Traditional approach solves new problems

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Traditional counsellor Margaret Wapass radiates warmth, humor and down-to-earth charm.

"But it takes more than a winning smile and a social work degree to be a good traditional counsellor - you have to know where people are coming from, how they were treated in the past," said Wapass.

"Most social workers don't understand Native people and the poor among us. They are middle-class, educated, high up and they don't understand. They don't know what it's like to live off a sewing machine, have no books or toys for the children, to have to trade wild meat for things like flour and salt. And worst of all, they sit behind a desk, asking you if you have an appointment. I don't sit behind a desk. As a traditional counsellor, it is my job to greet our Native people with the door wide open. Show them a good warm Neyhiyo [Cree] welcome. Something that's real, like a smile and an open heart. I take my clients walking in the bush, outside on our land. It's part of us, where we belong. I am there to listen and talk, give them that special attention. I must be doing something right. Fifty clients in three months and they just keep coming ."

Wapass, who is working on the last course for her Indian Social Work Degree, said the secret of being a good Native counsellor is to stay real and stay traditional.

"That means living on Indian land, using Indian ways, speaking and thinking in Cree" - three cornerstones of the new Kihewahpoo Traditional Counseling and Survival Skills Agency that Wapass is building at Thunderchild First Nation in Saskatchewan.

The forth cornerstone is Wapass herself, in her mid-fifties and ready to take on the world. Her vision is a holistic agency designed to leave the impersonal world of office waiting rooms behind and developed and delivered by healthy, knowledgeable Aboriginal people in the traditional lifestyle and setting of First Nations people.

"I first got the idea for a traditional counseling agency when I put together a pilot project for the Thunderchild Cultural Youth Camp this summer for kids six to 17. We taught them how to make fire, live in tipis. They woke up to the smell of sweetgrass burning in our camp and learned to cook their own food. Most had lost their own language and I would translate from English to Cree, teaching them the meaning of sweetgrass and sage, how to make an offering to mother earth with tobacco. We showed them how to skin rabbits and deer, built little tripods to dry and smoke the meat, and tend those fires from dawn till dusk The kids also learned how to cut and sew tanned hides to make real traditional powwow outfits."

With experience as a Native counsellor, court worker, cultural interpreter and teacher's aid under her belt, Wapass decided to spin the cultural camp pilot into a larger, more comprehensive business plan. She had wished for a number of years to create an agency geared towards traditional holistic counselling on her home reserve. She envisioned a First Nations multicultural approach to programming - Dene, Soto, Blackfoot, Cree - in an agency created by and for Aboriginal people, using prevention, intervention and aftercare counselling services to address residential school syndrome, intergenerational impacts, crime prevention, corrections services and addictions.

Wapass tried to bring her vision of a counselling agency to the attention of the former band council and the former health director, but received no support or encouragement for her ideas, she said. The December 1998 election of a new Thunderchild Band Council, headed by Chief Delbert Wapass, whose public affirmation of new social development based on culture and traditions, set the stage for a new climate of reforms on the reserve.

Wapass, who had experienced what she called "frustration, negativity and roadblocks" in the past, now felt the timing was right for the development of the agency she had envisioned - five log cabins and a tipi camp in a natural setting, offering traditional counselling support and treatment based on First Nations laws, language, customs and culture.

She received official approval for the building of the not-for-profit, privately owned and operated Traditional Counseling and Survival Skills Agency to be set up on land near Wapass' home residence on Thunderchild First Nation, to be staffed and run by qualified Aboriginal workers and funded by a personal business loan.

"Learning traditional survival skills is the often the first step for people learning to get their lives back on track - a big step in overcoming a distorted, negative image of their First Nation identity - relearning that pride and self-reliance. We want our young people to know how we survived years ago, how we chopped wood, hauled water, washed clothes to keep our children neat, clean and warm. In the old days, whenever a person needed help, the extended [tribal] family was there. Everybody pitched in," she said.

She is also planning to apply and integrate the multicultural counselling skills that she is learning in what she calls her most challenging course to date, a world view of counselling taught by Prof. John Sealy at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College in Saskatoon.

The agency will be staffed by a director, a resident counsellor-Elder and operations assistant, Philomene Hill. Wapass, also intends to tap into what she calls the hidden skills on the reserve, people who have been sitting back because they have never had a chance to demonstrate their skills.

"My operations assistant, Philomene Hill, who was born in a log cabin in Thunderchild, is very stable and responsible, an artisan-quillworker who learned from a very traditional father, and is a good example of the hidden skills on our reserve."

Feedback from the band, federal and provincial governments, health and corrections agencies have all indicated a need for a half-way house on the reserve, a safe place to learn, grieve and heal, with the top priority being Thunderchild band members, said Wapas.

"Everything starts from home. We want to get well grounded here in Thunderchild and then be able to work as a resource for other reserves, with referrals from the Saskatchewan and federal governments.

The first log building for the new agency is half up and will be heated by a wood burning stove. Windspeaker asked Wapass who had produced the logs for the cabins?

"The Creator," she answered, laughing. "With a little help from one of the band councilors who kindly cut them for me and had them delivered. I can handle an ax and saw myself, you know. Growing up I had to prove myself. I worked in the bush with my dad - cut and skinned logs for our cabin, wood for our cooking fires. My father Peter Wapass was a traditional Native counsellor. I learned my survival skills from my mother."

Wapass, who heads a movement to encourage a return to traditional women's dress at sundances and memorial round dances in Saskatchewan - high top moccasins, long dresses, shawls and braids - was also given special instruction and the right to hold men's and women's sweatlodges from a well-respected Elder, an old Cree man who had watched her for many years and decided to hand down this important oral tradition to her. He taught her where and when to build, what kind of rocks to heat and how many to use for the different sweatlodge ceremonies.

"As a traditional counsellor I have to balance my life. As a Cree Elder, the way I have been raised has caused a conflict. I was told that the Creator gave me a body, a mind, feet to walk with and that I should use my brains to remember, that I shouldn't be writing anything down on paper, that I should respect the oral tradition. All my life, ever since I could remember, it has been a big challenge to go to school, to go from a Grade 3 reading level to challenging the GED for college entrance. My late uncle, Chief Andrew Paddy, and the late Métis Elder, David Knight, both encouraged me to go back to school. They told me I could do it if I tried. I gaduated from high school in 1995 with my son, learned to read and write better and will graduate again in 2000 with a social work degree. What I have to say is, if I can do it, then anyone can go back to school and do it.

"When I grew up there was no such thing as drinking and smoking. You went to sleep when the sun set and got up at sunrise. There was no violence. We had no money for me to go to school. This made me cry. I had to stay home and look after my little brothers and sisters when I was 12.

"As a court worker and counsellor, I've seen so many problems with young Native kids. Where are the parents? Too many kids are left alone, bored, their parents out drinking or at casinos or playing bingo. The kids are left to stay up late, watching TV and videos. What has happened to the good way of raising children, where is the respect, the decency. Maybe if we reintroduce our Indian culture, we can turn the youth around, let them know they are worthy, give them that love and special attention.

"It seems to me that today's kids get into trouble to get their parents' attention, even to get them to go to court with them. In a Saskatoon courthouse, I have even seen parents who want the courts and the jails to be baby-sitters. If they are willing to have those children, they should see that they start them right and raise them good," Wapass said.

After making what she calls 'the mistake' of raising her two sons as English speaking urban Indians, Wapass moved back to the reserve in the early eighties. She wanted to help heal the breaks between the generations and teach her grandchildren to speak Cree and learn the Cree ways.

"My husband makes them a bon fire and we cook smoked muskrat and bannock on sticks over the open flames. We don't tell them what they are eating, they just eat it. Things are so different now. All my grandchildren have books and toys. My son started Grade 1 when he was seven. I have a granddaughter who is eight in Grade 5.

"My littlest granddaughte