybreak South, and On The Island.

McCue is hoping the class will run again next year, with more communities involved, and possibly even an Aboriginal student.

"I'll be approaching more communities over the summer to participate, and our First Nations applications to the UBC j-school increased this year. I'm hoping that there'll be a First Nations student in the class," says McCue.

Katie Hyslop reports on youth issues and education for The Tyee Solutions Society.