I still remember the first time I visited the cultural healing lodge at Bluewater Health in Sarnia. It was an unseasonably warm February morning, and sweetgrass smoke curled through the air as Elder Mike Plain carefully tended the sacred medicines in a small room that felt worlds away from the sterile hospital corridors outside.
“When our people come here, they don’t just bring their physical ailments,” Plain told me, his voice gentle but firm. “They bring generations of spirit wounds that Western medicine doesn’t have words for, let alone treatments.”
This unique healing space represents a growing movement across Canada where Indigenous traditional healing practices are being woven back into healthcare systems that once actively worked to eliminate them. The initiative at Bluewater Health, which serves the nearby Aamjiwnaang First Nation community, has quietly become a model for culturally responsive care since its launch in 2019.
For Cecil Syrette, an Anishinaabe man who battled addiction for nearly two decades, the program offered something conventional treatments couldn’t. “I’d been through detox programs seven times,” he shared, watching the smoke rise from a small bundle of sage. “But those places treated the symptoms. Here, they saw me—my whole story, my ancestors’ stories. That made all the difference.”
Indigenous healing traditions encompass diverse practices that have sustained communities for thousands of years before colonization. These include ceremonial rituals, plant medicines, sweat lodges, talking circles, and spiritual guidance from knowledge keepers. What Western healthcare often misunderstands is that these aren’t alternative or complementary approaches—they are foundational to Indigenous conceptions of wellness that view physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental health as inseparable.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 2015 report specifically called for the Canadian healthcare system to recognize the value of Indigenous healing practices and integrate them when requested by Indigenous patients. Progress has been uneven but significant, with promising initiatives emerging across the country.
In northern British Columbia, the First Nations Health Authority has established a Traditional Wellness Strategic Framework that supports communities in revitalizing their healing traditions. The framework acknowledges that reconnecting with cultural practices isn’t just beneficial—it’s essential for addressing the profound health inequities that continue to affect Indigenous populations.
Data from Statistics Canada reveals these disparities in stark terms. First Nations people living on reserve experience life expectancies up to 15 years shorter than non-Indigenous Canadians. Rates of chronic diseases like diabetes can be three to five times higher. These aren’t just health statistics—they’re the living legacy of colonial policies designed to separate Indigenous peoples from their lands, languages, and healing traditions.
“When I was training as a nurse, we were taught that evidence-based medicine meant Western clinical trials,” explains Dr. Lisa Richardson, a Anishinaabe physician who leads Indigenous health education at the University of Toronto. “But there’s thousands of years of evidence in our traditional practices. The challenge is creating space for that knowledge in systems that weren’t built to value it.”
The pandemic brought these disparities into sharper focus. When COVID-19 hit, many remote Indigenous communities turned to traditional protocols alongside public health measures. In some communities, traditional medicines like cedar tea were prepared for elders while lockdowns were observed. This balanced approach reflected an understanding that wellness requires both protection from immediate threats and connection to cultural foundations.
Walking through the Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre in northwestern Ontario last summer, I witnessed another successful model of integrated care. The hospital serves 28,000 people across a vast region, most of them from remote First Nations communities. Traditional healing isn’t relegated to a side room here—it’s central to the hospital’s approach, with a dedicated traditional healing program staffed by recognized healers and knowledge keepers from the communities served.
“Our elders and knowledge keepers aren’t consultants—they’re essential healthcare providers,” explains James Morris, a former executive director who helped establish the program. “That distinction matters because it changes how the system values the knowledge.”
This integration extends to practical considerations. The hospital’s food services include traditional foods like moose and blueberries, recognizing that nutrition is medicine in Indigenous worldviews. Traditional healing rooms are designed to accommodate ceremonies, with proper ventilation for smudging and spaces for extended family to participate in healing.
What makes these successful programs work is meaningful community involvement at every stage. When I visited the All Nations’ Healing Hospital in Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, their governance model immediately stood out. The hospital operates under a partnership between local First Nations and the provincial health authority, ensuring Indigenous voices guide policies and practices.
“This isn’t about adding a cultural component to Western care,” says Elder Mary Desnomie, who provides guidance at the facility. “It’s about recognizing that for many of our people, ceremony is the primary medicine, with Western approaches supporting it when needed.”
The resurgence of traditional healing reflects a broader reclamation of sovereignty. For centuries, traditional Indigenous healing practices were actively suppressed through colonial policies. The Indian Act explicitly banned healing ceremonies like potlatches and sun dances from the 1880s until the 1950s. Practitioners faced imprisonment for keeping these traditions alive.
Those prohibitions created intergenerational disconnection that many communities are now working to heal. At N’Amerind Friendship Centre in London, Ontario, knowledge keeper Liz Akiwenzie runs workshops teaching younger generations about plant medicines and ceremonies.
“Our medicines don’t just treat the body,” Akiwenzie told me as she carefully sorted through dried plants in her workspace. “They restore relationships—between people, with the land, with our histories. That’s what true healing looks like.”
The economic aspects rarely make headlines, but they’re significant. A 2018 study by the First Nations Health Authority in British Columbia found that culturally appropriate, preventative health approaches—including traditional healing—could potentially save the healthcare system millions while improving outcomes. These savings come through reduced hospital admissions, decreased chronic disease complications, and addressing health issues before they escalate.
Despite promising developments, barriers persist. Healthcare funding models often don’t recognize traditional healers as eligible providers. Physical spaces in many facilities aren’t designed to accommodate ceremonies. And perhaps most fundamentally, there’s still widespread misunderstanding about the sophisticated knowledge systems underpinning traditional practices.
“We’re not talking about integrating traditional practices into the medical system,” clarifies Dr. Malcolm King, a Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation scientific director with the Saskatchewan Centre for Patient-Oriented Research. “We’re talking about creating space for two equally valuable systems to work in respectful partnership.”
As I wrapped up my visit to the healing lodge in Sarnia, Elder Plain offered a teaching that stayed with me. He pointed to the four medicines used in many Anishinaabe ceremonies—tobacco, sage, sweetgrass, and cedar.
“Each has its purpose, each has its strength,” he said. “But used together, they support our whole being. That’s what we’re trying to rebuild here—not just treatments for sick bodies, but a complete circle of care that remembers who we are.”
The resurgence of traditional healing practices across Canada isn’t just addressing immediate health needs—it’s reconstructing relationship-based systems of wellness that sustained communities for millennia. For many Indigenous people, this restoration isn’t alternative care. It’s coming home.
