An organization that does outreach to the local Indigenous population is expanding to provide counselling and mental health supports after a need for those services was identified, especially as a result of COVID-19.
Anishnabeg Outreach Employment and Training began to distribute what it called spirit bundles to help support Indigenous families in Guelph, Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge.
Stephen Jackson, CEO of Anishnabeg Outreach, said the spirit bundles include food, clothing, cleaning supplies and sanitary products.
“Pretty much everything you can find at a Wal-Mart people donate to us and we in turn donate it out to families,” said Jackson. “It provides that first level of support.”
Hundreds of the spirit bundles are distributed every week in an outreach model.
“Because the Indigenous families aren’t able to come to us generally speaking, we go to them,” said Jackson. “We will meet them where they are at as opposed to forcing them to come to where we are at.”
It was during the drop-offs that Jackson and his team realized there was a dramatic need for mental health supports for the local Indigenous population.
The problem is many Indigenous people will not reach out for help because the intergenerational trauma caused by the residential school system, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and the Sixties Scoop have created a general mistrust in many colonial or mainstream organizations, said Jackson.
“There is 500 years of trauma that has taken place and it just doesn’t end,” he said.
Jackson said mistrust in mainstream organizations means that many won’t even use services like food banks because they don’t want to register.
“Because then they are on a list that could land them in future trouble,” said Jackson.
Those troubles could include negative outcomes like a higher-than-average representation by Indigenous people within the prison population, children in care or among the homeless.
“Those are just outcomes from lack of healing because if healing took place or had happened, a lot of those would be very different stats,” said Jackson. “They wouldn’t get apprehended, they wouldn’t go through the justice system and they wouldn’t be homeless, they would actually be able to move forward.”
To tackle the problem, Anishnabeg Outreach was matched up with Family Counselling and Support Services for Guelph-Wellington and Carizon Family and Community Services serving Waterloo Region to develop a program that would be a hybrid offering mainstream clinical therapy along with Indigenous culture and teachings.
There was already a number of mental health crises in the area and COVID-19 has just made them worse, said Joanne Young Evans, executive director of Family Counselling and Support Services.
“The Indigenous community is more challenging for us to break into because there is such a history of mistrust because of the way things have gone over the decades,” said Young Evans.
Family Counselling and Support Services and Carizon Family and Community Services will assist Anishnabeg Outreach in developing the program.
“The psychotherapists will work out of his agency. They will also have an elder who will be working with the program as well,” said Young Evans.
Jackson said he is thrilled to get the support of the two agencies.
“It allows us to build our program a lot more rapidly but take what is mainstream and put an Indigenous spin on it,” he said.
The counselling is expected to begin within the next few weeks, said Jackson.
Information on how to contribute donations to the spirit bundle program can be found here.
