There will be no quick patch-up jobs when a groundbreaking treatment centre for at-risk First Nations teens opens near Chilliwack this fall.
The Stehiyaq Healing and Wellness Centre, in a former youth detention camp beside the Chilliwack River, will take 28 teens aged 13 to 17 from all over the province -- including the Island -- and immerse them in a year-long residential program rooted in Coast Salish culture.
The goal is to transform them into leaders in their communities. Most of the bands on the Island's east coast are Coast Salish.
"It's not like taking your car in and just getting it painted. This is like putting on new tires and maybe a new motor," said Chief Joe Hall of Tzeachten First Nation, near Chilliwack.
The teenagers, who will live in renovated cabins, could have substance-abuse, behavioural or physical problems.
Some might be victims of abuse or in trouble with the law.
Students will go through detox before arriving if necessary, and the program will incorporate medicine wheels and sweat lodges.
Full-time teachers will deliver an education program -- the centre is set to open in the fall to coincide with the school year's start.
"When they leave, we expect them to be competent in education and indigenous culture. We expect them to be competent spiritually and emotionally," said Lee Brown, interim director at the Institute for Aboriginal Health at the University of B.C.
Much of the need for healing stems from residential schools, said Richard Mayuk, executive director of the Stehiyaq Aboriginal Healing Society.
"If your parents didn't know how to parent, you never had a model and then kids grow up doing the same thing. Part of our goal is to break those cycles."
It takes only one generation to break a cycle of abuse, but, for that to work, the whole generation has to do it together, a huge task, Mayuk added.
The province handed over the 13-hectare site of the Centre Creek detention camp to the Ch-ihl-kway-uhk Tribe last year and contributed $3 million of the $3.34 million cost of renovation. The balance has been picked up by the nine bands involved in the project, while several provincial ministries will help fund programs.
Although there will be provincial input, the program will be led by Stehiyaq because the cultural component is vital, said Aboriginal Relations Minister Mike de Jong.
The setting, beside the river and woods, is also important, de Jong said.
"There's a serenity in a location like this. It allows people, at a very vulnerable time in their lives, to touch back to their roots and who they are."
