Jennifer McPhee
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (July 27/01) - A program for women who were abused at the Grollier Hall Residential school in Inuvik starts this week.

Seventeen women from the NWT will receive one-on-one counselling during their 40 days at the Somba Ke Healing Lodge.

Counsellors will focus on how guilt, shame and anger can lead to dysfunctional lifestyles. Balancing women's spiritual, physical, mental and emotional needs will be part of the therapy.

Norman Yakeleya, executive director of the Grollier Hall Healing Circle, said women raised at residential schools often have unresolved issues even if they weren't sexually abused.

"There are different degrees of abuse," he said. Any time you take children away from home and place them in a foreign setting and lifestyle, it's a form of abuse. If a child does not conform, they are punished."