Family Violence Initiative

COMPENDIUM OF PROMISING PRACTICES TO REDUCE VIOLENCE AND INCREASE SAFETY OF ABORIGINAL WOMEN IN CANADA

INTERACTIONS WITHIN COMMUNITIES

Healthy Relationships: Women

Program Name:

Grandmother's Lodge – Wharncliffe Retreat & Learning Centre

Organization/Community:

Grandmother's Lodge/Anishinabe Culture

Location:

Thessalon, Ontario

Website:

www.grandmotherslodge.com

Goals & Objectives:

To provide healing and wellness through traditional education and healing in a retreat setting in a rural/remote region. Women are assisted to let go of body memories and emotion, mental and physical traumas, including those caused by violence and abuse.

Target Group:

Everyone (with a focus on women and youth).

Program Description:

Grandmother's Lodge is a spiritual sweat lodge providing holistic healing. All programs are 4 days in length – some are workshops, some are healing programs. Some examples include: Nookomissuk Wiidookaswin Bimaadiswin Program, a professional development training for staff regardless of age, ethnic origins and religious beliefs, where participants spend time with the grandmothers. Serpent Rising is a wilderness retreat. Healing and diffusing the patriarchal energy that has embedded itself in the communities for 500 years. Birth Lodge allows people the opportunity to revisit their own birth and reclaim their sacredness. Some programs are taken out of the Lodge. These include: full moon ceremonies, grief and sexual abuse counselling.

Program Successes/Impact:

Grassroots approach. Lodge continues to operate over several decades. There is a need that is being met as witnessed by those who come to the Lodge.

Key Lessons/Challenges:

Support in developing proposals for funding and resources to conduct outreach activities.

Program in operation:

1992.

Program:

Ongoing.