Special Posts on the Aboriginal Healing Foundation Research
Series:
By: Christine McFarlane
Every once in awhile, I look at my blog and try to figure
out what I can do differently on it. In the last while, I have been struggling
with certain things, and I found it quite fitting that, after I had a very
vivid dream the other day of a fellow Native person asking me
“do you still pray?” and then handing me a bundle of sage,
that in the mail today, I received some books from the Aboriginal Healing
Foundation.
The Aboriginal Healing Foundation-which is an
Aboriginal-managed, national, Ottawa-based, not for profit private corporation
will soon be closing its doors, due to the cutbacks of Stephen Harper’s
Conservative government.
For those who do not know what the Aboriginal Healing
Foundation (AHF) is, I will explain. The AHF was established March 31, 1998 and was provided with a one-time grant of $350 million dollars by the Federal
government of Canada as a part of “Gathering Strength-Canada’s Action Plan.”
The foundation was given an eleven year mandate, ending March 31, 2009, to
encourage and support, through research and funding contributions, community
based Aboriginal directed healing initiatives which address the legacy of
physical and sexual abuse suffered in Canada’s Indian Residential School System,
including inter-generational impacts.
According to the AHF,
“As a result of institutional abuses suffered in the past, Aboriginal
people today suffer from the many effects of unresolved trauma including but
not limited to:
·
Lateral violence (when an oppressed group turns
on itself and begins to violate each other
·
Suicide
·
Depression
·
Poverty
·
Alcoholism
·
Lack of parenting skills
·
Lack of capacity to build and sustain healthy
families and communities
And their vision is
“of a future when these effects have been meaningfully resolved and Aboriginal people have
restored their wellbeing for themselves and for their descendants seven
generations ahead.”[1]
It was during my studies at the University of Toronto in the
Aboriginal Studies Program that my professors had me become aware of the
Aboriginal Healing Foundation and their Research Series books and it was these
books, which include “Aboriginal Healing in Canada, “ “Historic Trauma and Healing,” “Resilience and Residential School Legacy,” just to name a few that helped me to understand what happened to my people, and to my own biological family and myself.
To hear that the funding has been cut to such an integral
organization is disheartening. I encountered the AHF table at The Meeting
Place: Truth and Reconciliation Conference at the end of May and ordered the
other research series books. Though it is a heck of a lot of books, I wanted to
invest in them. I have a few here
at home already, but I wanted to invest in the library of books so that once I
was done reading and reviewing them for my blog, I could donate them to the
First Nations House Library at the University of Toronto because it is these
books that will help others in our community understand the importance of the
issues covered in these books. I also hope that those who read these books will take what they learn from these books and carry them in their own learning
journey, both personally and academically.
Just to temporarily digress, my first review will be a book
put out by The Truth and Reconciliation Commision of Canada “Canada, Aboriginal
Peoples, and Residential Schools-They Came for the Children,” and then I will
review the resource books I have acquired from the Aboriginal Healing
Foundation (AHF).
It is my hope that as I finish each review, my readers will
see the importance of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and the resources they
have faithfully put together. I just wish that our Prime Minister-Stephen
Harper saw this and re funded this organization because on one hand the
government apologizes for the Indian Residential Schools System and then takes
away the funding that helps the victims, families and communities move on with
their lives.
For more information on the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and a
more detailed background of their corporation, please visit http://www.ahf.ca
Chi miigwetch
