Alvin Mills continues to help those battling addiction
By Lethbridge Herald on January 8, 2025.
Alvin Mills is the founder of Kii Maa Pii Pii Tsin deep healing recovery camps.
Herald file photoAlexandra Noad – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A local man has overcome the struggles of surviving residential schools and addiction, and is now paying it forward by helping other addicts overcome challenges.
Alvin Mills spent time at St. Paul’s Anglican Church residential school on the Blood Reserve for nine years and another four years at St. Mary’s.
Times were hard for Mills at school as he faced persecution from not only the nuns, but also from the older kids. He was active in sports, being on the boxing team at St. Paul’s and on the basketball team at St. Mary’s.
Mills says sports teams provided an escape from the awful experiences of life at residential schools.
“For me, boxing is a cruel sport,” he says. “A lot of it is mental because it’s just you and the other guy.”
During his boxing days he made it on the Alberta Team for boxing and competed in the 1975 Canada Winter Games, which were held in Lethbridge.
One of Mills’s fondest memories was on the basketball team. He recalls dribbling the ball from Cardston to Standoff to raise money for a trip to go to Japan.
“We dribbled the basketball from Cardston to Stand Off right on the highway, raising money to go on the trip.”
Mills received a college scholarship for the Medicine Hat Basketball team and unfortunately, he was introduced to alcohol during his one year at college.
He dropped out of school and spent many years on the streets of Lethbridge, in a rough life of drugs, incarceration and violence.
“I was in and out of jail, drinking on the street and the violence went hand in hand with the street life,” he says.
In 1999, Mills was sent to prison for four years after being convicted of attempted murder for an incident where he discovered his wife, the mother of his three children, with another man.
Following his release, he continued struggling with addiction, something he says was caused by unhealed trauma.
Finally, in 2013, he was able to turn his life around. One day in May, around Mother’s Day, Mills was stabbed in the throat. When he regained consciousness, the doctor told him it was a miracle he survived – if the cut had been an inch deeper, he would have been dead.
Mills spent time working through his trauma at Beaver Lake Wah Pow Treatment Centre. He remembers being shocked at the counsellor’s advice to show the person who stabbed him kindness if he ever saw the man again.
“My counsellor …told me ‘Alvin next time you see that guy that stabbed you, shake his hand (and) wish him a good day,” says Mills. “I didn’t know what she meant by that but now (I realize) with that guy doing that to me, it was an eye-opening experience.”
From that day forward, Mills chose to use this second chance to help those in similar situations. He firmly believes everyone deserves a second chance.
“People can make it, they just have to be given that chance,” he says. “I always hear ‘oh (they’re) too far gone.’ To me, nobody’s too far gone.”
Mills founded his own organization, Kii Mii Pii Pii Ts’in, which translates from Blackfoot as “kindness to others.” With the organization, he does frequent sandwich runs to feed and help keep track of unhoused Blackfoot members. He has fought against lateral violence that he and others have received, and has been a voice for victims of the opioid crisis and how it has evolved.
When he isn’t doing advocacy work, he can be found visiting his son, who has cerebral palsy
His goal with his outreach is to provide dignity and respect of the vulnerable population.
“One of the bases of … Kindness to Others is we continue that outreach work and, of course, to have that dignity and respect for the at-risk and vulnerable.”
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I have always liked Alvin. He is a straight shooter. If the goody two shoes of the world would step aside and allow Alvin to run the rehab show, more people would be alive today.
But, as per normal, whitey knows best, hence the reason I refer to any fiasco that is run by the establishment as “Residential Schools Part 2”.
Give Alvin one third of the money the Social Services compete for daily, and he would show better results, but, thats what scares them, and it will never happen!
Congratulations to Alvin on his journey to sobriety and helping fellow addicts.
Our elected officials should hire him and stop wasting tax dollars on their latest guarantee fix for homeless and addiction.