I can only answer the second part of that question, in that culturally appropriate has to be geographically appropriate as well. We can't have a blanket policy that goes across Canada, because the Tlingit and the Mi'kmaq are two separate nations and have two ways of thinking, which is good. We have to have someone in those facilities from that culture, and we have none now.
When a person comes back with PTSD, for one example, the first thing they do is assign them a psychiatrist. Well, a psychiatrist knows diddly-squat about who I am, what I am or why I am as a native person. Whatever “treatment” I'd be getting is already beginning to be culturally inappropriate. If I go to a sweat lodge and get the healing from that, that works.
When I came back from Vietnam, I did not go to a psychiatrist because it was like talking to that wall; it just bounced off. He had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I went to a spiritualist, and I went through a ceremony in the Navajo tradition for a start. Then I went to a Mi'kmaq spiritualist with the late David Gehue. I can honestly say that I don't have PTSD anymore because it was a culturally appropriate treatment for it the entire time. Let's start there.
Thank you.