In Winnipeg, Raven Hart and Ivana Yellowback smudge during an October session of Mikiwahp, a 15-week life skills program for Indigenous mothers.Photography by SHANNON VANRAES / THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Raven Hart closes her eyes as she stands and smudges each woman sitting in a circle with her eagle fan.
“You are beautiful. You are a good mother. We are proud of the work you do,” she tells the three women gathered on a recent morning for the Mikiwahp program in Winnipeg’s north end.
She asks the women to share at least three things that make them proud and then what they did the night before. One woman mentions she had a tough moment and she could have fallen back into old habits, but instead she beaded the night away.
Ms. Hart says this sharing helps identify if any participants are struggling in any way. “In other programs, we found out that our youth had been wandering the street at night and were homeless – so that’s our way of identifying any risks that are happening within our group,” she said.
Mikiwahp, an Ininimowin (Cree) word for tipi, is a new 15-week life-skills program for Indigenous mothers whose children are in government care or who are at risk of losing their children.
Ms. Hart, 44, and her 29-year-old cousin, Ivana Yellowback, who are both Cree, were asked to create the program for Southeast Child and Family Services, a provincial agency.
The pair take participants to sweat lodges and a full moon ceremony, and teach them about harvesting and using traditional medicines. Ms. Hart says she wants to help the women overcome intergenerational trauma and work toward “generational wealth.”
“Generational wealth is rooted in language, culture, ceremony, family, kinship and connection to all of our relations,” she says. “We are resisting colonization with the work we do, to not become what society wants us to be – but who we are truly as Indigenous matriarchs.”
Ms. Hart and Ms. Yellowback are both university educated: Ms. Hart is completing her bachelor of social work and Ms. Yellowback graduated with honours in sociology. However, most of the knowledge that they pass on in the Mikiwahp program comes from the knowledge of their families and their traditional knowledge keepers, as well as the ceremonies they grew up attending.
Ms. Yellowback says that while she did have some child welfare involvement in her life when she was young, she was lucky she wasn’t apprehended and taken away from her family. But far too many Indigenous children are placed in child welfare, she says, a practice she views as an “assault” on Indigenous families.
An eagle rattle and sage are part of the rituals used at Mikiwahp, whose name means 'tipi' in the Ininimowin (Cree) language.
Indigenous children are significantly overrepresented in child-welfare systems across the country. According to the Manitoba Ministry of Families 2020 annual report, 90 per cent of children in care in the province are Indigenous.
In 2019, new federal legislation that aims to reduce the number of Indigenous children in care and improve child and family services took hold. The legislation was created with Indigenous peoples and it focuses on establishing the best interests of the child and fostering cultural continuity.
The Mikiwahp Program is doing exactly that by being rooted in Indigenous land-based world views. Ms. Yellowback says what participants are searching for is a connection to their culture, and a better sense of their identity. “A lot of our girls that we work with were sexually exploited or sexually abused as children, or as they got older, as teenagers on the streets,” says Ms. Yellowback. “They suffered with addiction and loneliness.”
Each Mikiwahp (tipi) pole symbolizes a virtue. Among them are respect, humility, hope, kinship and love. Another virtue that Ms. Hart likes to teach is that cleanliness of your space is just as important as the cleanliness of your body, mind and spirit.
“We have been through a lot of trauma as Indigenous women,” says Ms. Hart. “We don’t want to just continue to live in that trauma – we want to rise above it.”
“We don’t put drugs or alcohol into our body. Our bodies are sacred. The cleaner that we keep our home fire, our bodies, the clearer our family, and our future generations will be.”
Most of the practices Ms. Hart and Ms. Yellowback share at Mikiwahp come from their families and traditional knowledge keepers.
Ms. Yellowback says it is important to have Indigenous people leading Mikiwahp because much of the programming for Indigenous women or Indigenous children in care comes from a non-Indigenous, colonial framework. Something as little as their mannerisms matter.
“The way that we talk, or joke around – our slangs, our accents. To create safe spaces, to be able to talk in that way, to understand what they are saying, rather than to not know,” is important, says Ms. Yellowback.
One of the women taking part in Mikiwahp is a 24-year-old single mother whose daughter is 6. It takes her an hour each way by transit to attend the program twice a week. She says Ms. Hart and Ms. Yellowback are the reasons she keeps coming back.
“It’s good connecting with somebody who’s been through it too,” she says.
Since she started the program, she says she has learned how to have healthy conflict resolution. She says she struggled with anger in the past. When it came to conflict, she admits she would often become violent.
“Raven calmed me. She taught me how to handle my anger in a healthy way.”
Ms. Hart shares a personal story.
Once a powwow dancer, the young mother decided to put her outfit away when she started abusing drugs and alcohol. Now, almost one year sober, she wants to start dancing again. It would be so much fun to do with her daughter, she says, laughing easily as she speaks.
“We have women that are wholeheartedly in, and have started their healing work,” says Ms. Hart.
“That is the most important part of the work that Ivana and I do. We create safe spaces of love and compassion where women can come and heal.”
At the end of the Mikiwahp program, participants are presented with a self-care bundle containing traditional medicines, an eagle feather, a kokum scarf and a grandmother stone to pray with. The women also graduate with a traditional family parenting certificate and a life skills certificate, along with job training and potential employment at a local security organization in Winnipeg.
Ms. Hart reminds the women of the inherent roles Indigenous women have played in their homes, communities and in their ceremonies – since time immemorial.
“When we are at the centre of our lodges, we are not at risk. Our children are not at risk.”
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