Healing circle gets $8K grant from CFSEA

By Jeremy Appel on November 20, 2018.

jappel@medicinehatnews.com @MHNJeremyAppel

A healing circle for prisoners at the Medicine Hat Remand Centre has received an $8,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Southeastern Alberta.

The circle has been up and running since March and is open to Indigenous and non-Indigenous inmates.

The group received an $11,000 CFSEA grant in November of last year to help get started.

Lee Anne Charbonneau, executive director of Medicine Hat’s John Howard Society, which offers the circle as part of its programming, says its purpose is twofold.

First, the circle works towards reconciliation by having Indigenous and settler Canadians engage with Indigenous healing practices.

Second, it provides a service for the disproportionate number of aboriginal people in Alberta’s jails.

While Indigenous people make up six per cent of Alberta’s population, they represent 40.3 per cent of the jail population.

“It’s providing a service to people who are already there,” said Charbonneau.

Participation in the circle is wholly voluntary, she added.

“All the inmates are offered a chance to attend, including the women and, of course, the women and the men attend separately,” said Charbonneau.

Each circle session begins with a smudging ceremony, burning sweetgrass and sage, which are considered sacred medicines in Indigenous tradition.

“We sit on the floor in a circle. Everyone participates in the smudge and then that’s followed usually by some readings,” said Charbonneau. “We read about issues in social justice, criminal justice … and do storytelling.”

The stories are “traditional teachings from elders addressed to people who are in conflict with the law.”

She says the circle provides inmates with the opportunity to heal while they serve their time, whether their ailments are physical, emotional or both.

“A lot of people who are in jails … are suffering from addictions and trauma, violence in their lives. Some of them suffer from brain injuries and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and other physical ailments,” said Charbonneau.

“It helps you focus. It offers unity. It gives the men a forum to talk about their past traumas. It also gives them information and enlightenment on some very difficult issues, like violence against women (and) suicide.”

Since its inception, the circle has had 98 attendees, who have attended 168 times.

“Quite a good number — 40 of them — have attended more than once,” she said.

One of the regular attendees has become her “medicine helper,” assisting Charbonneau to keep the flame going while she talks and adding more sweetgrass and sage to the smudge when needed.

Healing circles have been offered in many of Alberta’s provincial jails in recent years. The closest before March was in Lethbridge.

“Medicine Hat had been left out of that loop for a long time,” Charbonneau said.

“We’re really proud to bring Medicine Hat up to modern standards of what’s available for rehabilitation in provincial jails.”

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