New tack eyed for addiction relapses
Plan emphasizes First Nations’ culture, healing
When someone kicks an addiction only to relapse, First Nations University professor Carrie Lavallie sees a gap in treatment, especially in cities.
To fill that gap, she’s started a project in Prince Albert aiming to include traditional healing practices that are typically only available in rural settings and on First Nations. The idea, subject to community input, is to offer 24hour service access where people can find community supports and traditional treatment. “We need to bring in all different ways of knowing to create new answers. Because right now, the answers we have aren’t working, or aren’t working 100 per cent,” she said.
The first stage of the process is surveying residents and local organizations for their thoughts, asking what they want to see and where gaps in treatment are. By next April, Lavallie hopes to finish that phase, before adding new partners, finding funding and doing more research to move the project further later that year.
The model that sparked her interest was the healing centre in Fort Qu’appelle, which is about 70 kilometres northeast of Regina and offers traditional practices like a sweat lodge for those in recovery.
Lavallie noted urban healing centres are under-researched, but said their more rural counterparts like the one in Fort Qu’appelle are encouraging.
Their focus on relationships and cultural context make for a more holistic approach, she said, as opposed to focusing solely on personal thought processes and shortcomings.
That’s because Indigenous perspectives emphasize healing together, rather than more individualized Western approaches, she said.
Subject to community input, Lavallie sees access to elders, smudging and traditional medicine as part of potential treatment in Prince Albert. She said a more collective healing process reduces feelings of shame for people in recovery, increasing their chances of success. Nick Pearce is the Starphoenix’s reporter under the Local Journalism Initiative