Fort William First Nation gathers to celebrate recovery and support community
By Rick Garrick
FORT WILLIAM FIRST NATION — Fort William First Nation’s Recovery Day gathering included a Mini Addiction/Mental Health Fair, message wall, traditional feast, pipe teachings, drumming, music, and other activities on September 17 at the Health & Wellbeing Centre.
“This is a great opportunity for the community to come together and participate in an activity that is focused on substance use recovery,” says Fort William First Nation Chief Michele Solomon. “There’s things that are happening here for the kids and the adults. It’s also a time that we can acknowledge those people who are new to recovery or early in recovery and just really be with each other and support each other because we know that this is such a big problem in our community.”
Chief Solomon says it was wonderful to have the traditional feast at the Recovery Day gathering.
“We have some really great cooks at Fort William First Nation, so having a nice traditional feast is always wonderful — there’s some good food here, some moose meat and wild rice,” Chief Solomon says. “It’s overall a fun day and a day to just acknowledge the challenges of substance use in our communities but also celebrate living substance free.”
Ashley Harju, Mental Health and Addiction Manager at Fort William First Nation, says this was the fourth annual Recovery Day in the community.
“This year we’re developing it a little bit larger, so we’re having live entertainment,” Harju says. “This is really important for us to honour everyone in recovery and the journey that has [brought] them here. It’s taken a lot for some individuals to be able to come forward and say they have come into recovery, they had an addiction, and to acknowledge that. We’re just proud to have everyone come together and show as a community that we support each and every person.”
Harju says they had some organizations in attendance that were sharing the resources, information, and programs they have to support people in the community.
“If someone comes today, they might end up connecting with someone and that might be the start for their recovery journey,” Harju says.
Kristina Marshall, Registered Psychotherapist at Headley and Co. Mental Health, says they are a small counselling centre that offers individual, couple, and family therapy.
“It’s important for people to know that there are people out there that they can talk to, that are willing to listen and to hear their side of their story because everybody’s story is important and stories help us recover,” Marshall says, noting that interested people can contact them through the phone number or email posted on their website. “We all work a little bit differently, client-centred psychotherapy means counselling to talk about your maybe history, what led you to where you are right now, and how you want to improve and how we can help you to find new paths forward.”
Tina McMann, volunteer at Narcotics Anonymous, says they were providing information about where to go for Narcotics Anonymous meetings during the gathering.
“It is a group of people who are trying to stay off all substances,” McMann says. “Usually, they will have a topic of some sort and then you share what your experience, strength, and hope is in that.”
McMann says Narcotics Anonymous is similar to Alcoholics Anonymous.
“It is the same concepts where you sit around in a circle and you talk about where you are at in your recovery,” McMann says. “We kind of all come together and help each other.”