Recovery camps open with return to Blackfoot culture
By Lethbridge Herald on August 10, 2023.
Volunteers with Kii Maa Pii Pii Tsin deep healing recovery camps open with ceremony for the camps to start at the Red Crow Park in Standoff on Wednesday afternoon.
Herald photo by Steffanie CostiganSteffanie Costigan – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Kii Maa Pii Pii Tsin deep healing recovery camps began readying for new sessions with an opening prayer and song Wednesday morning at Red Crow Park in Standoff.
Founder of Kii Maa Pii Pii Tsin deep healing recovery camps, Alvin Mills, talked about the program and the healing that will take place by returning to the roots of Blackfoot culture.
“We are starting our recovery camps, and they are situated under Red Crow Park, right here in Standoff, Alberta. We ran recovery camps last year. So right now, with the recovery camp, participants can get back to the roots of the culture with nature.
“And then we’re going to implement Blackfoot culture and beliefs as part of that recovery process. We’re going to concentrate on at-risk and vulnerable, especially the ones that are struggling with the opioids,” said Mills.
Mills said there are plans to do two youth camps to help teens recover from addiction. He described the death count and the light the recovery camps will be in helping to overcome the opioid crisis.
“As the death toll climbs, we must do all we can to stem the flow of this darkness that has descended on us. And with our recovery camps that’s going to be the light for people to come and find their way away from the drugs and the hardships that they endure on the streets. We want to make a dent in the opioid crisis.”
The Blood Tribe has contributed approximately $18,350 to the camps. The funding went towards the start-up and operation costs for the two-week camps with 10 participants.
“And then if resources allow us we’ll take case by case, and we’ll see how we could alleviate the crisis that’s happening in Lethbridge,” shared Mills.
Mills explained what the process of recovery is: he had each participant sign a consent form for an opioid dependency screen.
Those coming off drugs are given methadone or suboxone to help. He said after the seven-day camp, participants then move onto the sweat lodge with Blood Tribe Health.
“So with the recovery camp, we are like a treatment facility. We’re like a detox. Individuals that had mental health issues, and health issues, a lot of people, some of them when they’re out there, they start developing wounds due to the mess that makes you start scratching. And so those kinds of issues we’ll be able to address because we’re right beside the facilities to help,” said Mills.
Denis Grady, with Franciscan and Friends Music Mission, offered the opening prayer. Grady expressed the impact he has seen drugs have on the Indigenous community and the support of the families they have been trying to give.
“We’re very cognizant of the impact of the toll that drugs and alcohol and suicide are taking on the community. So we, in a very kind of quiet, low-keyed way, try to focus in on supporting the families, especially the children, said Grady.
The song sung after the opening prayer to kick of the recovery camp was called Waterton Lake, an Indigenous song written by a volunteer’s family member.
“With this truth and reconciliation, we’d like to see an all-inclusive, Indigenous outreach team that can go into the city or Lethbridge. And you know, be peers that have used with the people that we were trying to help. We can go, for example, we can go into Galt Gardens. We know everybody anyways, except the younger people. And we could use compassion, treat them with dignity, and urge them to come.”
Nicholas Crawler, from Stoney Nakoda Cherokee Morley Alberta, voiced his reasons for being at the recovery camps and his hopes to advocate for overcoming addiction.
“I’m honoured and glad to be here for a reason. It took me a long time to come really this far. I really had come through a really tough battle and a tough journey, too. I’ve been travelling lately been, you know, trying to make new friends and spread out the word of culturalism of anti-culturalism and anti-racism” being expressed by the First Nation Alliance group that he’s involved with, he said.
Grady said supplies have been donated to the recovery camps by Franciscan and Friends Music Mission. He said he has seen passion in Mills as he puts the camps together.
“I think meeting someone like Alvin, who’s just remarkable. He’s come from this place of darkness. And he’s passionate, and he knows the struggle, he’s just trying really hard. And he’s working with what he has, and he’s not giving up. And I think the people who are struggling are coming off the street because they love him and know, and they’re getting out hope that they can have a better life.”
Crawler has been seven months sober and he talked about his purpose in travelling around the world to spread awareness.
“I’m also travelling to help out towards other young mental health illness and also addictions as well. And I’m just, you know, an ambassador, just going around world . . .spreading the word out to each and every other community… And so that’s why I’m here for a reason, just to save lives, to continue on with a better future.”
Mills said the supervised consumption site in Lethbridge had a harmful effect on many, especially the Indigenous community, and Lethbridge has surpassed the cities of Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton in terms of the opioid crisis.
“It produced a generation of drug users that could inject. And they’ve been in this fight a long time. And as everybody sees, Indigenous had been very adversely affected by this opioid crisis. So now, I’m seeing the pledge, Blood Tribe pulling together now to fight this crisis, and we need all the help we can get.”
Mills talked about his own experience living on the streets and overcoming addiction and his understanding on how people can change.
“I’m very passionate in helping my people. At one time, I struggled with addiction. I was on the streets of Lethbridge. Most of my adult life I was incarcerated and living the life of violence.”
And he has seen through personal experience that people can change.
Mills said more people are coming on board with his camps.
And with great emotion, Mills expressed the compassion society is lacking and the kinds which is needed.
“We need more compassion in our society. We need to say hello because, you know, things aren’t good. Given what Kii Maa Pii Pii Tsin means, kindness to others, caring for others, it’s a Blackfoot word that’s very significant with the Blackfoot culture.”
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Thank you Alvin for inviting us out for your official opening ceremony, and your tour. It was an honour to be there.
I hope and I pray to see more funding come into your project, since the small amount you received will not last long when you have to pay for insurance to operate the camp, provide mandatory services to gain any government funding applied for and pay for food, supplies, tents, and transportation services. Those costs are high!
I look forward to seeing your website come up in the future and a way we can donate to your project . . . Go Fund Me, Canada Helps . . . anyway one can easily donate. I support your camp!!
Having the camp near services in Standoff is much better than at Kipp and the area in Red Crow park is ideal. Your tenacity and compassion to push for this camp is evidence that your heart is there and you will not stop fighting for those figting addictions to come and detox, away from the drugs and maybe, in some cases be re-united with family. It is a monumental task that you willingly undertake and I respect you. It was very sad to hear of the high number of people who experienced your camp last year, as the city funding was cut, who have passed away from overdoses.
If they had somewhere to go like your camp, many may be with us today and in treatment or at the least alive, perhaps coming back this year. There just isn’t enough access at this time for treatment and this is why I support you. No operation is perfect at the start, especially with little to no funds to operate and your move to Standoff is a great idea I believe! You need to have your Band Council behind you since many issues begin in Indigenous communities and end on our streets! Too many Indigenous families have been devastated, in some cases more than once as they bury their young!
Too many have died on our streets, which I call ‘killing fields’ and until we have more treatment available to get these people into, your camp is a good alternative . . . one more tool that helps, but is not the complete answer, that will help save some lives.
The clock begins to tick as soon as addicts end up on the street, and I have seen some only last a few weeks before fatally overdosing while others last 5 years . . . most though only last a couple of years and you can see them deteriorate from healthy looking, well dressed, to having visible sores, facial expressions called “Flat Affect” showing no emotion, walking hunched over as they shuffle down the street and no care where they plop down to rest/sleep or whether they live or die.
Enabling addicts by not getting them into treatment, saying it is okay, continue to do your drugs and we will be here for you, is only killing them in a slow and painful death and it is the most inhumane I can think of in a modern society with access to endless knowledge.
People don’t even treat their pets in such a manner, and if they did, the Humane Society would get involved to protect the animal!
How can we think it is okay to watch young people kill themselves in such a manner, spending billions across Canada on programs the don’t treat them, but enable them to continue in their addictions, even supplying all the paraphernalia to do so? It is sadistic!
People have been brainwashed into accepting these failed policies such as harm reduction, which only enable the addict and doesn’t treat them! A very low percentage of people have been successfully treated under ‘harm reduction’ policies which kill more than it helps. BC is the best tangible evidence it doesn’t work, after 20 years and multiple excuses why it continues to fail . . . 10 years should be all the evidence needed to show it has failed, while thousands of people died in the mad experiment.
Getting people off the streets and treated is the most effective way to impact this crisis in a notable way that will see the best resuts. Society must wake-up, stop enabling people to slowly kill themselves, and focus on effective mental health and addiction treatment.
Is Alvins camp perfect . . . off course not . . . will is save some lives . . . absolutely! Alvin and his team are like any other organization in the beginning, struggling to find ways to succeed.
Alvins heart is in this and he truly is their to save people and not just his people, but anyone!
I support him and hope he will find more funds to grow this camp, getting people off the streets, the killing fields!
God Bless you Alvin and your operations!
Great