Healing camp teepee rises in Victoria Park
The rain poured on Chris Martell’s teepee Tuesday night in Victoria Park, offering him an opportunity to get to know Dave Lyons-morgan.
The two had only first met Tuesday night, when the teepee initially went up, the beginnings of the Healing Camp for Justice in Saskatoon.
It’s your first night in teepee, it has to be in a storm, Martell said to Lyons-morgan, to which the latter replied that he’s perfectly fine.
“My son’s First Nations name is Morning Thunder, so setting up a teepee in a thunderstorm rain is overwhelming and his presence, I felt it great,” Martell said Tuesday.
Martell is the father of Evander Daniels, who died in 2010 at his foster home. Daniels was 22 months old when he drowned in a bathtub. His foster mother, Eunice Wudrich, was acquitted of a charge of criminal negligence and died in 2014.
Martell is unable to speak about his son — it’s a painful topic.
“It’s been a very rough year for me for mental health due to my son’s passing in 2010. I spent some time in Regina with the camp down there. It’s been wonderful with the people who were putting it on,” Martell said.
Martell’s is the lone teepee right now in the park, just below the intersection of Spadina Crescent and 17th Street West, down a softly sloping green hill, facing the river. A smattering of rain fell as the two stood outside of the teepee.
Martell has sought permitting and said they want to do this right.
“It’s a peaceful protest for healing; if you want to come learn our traditions, come down and learn the traditions,” Martell said, inviting people who survived the ’60s Scoop and were in the foster-care system to meet with therapists and elders.
So far, he said the support has been overwhelming.
Lyons-morgan learned of Martell’s camp in Saskatoon from friends who are involved in the Justice for Our Stolen Children camp in Regina.
“The community has a lot of people in it that are hurting and I am a very privileged person. If there’s any way that I can help my neighbours and my fellow community members, I feel I should,” Lyons-morgan said.
The camp in Regina was first set up in February and remained until June, when participants were forced to clear out. They soon rebuilt the camp and met with members of the provincial government last week. Martell wanted to build a camp in Saskatoon to bring about awareness about the foster-care system and help with their healing.
“Like myself. I have mental health problems and I need to heal. I felt like coming together as a community with elders, and police and (the) city and social services invited, we sit down and we can talk, meet and work together and I want people to share their experiences ... they had with the foster-care system,” he said.
Going to the Regina camp helped him greatly, Martell said, knowing there are people out there sharing similar experiences. He wanted to do the same in Saskatoon so people can move forward with their lives here, too.
Gilles Dorval, the city’s director of Aboriginal Relations, said “Mr. Martell reached out to the city about his peaceful protest and we are now working with him to ensure all the appropriate protocols are in place.”