Several staff members attended “Healing Our Spirit Worldwide”. This conference is in its 9th year, and brought together over 2500 Indigenous leaders and health care professionals from around the world to share and celebrate the healing power of traditional Indigenous knowledge and culture.
The event ran from September 11th-15th in Vancouver, British Columbia with (left to right in picture) Family Counselor Linda Nasekapow, Land-Based Facilitator Roseanne Que-dent, Treatment Director Raija Vic, Family Counselor Greg Vic and Family Counselor Jamie Sykes attending the conference. The five-day event featured ceremonies and traditions from around the world with power-ful opening and closing ceremonies. Workshops were presented by agencies sharing their stories about their healing programs with discussions where participants had a chance to connect and share ideas and stories about their successes and challenges. Evening events included movie screenings and medicine making. There were many powerful speakers with the common theme of joy expressed in sharing with so many other Indige-nous peoples.
Family Counselor Jamie Sykes was able to reconnect with former Ahousat, British Columbia First Nation Chief Greg Louie. They had met in 2017 while Jamie was film-ing season one of APTNs First Contact Canada when the Ahousat community hosted the cast members to share their knowledge and teachings about First Nations. Staff saw many familiar faces from the Northern Ontario healing community and were able to bring home new connections and ideas to implement into the Tommy Beardy Centre’s programming and success.
