Home is healing centre

What was once a vision is now a living reality.

John McRee’s vision of helping youth has been realized in the creation of the White Buffalo Healing Centre for Youth, located on the Swan River First Nation. McRee, who has vast experience stemming over 15 years in the roles of liaison, educator, and Child Family Services worker, has created a place where children, ages 12-17, can easily consider their temporary home.

Children specified as in-need, as outlined by the Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act, benefit from the healing centre, which places an emphasis on tradition and culture as well as the need to keep family close and community ties to the child.

White Buffalo focuses on its role as a healing center and not a traditional group home which means it can provide northern Alberta youth with the knowledge of old ideas that are the basis of living a good life, said McRee.
McRee believes the instruction of his mother’s words, that of the value of time-honoured belief and practice in traditional healing, have been the influence within the center and provides the basis of implementing the importance of the mind, body, sprit and emotion with regards to program development.

 Marie Rasi is the CEO and developer of programming within the center. She is also greatly influenced by McRee’s mother. Rasi is an advocate of the six-month life skills program, which incorporates daily ethics, a grandfather’s module and a daily living skills module, while ensuring that the youth have continual access to the communities.

“It really is about providing the tools and empowering youth through education and a support process. When young northerners exit the program they can meet existing and future challenges with gusto,” said Rasi.
The cultural components and specific programming are based on the 10 Ethics as the founding principles and the guide to daily living as Aboriginal peoples, said McRee.

Both McRee and Rasi further suggest that embracing and facilitating daily living skills are an effective and beneficial approach to critical areas such as effective communication, personal development, goal achieving and accountability strategies, all of which are required to meet the challenges of a new generation and rapidly changing environment.

McRee believes that what makes this healing centre different from traditional group homes is the commitment to working with not only the youth and their families but also with the community as a whole.

The White Buffalo Healing Centre for Youth, according to McRee and his vision, is successful for all the right reasons: it addresses traditional skills that are complimentary to lifestyle, and contain elements that explore the four areas of life, self, family, community, and nation.