Donne Dubie (60, Founder of The Healing of the Seven Generations Kitchener, Haudenosaunee of Six Nations, Turtle Clan)

‘Do you walk the path that Creator wanted you to walk? Do you accept the things that Creator puts in front of you? Allow yourself to see the seeds that Creator is planting. If you are open, then you are strong.’

“Sometimes we got strap, sometimes buckle. No beating was ever under 50 strikes. I used to count.”

Donna Dubie always believed that love was a hateful thing. It came with hurt, disrespect, violation and fear. The happiest times of her childhood are tainted. A story about dragging her first Christmas tree home for blocks to surprise her family ends with, “I don’t remember what happened that night, but I know my brother and I went to bed broken and our spirits bruised.”

Donna’s father left the Mohawk Institute (Mush Hole) Residential School a very broken man. On the outside, he was an alcoholic, angry and afraid, an abusive parent and husband. Like others who lived through the trauma of residential school, his journey became a revolving door of loss, confusion and coping mechanisms. For years Donna walked down the same path as her father, stuck in the kinds of relationships she had been taught.

“I was with a very abusive husband. He wasn’t quite as bad as my father, but he beat me severely on occasion. When I was pregnant with our third daughter, he kicked me square in the stomach. When he left us, I became homeless with my four children for six months. I picked up with another man who was more horrendous than my father ever was,” she says. “I thought I knew what my life was going to look like. All I could see was the edge of a cliff and nothing but blackness below me. I pondered again about taking my life. I went to Toronto with a plan to commit suicide, having left my children with someone that I trusted. That is when I met Charlie again.”

Donna has been with her husband Charles Dubie for 35 years. He has never said a hateful thing to her. He has never physically, mentally, spiritually, or emotionally abused her.

“Creator puts the person that you’re supposed to be with in your path. Sometimes it’s not the person that you envisioned for yourself, so you put this person aside and carry forward. I knew my husband previously, but when I saw him again, I suddenly saw him differently. I understand now that he was a gift that the Creator sent me.”

It took a long time for Donna to relearn the ways in which she experienced love. In finally accepting Charles her healing journey began. In 2001, she founded The Healing of the Seven Generations, a Kitchenerbased community centre to help bring the same clarity to her community. Every year Donna sees over 15,000 Indigenous people seeking guidance, hoping to break their cycle of suffering and embark on their own paths to find healing. She reminds each of them to accept whatever it is that Creator places in front of them.

“Every time you ask for strength, Creator puts a test in front of you. If you put that test to the side to deal with later and carry forward, Creator knows it. Further down your path, he will put another test, only this time it’s bigger. He will make it so big that you cannot go around it,” she says.

“We have enough strength already. Ask instead for knowledge, understanding, direction, and acceptance. This is what we need to move forward. Creator will show you.”