In 1967 the people of this Innu community left their nomadic lifestyle behind and settled in Davis Inlet in Canada's province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The CBC has documented the stories of the Mushuau Innu and their subsequent move to nearby Natuashish in film clips and interviews that reveal both their heartbreak and their hope.
Courageous Choices
It takes courage to see yourself clearly and make choices that are difficult. Chief Prote Poker did that when he introduced the ban on alcohol in Natuashish during the spring of 2008. And he made a courageous choice again when he invited a small group of individuals to hold a Journey workshop in the village arena.
Getting to the Root of the Problem
The Journey was founded on the awareness that people’s destructive behaviours are driven by emotional trauma. Drugs and alcohol are often used to cope with issues that just don’t seem to go away. In fact, the emotional issues haunt us and the drugs and alcohol perpetuate the very behaviours that cause the pain. So the cycle continues.
Practitioners of the Journey guide their clients toward the source of the behaviours through simple introspective processes. The founder, Brandon Bays, wrote her first book as a way of sharing the tools she acquired in her own journey to healing. There are examples of the emotional process and the physical process in the book, that anyone can use, if they so choose.
The Journey in Natuashish
Following an invitation from Chief Prote Poker, Skip Lackey, the senior presenter for North America, gathered a small group of practitioners to fly to Natuashish and offer the Journey Intensive workshop followed by Advanced Skills and Liberating Kids Shining Potential.
Chief Poker and his wife Christine first heard about the Journey from Patrick Bernard, a drug and alcohol addictions counselor who had been working with the community for many years. Patrick and his wife Betty, who are themselves both members of First Nations communities, are trained Journey Practitioners. Chief Poker and Christine decided to try a Journey workshop themselves and find out what Patrick and Betty were talking about.
The Power to Heal is Inside Everyone
Skip led a beautiful, fun-filled workshop that offered the group of approximately seventy-five adults the choice of discovering what Skip calls, “the subtle, invincible, healing energy” that is inside everyone. There is no mystery. There is no evangelism. The experience is entirely personal, and the person in charge is the person receiving the process.
Choosing Health and Well-Being
The Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the single step. The first step in anyone’s journey to happiness is to choose health and well-being.
Chief Poker chose to end his own addiction to alcohol by banishing it from his home. He banned alcohol from the community in an effort to buy time for people to make other choices about how they want to live their lives. It has not been easy for some in the community to experience the gap that was left when easy access to alcohol was taken away.
The joy that flooded the arena every day during the Journey workshops led to evenings of campfires, singing and dancing. Families reunited. Old friends, who had grown distant and wary in recent years, hugged. As people found it in their hearts to forgive those who had caused them pain, opportunities for happiness began to bloom.
The community celebrated Aboriginal Day one week after the Journey workshop took place and they said it was their best celebration ever.
Lesley Strutt - Lesley Strutt lives with her dog in the Gatineau Hills near Ottawa, Canada. She loves being surrounded by nature: it brings her joy and ...
