Soteria Canada
This is what we are going to do. We’re going to access some of the healing fund money from the Residential school settlement and build the first aboriginal run soteria house here in Saskatchewan. It will be an octagonal structure in a rural area with various places for people to hang out. It will have one room made JUST for destroying things for when people get into the first destructive aspect of psychosis. And there will be other areas too, a snoezelen room for people to just experience their senses, an art room with 24 hour access, a library/internet learning room, a place for people to learn languages, religion, art practices, whatever they want. No one specific truth will be imposed on the people who go there, it’s all about them and letting them become who they are even if/when they make mistakes on the way. And I’m not letting any “traditional” methods of healing take precendence, irregardless of what culture they come from, this uses everything that the person wants to explore. There isn’t any “wrong” way for people to go through there experience, the staff are there mainly in a serving capability, cooking and cleaning and guiding people away from self harm. And no fucking psychiatrists, they can bugger off. And I don’t know that I want the staff to only ever want to work in that job, I think it’s better as a job where people do it for a few years and move on to other things. And if someone working there is being abusive to the clients, they are fired immediately, no second chances.
And I also think that after the first one gets off the ground, we can start building other places across Canada, and maybe the world. I don’t intend for this idea to be owned by only one tribe or region. But there are specifications that I’m still working out. And people can come by and hang out and teach their own skills to people there if they want, but no frickin’ programming and no telling anyone that they’re bad or hopelessly fucked up.