Absolutely. I'll give you a personal example.
In my service, I was posted in Montreal, in Anjou. I ended up being six months in Rwanda. When NATO closed out Rwanda—this is a bad example for me to use, but I'm going to use it anyway—I came back not the same person. I went through the military, through social workers, to try to help me through. It was helping, but it wasn't getting me there. I requested time off and I went on leave. I went to my elders. I went to a sweat lodge. I went to ceremonies. I spoke to elders to help me get through the things I experienced and the things I did.
The sweat lodge helped me clear any negative energy I had in my system and helped me to move forward. Honestly, I can say to you today that, otherwise, I wouldn't be sitting here today—I still tear up when I think of those children and I think of the things that happened over there—in the way that I am, advocating for indigenous people and advocating for our spirituality, our culture and our ways of life with our sweat lodges, our ceremonies and the things we need in order to move forward.
We have been working with Veterans Affairs to offer sweat lodge ceremonies and to have elders try to help individuals who are still in uniform through situations with post-traumatic stress syndrome and help them move forward. You can't treat everybody the same way. It doesn't matter if our skin is all the same colour; we all have a different way that we have to be looked at in order to move forward in a very positive way.
That's my example of why those ceremonies are so important.
Meegwetch.