First of all, thank you for the opportunity.
My name is Allen Benson. I'm a member of the Beaver Lake First Nations on Treaty 6 territory. I want to acknowledge the traditional territory that I'm on, the Algonquin nation.
I am here representing Native Counselling Services of Alberta. I am also past chair of the National Associations Active in Criminal Justice and present chair of the Family Violence Death Review Committee in Alberta.
Our non-profit organization goes back to 1970. The agency was created to address aboriginal overrepresentation in the criminal court system at that time.
Since that time, we've grown to an agency that has addressed services in all court levels except civil and we have expanded our services to providing services in the correctional services industry, corrections centres where we provided elders and liaisons to begin with, and then expanded to run a joint federal-provincial institution in Edmonton called the Grierson Centre. That centre was then transferred to what's known as a section 81 healing lodge.
That section 81 healing lodge is called the Stan Daniels Healing Centre. We will speak more to those facilities shortly.
We would like to address a little of our experience in the quality and type of service provided, and then address some of the issues.
For 47 years we have been addressing the issues around indigenous families and individuals in Alberta, and for 30 years we've had a partnership with Correctional Service of Canada. We think we've gained a lot of knowledge and wisdom over the years in addressing the issues of men and women and their reintegration journey. It has taken us as an agency that long to gain the experience and knowledge needed to address the needs of the offenders, and through that knowledge we have been able to better address crime prevention and the needs of the individuals and families to prevent them from incarceration.
Our approach to providing correctional services is informed by two decades of research on the effects of colonization on indigenous individuals, families, and community, and on the Cree teachings of Wahkohtowin, which is a doctrine of relationships as taught to us by our elders in our territory.
These research findings were used to create an evidence-based indigenous model for building resilience in 2009. The model has been expanded and deepened by an ongoing research and action and reflection process by the board and the management of the agency, which makes certain our programs and services address the issues of our clients' presence and reflect a profound understanding of the healing process.
Four critical beliefs and assumptions guide our work.
One is that indigenous criminal behaviour is connected to historic trauma and being victimized as children. It's the legacy of colonial law and policies, such as residential school systems, a legacy that has been passed intergenerationally in indigenous families and communities.
The second is the four dimensions of historic trauma, which include isolation from healthy family and community support networks, colonized identity, hopelessness and powerlessness, and being disconnected from legal tradition.
Therefore, addressing these issues should be the focus of our healing interventions.
The third is reconciliation of these damaged relationships. It's critical that indigenous offenders be supported to reconcile relationships they have been damaged through criminal and unhealthy behaviour. Therefore, we believe in accountability.
Fourth, healing is a self-directed journey. Indigenous offenders need to be responsible for their healing and reconciliation process, and they require trauma-informed support in this process.
These are the four pillars that guide everything we do, not just in the correctional services, but throughout the agency.