Family is the most important institution of all. No matter what, when we started Peyakowak in Saskatchewan, it was the families in the long run who guided us. They were the ones who taught us. In the long run, when you go to assist families you need to see the intergenerational trauma. If you're focusing on alcohol, violence and all that other stuff, you're really not getting to the core of what needs to happen.
When you're walking alongside parents, sometimes for about a year to two years, life changes as much for them as for their children. You don't realize the value that just doing that has, and it's not just on that one family, because what we find is that helping one family ripples and affects other family members as well, so that we get requests from other extended family members to assist also.