Journey towards reconciliation includes access to traditional ceremony

In order to heal from the trauma endured in residential schools, many Indigenous people have turned to traditional healing ceremonies.

This is the third story in a Global News series called Journey Towards Reconciliation. To see previous stories, click here.

Alberta singer-songwriter Donita Large has leaned on music as a way to heal for most of her life.

When she was a child she would sing, loudly, at the Catholic Church on Saddle Lake First Nation with her kokum (“grandmother” in Cree) and her father, a residential school survivor.

“Growing up, all I knew was that, yes, my dad went to residential school,” Large said.

Intergenerational trauma is generally defined as trauma that gets passed down from those who directly experience an incident to subsequent generations.

Generations of children went through chronic adversity and trauma during their developmental years because of residential schools and the Sixties Scoop, putting them at risk throughout their lives for mental and physical health problems.

Experts and First Nations advocates have cited the violence and abuse inflicted upon several generations of Indigenous children at the schools as the reason why Indigenous communities experience disproportionately higher rates of violence, psychological distress and substance use and abuse.

In Large’s case, her father was an alcoholic.