There's been a growth of movement towards traditional healers, healing and ceremonies. A number of the health centres in B.C. have traditional healers as part of their staff. Ceremonies have been so valuable in people's healing. Those are being brought back. There's hope for the future, but a lot of it is what we have to do ourselves as indigenous communities. I'm a researcher, and I often say, “re-search is the search again for what we once knew”, because we had some really good systems in place before colonization. We've tried for years now to get help from federal and provincial governments and organizations. A lot of money has been spent, but not a lot of help has been provided.
I believe that the secret is community empowerment, community engagement, ownership and self-determination in many ways when it comes to mental health services. Obviously, we're going to need some finances to do that, but we have to find the solutions ourselves, because government just hasn't been able to do it for us.