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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Federal budget cuts have caused the Healing Drum Society to discontinue its intensive healing program for residential school survivors.

Mary Josephine Simpson travelled to Yellowknife from Whati to attend the last intensive trauma Embracing Our Human-Nest program at the Healing Drum Society. The society is discontinuing the program for residential school survivors because of federal funding cuts. - Laura Busch/NNSL photo

The last public month-long healing program offered by the society, titled Embracing Our Human-Nest, ended Aug. 16 after treating roughly 1,000 clients since 2002. The society is losing about $1 million in funding every year - roughly half of its budget - meaning it will no longer offer the program even though nearly 200 people remain on the waiting list.

"We receive feedback about the insanity of this decision all the time," said Joe Pintarics, executive director of the Healing Drum Society. "It's going to severely limit our ability to help people heal."

Six jobs will be lost at the Healing Drum Society, which is based out of Yellowknife, as a result of the cuts.

"It's a very good program and I wish it could be going on but they said there's no money for it," said Mary Josephine Simpson, who travelled to Yellowknife from Whati to take the program after spending about a year on the waiting list. "There's a lot of people out there who really need help and I don't know why the government is cutting them out of funding. They should see how it looks in the North, for the Northern people. They really need this program to help them put their past behind and go on to the future. That's what I'm trying to do for myself."

Simpson attended residential school for four years, including two years in Lapointe Hall in Fort Simpson. She said the group sessions gave her a safe space to talk about what happened to her during those years.

The healing program is modelled around self-responsibility and aims to empower people to take charge of their own lives, said Pintarics. The program is offered in Yellowknife, and has been offered around the NWT at the request of communities. The ultimate goal is to help clients achieve what Pintarics calls "dynamic peace."

"You accept what was done as what was done, and you learn to deal with that and make a commitment to yourself that you're never going to be in a position to let that happen to you again. And you move on," he said.

Before the program is shuttered forever, the Healing Drum Society will honour its commitment to provide two more programs, one at the North Slave Correctional Centre and another at the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre in Hay River.

As part of its 2010 budget, the federal government announced it would no longer support the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation that funded more than 100 community-based support programs for residential school survivors and their families, including Embracing Our Human-Nest.

Instead, money was given to Health Canada to run programs to support services for former residential school students and their families.

Health Canada spokesperson Sylwia Krzyszton stated in an e-mail that the department received $65 million in 2010 for its Health Canada's Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. This program provides professional counselling services, community-based support workers, support for elders, and transportation to programs not available in a resident's home community.

These services will continue to be offered at the Healing Drum Society, which received $734,096 from Health Canada for the 2013 fiscal year.

"Funding for the Healing Drum Society is used for residential school survivors and their families to deliver programs for people impacted by physical/sexual abuse; provide follow-up services and supportive counselling; and provide a better understanding of services available," stated Krzyszton.

The federal department also provided $216,390 to the Gwich'in Tribal Council and $703,675 to the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation.

However, none of this funding will go toward group therapy sessions such as what is offered through Embracing Our Human-Nest, said Pintarics.

While each person has unique needs when it comes to counselling, during Pintarics' five years with the society he has seen the program work for many people who have been through numerous other treatment programs with little success.

Individual counselling will continue to be offered through the Healing Drum Society, but for participant Dawn Mangelana, it was the group dynamic that helped her most throughout these workshops.

"I do one-on-one counselling as well, however I may still feel like I'm alone and they don't understand my story," said Mangelana, who was raised in Tuktoyaktuk but now calls Yellowknife home. "Just being in a large group rather than a one-on-one counselling, I find that it helps for my healing. It has more of an impact, having a group together like this."

In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued an apology to aboriginal people for the Indian Residential School system. It began with the words, "The treatment of children in Indian Residential Schools is a sad chapter in our history."

The idea that residential schools is nothing more than a sad chapter in our past is obscene, said Pintarics.

"This is happening today, this is going on in front of our eyes," he said, pointing to First Nation Child and Family Services Society statistics that show more than three times the number of aboriginal children are within the child welfare system today than there were enrolled in residential schools at its peak.

Meanwhile, nine out of 10 federal inmates were raised within the social system.

Harper's apology aside, Canada has never acknowledged that taking children away from their homes continues to hurt future generations, said Pintarics.

"When are we going to wake up and say, 'Hey, we need to do something about this,'?" he asked.

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