Holistic approach works best

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Harold Tookenay is Nechi Institute's senior trainer and has been involved with both Nechi and Poundmaker's Lodge since 1983 in the roles of counsellor, trainer, senior trainer and more. Back and forth between the two - working, learning, listening, sharing -Tookenay appreciates the intertwining of the two organizations with a similar philosophy of commitment to addictions-free lifestyles.

His job now is supervising Nechi's trainers, looking after training details, scheduling, "talking to communities out there who want training, who need training, and just negotiating and selling Nechi to the communities across the country," Tookenay said.

Tookenay is an Ojibway with roots in Long Lac and Mobert reserves in northwestern Ontario. He came to Alberta in 1983 after graduating from the Hazelden Foundation in Center City, Minnesota. Hazelden is a training centre for chemical dependency practitioners, counsellors and therapists. Tookenay chose to bring his knowledge home because his inner voice told him "Your heart belongs to the Native people in Canada; go back there and do the work there."

One of Nechi's organizational beliefs that Tookenay passes on is that "the client/trainee must be honored: individual people know what they need and can contribute to their own healing." Tookenay finds that a lot of non-Native treatment centres are "clinical" and don't emphasize the spiritual aspects of healing enough. Sometimes even non-Native clients feel this too.

"One of the things we find here also is that we have some non-Natives [in recovery] come into our addictions program and gambling program and they take to it," Tookenay explained. "I think what they lack is the spirituality part of it - the ceremonies, the rituals and so on. They're attracted to that way of being spiritual.... And I think the reason for that is that, by and large, that part of life is missing. When I converse with Native people and we ask ourselves 'what do they want?' it seems to me there is that spiritual hunger, a thirst, a need to get in touch with that part of their lives."