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Summer 2010 | Vol 13 No 4

Focus

“Our men have lost their place”

Aboriginal shelter guides men on healing path

By Amanda Dale

Crossing the threshold into Na-Me-Res, a 63-bed Aboriginal men’s shelter in mid-town Toronto, Dave P., a Micmac from Nova Scotia, might have noticed the coat of arms that promises Food. Water. Shelter. Friendship.

But at that time, he was not noticing much. “What got me off crack was being here,” Dave tells me, as he packs to leave the shelter for his own room at Sagatay, the organization’s 22-bed residential healing and learning centre next door. “These people made me feel welcome. I was sceptical about going to a shelter,” he admits. With no alcohol or other drugs to tempt him at Na-Me-Res, he still hasn’t beat his addiction, “but,” he says, “I have my fist around it.”

And now Dave has a brand new start. Today he “graduates” to Sagatay, where traditional healing circles and specialized men’s programming blend the practical and the spiritual. “I never thought this day would come,” he says. It’s all part of the long journey to healing from violence, mental health issues and addiction through an approach that identifies the roots of these problems in a long legacy of colonial policy.

“Our men have lost their place,” says Vivian MacNeil, manager of program development at Na-Me-Res. She and former employee Dorian Tiller partnered to develop the Special Needs program, which supports men like Dave who have mental health and addiction battles on their hands.

“Our men have lost their traditional roles,” says MacNeil of the rapid intergenerational loss of culture and belonging afflicting Aboriginal communities. “Add to this sexual and physical abuse from residential schools, survival on the streets and the spread of substance use as a way of coping …” Her voice trails off, the results of this tragic spiral evident in the jammed hallways and program rooms all around her.

At both the shelter and Sagatay, medical and psychiatric services are melded with traditional healing models that restore aspects of Aboriginal identity and belonging, a cultural lens that restores dignity, hope and purpose.

Most men at Na-Me-Res have left reserves, where unemployment and social conditions – poor housing and inadequate educational resources – make it impossible to get ahead. “The women are leaving violence and the men are coming for employment,” MacNeil explains. “But when they get here, they get lost.”

The pull from reserves has revealed a significant deterioration in mental health and means that a disproportionate number of homeless people are Aboriginal – 29 per cent, according to the City of Toronto’s 2009 Street Needs Assessment. But Toronto’s shelter system is not geared toward their unique needs and history. Na-Me-Res is.

As a key element of colonial policy, the Canadian government sought to make Aboriginal peoples fit in by outlawing their cultures, banning their languages and family and community traditions. Entire generations of First Nations and Inuit peoples also endured direct physical and sexual abuse through residential schools and other institutions, while being robbed of the chance to parent their children. It is estimated that up to five generations of Aboriginal people have been prevented from intergenerational bonding from these policies, which fulfill in part the international legal definition of genocide.

“Men have lost their place and often take it out on women. And women look at them and can’t forgive.”

Peter Menzies, clinic head of the Aboriginal Service at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and president of the board at Na-Me-Res, has examined this intergenerational trauma. His study published in 2006 in the Canadian Review of Social Policy has made it clear that trauma is at the root of much persistent homelessness among the men MacNeil and her staff see every day in the Special Needs program.

For MacNeil, this program has a special place in the innovations she has been a part of here. In the past, difficult behaviour – not difficult histories – was what shelter workers were trained to see. Today, coming to terms with their own histories is part and parcel of what Aboriginal shelter workers do to connect with their compassion. It’s all part of healing the community.

Now, admissions and discharges are seen as part of a cycle of healing, not as a failure to “progress” on the part of the man seeking support. Complicated forms, overly burdensome rules, impossible expectations and judgemental attitudes are banished. They are replaced with compassion, attentiveness and awareness of the social and historical context contemporary Aboriginal men are grappling with.

In his study of intergenerational trauma and homeless Aboriginal men, Menzies postulates that in First Nations and Inuit communities, trauma has often happened in four interconnected ways – through the individual, family, community and nation.

When trauma is experienced by more than one generation in a family, personal trauma becomes part of what it means to be in that family, explains Menzies. Where most families within a community experience similar life events, the community can be left without the spiritual or other resources to address the problems together. When an entire people experience these things as a matter of public policy – in this case colonialism – trauma can be said to happen to a nation. No one really knows how long it can take to heal from such wide-scale trauma.

Back at Na-Me-Res, in the healing circle, the topic today is jealousy. It’s Jason’s turn with the feather, which signifies his time to speak. His story illustrates the loss that Menzies’ study enumerates. “I had to get away from my family, from the reserve,” says Jason. “The drinking. The fighting. The negativity. Infidelity. No one knew me. I was on my own. I was lost, you know?” The group answers in Ojibway. In unison. A call to a brother lost to re-enter the circle.

“I had to stop drinking,” Jason continues. “And stop being so jealous. I learned to trust my wife. She said to me ‘I’m tired of being your girlfriend! Step up to the plate.’ Ahh, commitment!” He gets a low rumble of recognition from this group of men, all trying to do and be better. “I never thought I’d be with someone for 11 years!” A roar of congratulations. “I still struggle,” Jason admits, head bowed in the brave humility that characterizes the healing approach.

The facilitator mentions that there are women in the circle today. Not usual in the men’s healing circle. “It helps us find balance,” he says. “I invited these ladies because they have an important perspective.”

Aboriginal cultures have strong beliefs about respect for the feminine and masculine, and treating each other, the land and the community with esteem. These things are part of a circle of what is sacred and treasured. Not to be violated or disrupted. “Our communities are often cut off from this value,” the facilitator tells me. “Men have lost their place and often take it out on women. And women look at them and can’t forgive.”

Another Dave – David R. – is in a different space. The healing circle is not his thing right now, but he finds the sweat lodge invaluable. He is part of the Special Needs Program and gave up a life of solitary grief in the wake of his partner’s death from cancer to begin anew at Na-Me-Res. After wandering the hiways of Canada in a state of blinding mental illness, David is now in a room of his own downtown. He visits the staff at Na-Me-Res regularly. They are his touchstone, and there is no doubt that continued contact with them has helped to keep him housed. David shows me the sweat lodge, an improbable and moving innovation that resembles a canvas tent on the cedar deck of Sagatay.

Above the fence line, an ordinary affluent Toronto neighbourhood stretches out, while the men here reach back through time to connect with what keeps life sacred for them. When asked about the role of the sweat in his healing, David has no trouble answering: “Imagine you are sitting by a campfire and your old grandmother comes out to talk to you, to help you and to guide you. That’s what the sweat is like. The ancestors come and take care of you.”

Back in the shelter, Dave P. can’t contain his nervous excitement about moving: “This is going to be an opportunity to change my life,” he says, as he waves goodbye. On his way to find a new life 100 metres and a full incarnation away from the methadone, jail time and lost family his journey has entailed, he too connects with his Aboriginal past, but in a more tangible way: “I want my grandfather to know where I am,” he pleads. “Tell him I am fine. He is Micmac. He is the only one who continued to believe in me.”

Dave clutches his green plastic bags of clean clothes fresh from the dryer, hope and fear visible in his open face. Hugs all around. The staff have a little glimmer in their eyes as another Aboriginal man with his own path and his own story finds his way to the high ground these men strive to reach every day.