Elders-in-residence a new kind of guidance counsellor
Program at reserve school gives students a chance to share burdens, receive advice
When students first step into the large canvas-and-wood lodge inside the old cosmetology lab at Kainai High School, they’re often careful to avoid stepping on the soft buffalo robes strewn on the ground.
It makes Kainai elder Harriet Heavy Runner laugh.
“Bless their little hearts, they have a lot of respect for them, they don’t want to walk on them … but they need to sit and even lay on them because it’s healing. That was what we grew up with. It was healing for us and for them it would be a healing process, too,” Heavy Runner says.
Heavy Runner is one of a handful of Blood Tribe elders available to counsel students each day as part of the high school’s innovative elders-in-residence program on the southern Alberta reserve.
The program, in the works since last fall, gives students a chance to share their burdens and receive guidance from someone other than their peers, parents or teachers.
As the community continues to grapple with the deadly fentanyl crisis that has led to dozens of deaths on the reserve, the school hopes the elders-in-residence program will form part of a larger mental-health-focused approach to supporting students who might be dealing with serious challenges at home.
“We’re giving them a choice in here: Choose the path that you want to choose. We’re encouraging them, sharing our stories, sharing our knowledge and making them aware that you can overcome those challenges, even though they’re still there,” says Peter Weasel Moccasin, another elder with the program.
“That’s what we’re trying to teach: to be proud of yourself, your heritage.”
Heavy Runner uses the Blackfoot word “kiitsiitokonoona,” meaning “our lodge” to refer to the peaceful, teepee-like structure the school has built for the elders-inresidence program.
Each morning, the elders smudge inside the lodge, and the smell of sweetgrass hangs in the air as they wait for students to drift in to take a seat in a circle of chairs or stretch out on the buffalo robes.
Keisha, a Grade 11 student, visited the lodge one day when she needed to clear her head.
“When I went in there I was having a really bad day. I just needed someone to talk to and I needed somewhere to go and just sit and gather myself again.
“It made me feel better: Just the smell of their smudge, the quietness and honestly, it feels really homey. It really made me feel better, really made me feel at home,” she says.