Jennifer Geens
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Sep 30/05) - Inmates at the North Slave Correctional Facility have been without their sacred sharing circle since September 1.

Lydia Bardak of the John Howard Society said inmates had spoken highly of the program.

"Any time I was over visiting, they shared how much it helped them," she said.

The sharing circle was a "linguistically appropriate and culturally appropriate" program for North Slave, said Bardak.

Inmates at North Slave are 95 per cent aboriginal. The prison, which was completed in 2004, incorporated a spiritual room with granite floor and woodstove inside the aboriginal skills programming area.

The circle, which took place Friday nights, was facilitated either by elder Bob Wasicuna or by inmates themselves. Wasicuna recently completed his contract with the prison, and the facility is looking for another elder to take over.

In the meantime, the sharing circle is in limbo.

"The involvement of an elder is critical," said acting warden Eric Kieken.

"No one has questioned the validity of the program, we just want to make sure it's run properly," he said.

"There was some perception among the inmates that we had killed it arbitrarily and that was never the case."

Kieken couldn't say how long the temporary suspension would last, since an elder has yet to be hired. After a facilitator is found, the program will undergo a review by the prison's program staff.

He said the facility would like the sharing circle to become more structured, and have the inmate facilitators receive more training in handling self-revelations.

"You don't leave people hanging at the end of the day," said Kieken. "It's not like on the outside where you can continue these meetings for hours and hours. These have defined time limits."

Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings are continuing, but the interruption of elder services has also postponed a training program for peer helpers Bardak said was supposed to have begun this month.