A Visit to Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge

The Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge is located on Nekaneet First Nation on Treaty 4 land. Earlier this month, Adrian McBride, Legal Aid Saskatchewan’s Regional Legal Director for the Swift Current and Moose Jaw area offices, and Taran Salh, LAS Rural Externship Student, were guests of Rachel Parker, the director of the healing lodge.

Since 1995, the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge has housed female offenders in their rehabilitation and transition back to their communities. Operated by Correctional Service Canada, the lodge – the only female healing lodge in western Canada – can accommodate up to 60 women. Parker explained to McBride and Sahl that those who seek to come to the lodge are told they have two choices – if they simply want to serve out their time, the lodge is not for them, but if they want to improve their lives, they are welcome to seek admission.

“The organization of the program is that they try to establish a family group,” explains McBride. “The director is referred to as mother. The female corrections staff are referred to as older sisters. They also have male corrections workers – which I found surprising since some inmates come from abusive relationships – who are called older brothers.”

Residents live in cabins with two or three others. They wear regular clothes, and if anyone is lacking there is a room from which they can select what they need. A communal laundry room is on premises, with plans to perhaps add separate laundry facilities to each cabin. As for meals, McBride says, “They have their own cooking facilities. The lodge has a ‘grocery store’ where the women can select their food, learn meal planning and cooking.”

Salh notes that this “regular” way of living – casual dress, familial references, communal cooking and living – creates a community for the women. “From my time at Legal Aid Saskatchewan, I have learned that some people enter the world of crime because they feel that they don’t belong,” she explains. “Getting out of that world is harder than Alice getting out of Wonderland. I can appreciate the efforts that the healing lodge is making to create community and a sense of belonging.”

Residents work with a team of teachers and mental health workers as they participate in various programs. For example, the healing lodge offers a horse therapy program, and various arts classes. “Infant-size star blankets are made for those infants who have died at the hospital in Regina,” says McBride. Salh adds: “Whatever they create, whether it is a beaded pen holder or lanyard, star blanket, etc., is given away. I think that being able to part with something that is one’s creation helps with the healing process.”

The centerpiece of the facility is a separate building where residents gather in the morning. It is a circular room with different levels of seating, in the centre of which is a firepit. “It is intended as a sharing circle where anyone is free to talk about anything,” says McBride.

The healing lodge has a classroom and two teachers. “We had the opportunity to speak with both teachers about the challenges of teaching in a correctional facility,” says Salh. “The primary challenge being that education is becoming more technology-based, and teaching in a correctional facility does not match those advancements.”

The Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge is located in a forested area in the Cypress Hills. Both Salh and McBride describe it as “peaceful.” Nekaneet First Nation live in traditional ways, and the practices, culture and values are taught to residents. “Recently, the women went with Elders to gather medicines from the woods,” says McBride.

He asked how women who have no roots to their culture fit in with the lodge’s programs. Parker explained that the women meet with an Elder who begins with very basic aspects of Indigenous culture, and they move gradually towards gaining their identity.

Salh notes, “The residents have supports in the Elders, staff and community, and I think it is important that they are shown that they also have support in themselves.”

This visit to Okimaw Ohci was not McBride’s first, but it was for Salh. “I arranged the visit specifically for Taran’s benefit as I thought it would be of help in getting the corrections viewpoint as to how convicted women can get needed support that they would not get in Pinegrove,” McBride explains.

“It was an exceptional experience, and it developed my understanding of where the law might be heading with regards to incarceration,” says Salh. “I gained so much from the visit, and it will guide me in my personal and professional life.”