PIIKANI HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

Native people have long known the ways of wholeness and health, much of which is derived from the lands and resources they stewarded since time immemorial. Piikani Lodge's Health programs aim to restore and reclaim ancient ways of holistic health and mental well-being through Indigenous-led research, evidence-based practice, and the development of translational models.

Trained in both Western biomedical research methodologies and Traditional knowledge applications, PLHI staff deliver evidence-based, culturally relevant, trauma-informed interventions. In the process, we are building local research capacity and supporting Indigenous scholarship and professional development.

In an effort to reduce the historic and generational trauma caused by mass assimilation policies resulting in the forced removal of generations of Native children for their entire lives up to and beyond their late teens and early twenties, severing identity and connection to family and land, PLHI undertook a wellness initiative to reclaim Amskapi Piikani identity and relationship to the land in all seasons.

The PLHI team inherently knew that the way to healing, the way to attack some of the highest suicide and preventable death incidence in the nation, was to reclaim connections to life before government imposed residential schools. As a result, our team has been able to combat soaring rates of suicide attempt and completion, epidemic opioid and stimulant misuse and overdose incidence and to move forward into wellness and to reduce the negative, generational affect of destroying familial structures.