My name is Claire Carefoot and I'm the director of Buffalo Sage Wellness House on Treaty No. 6 territory in Edmonton. I want to acknowledge that we're on the traditional unceded territories of the Algonquin nation.
I'm here representing Native Counselling Services of Alberta, one of Canada's longest-standing social justice indigenous organizations. Our CEO, Dr. Alan Benson, who has worked for NCSA, has been a champion of social justice for 40 years. I have been working in the criminal justice system for 29 years.
NCSA is a not-for-profit agency that was established in 1970 with the objective of providing court work assistance to indigenous people in conflict with the law. NCSA recognized that indigenous people in conflict with the law often feel alienated by legal and court procedures and that they need support in navigating the justice system. Since then, NCSA has evolved to deliver over 30 core programs and services in the area of restorative justice, corrections, and family services, as well as legal education, research, training, and film production.
Our mission is to promote the resilience of the indigenous individual and family through programs and services that are grounded in reclaiming our interconnectedness, reconciliation of relationships, and self-determination.
NCSA is a national and international leader in the provision of culturally-based correctional services for indigenous people. The information we offer to the Senate committee today draws upon our 48 years of experience in working with indigenous people and families in Alberta, a 30-year partnership with Correctional Services of Canada, as well as the wisdom we've gathered from supporting thousands of indigenous women in their reintegration journey, witnessing the difficulty of re-establishing themselves in the community in a healthy, respectful way.
Our approach to providing correctional services is informed by almost two decades of research regarding the effects of colonization on the indigenous individual, family, community and the Cree teachings of wahkohtowin, the doctrine of relationships taught to us by elders in our territory.
These research findings were used to create an evidence-based indigenous model of building resilience in 2009. The model has been expanded and deepened by an ongoing research, action-reflection process, by the board, management and field staff, which makes certain our programs and services address the issue of our clients' present and reflect a profound understanding of the healing process.
There are four critical beliefs or assumptions that guide our work. One, indigenous criminal behaviour is connected to historic trauma and being victimized as children. It is the legacy of colonial law and policies, such as the residential school system, that has been passed intergenerationally in indigenous families and communities.
Two, the four dimensions of historic trauma 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 healing interventions.
Third is the reconciliation of relationships damaged by colonization as a cornerstone of reintegration. It is critical that indigenous offenders be supported to reconcile relationships they have damaged through criminal and unhealthy behaviour.
Fourth is the recognition that healing is a self-directed journey. Indigenous offenders need to be responsible for their healing and reconciliation process and they require trauma-informed support for this.
NCSA has been a leader in program innovation of successful reintegration programs for indigenous offenders since 1995. We developed the first historic trauma-healing program for indigenous women offenders, the Spirit of a Warrior, to assist indigenous women who are caught in the cycle of violence to better understand their personal intergenerational cycle of historic trauma-informed behaviour, to build knowledge and skills that will reduce and eventually eliminate trauma-informed behaviour in program participants, and to facilitate the participants' connection and commitment to their lifelong healing journey.
The Warrior program is founded on the values of wahkohtowin—caring, sharing, kindness, respect, love, and self-determination—which are learned through sessions, ceremony, and ritual. The program is nationally and internationally recognized, and for over a decade CSC worked in partnership with NCSA to use these programs.
In 2010 NCSA opened the first section 81 facility for indigenous women. Currently the Buffalo Sage Wellness House is a 28-bed facility that houses both federally sentenced minimum-security inmates and conditionally released offenders on day parole, statutory release with residency, or full parole with residency. These are the strongest women I know. They have survived circumstances that I know I could not have survived.
Buffalo Sage Wellness House provides culturally-appropriate women-centred programs to assist residents on their healing journey and to support them to make good decisions, pursue education and employment, and reconnect with their children and families. The staff at Buffalo Sage provide a high quality of support and supervision to promote the safety of the women as they establish themselves in the community as well as the safety of the general public.
We do have some recommendations, which you had asked for.
First, indigenous women need more opportunities—