Medicine wheel offers roadmap for healing

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For six years Glen McCallum has been using his own experience with addictions and healing to help other people come to terms with the past and their problems and to chart their own course toward wellness.

McCallum is president and counsellor associate at Building A Nation Inc., an organization that provides counselling services in the Saskatoon area. But before he began working to help people deal with their demons he had to deal with many demons of his own.

McCallum is from Pinehouse Lake, a small, isolated community about 380 kilometres north of Saskatoon. Alcoholism and violence were major issues when he was growing up in Pinehouse, McCallum said, in the community and in his own home.

As a member of the community, McCallum couldn't see the problems that existed in Pinehouse. The drinking, the fighting and the neglect were just part of life. It wasn't until he was away from home working on construction of the Key Lake highway, which runs from Pinehouse north to the Key Lake uranium mine, that a television program gave him some perspective on the situation.

In the late 1970s, the CBC did a documentary on Pinehouse, McCallum said. The film was called The Drinking Capital of the North.

He was sitting in the recreation hall with all the others who were working on the highway when the program came on, he recalled. He was the only person from Pinehouse in the room.

"And as the program started it was really awkward, to be able to look at my own community in regards to the alcoholism that was going on and the stuff that was going on related to alcoholism," he said.

"And people kept asking me at the rec hall, saying 'That can't be true.' 'Pictures don't lie,' I told them. 'This is the truth.' It was hard for me ... but I watched through it, watched the whole program that evening."

For the first time, McCallum said, he saw the community and its problems from the outside, not as someone on the inside and part of the problem.

He was part of the problem, though. He would go away and work for a time, but when he'd return to the community he'd start drinking again. And even after he did quit drinking he was what he calls a sober drunk. He wasn't abusing alcohol anymore, but the problems that had led to him drinking in the first place were still there, unresolved.

That changed when his brother Leonard, who himself has an addiction to alcohol, came up with a new way to try to help members of the community overcome their addictions. Leonard, McCallum explained, had been to just about every treatment centre in the province, but when he came home he'd return to his old ways. This, McCallum said, was a common occurrence in the community.

"I've seen people get off the plane that have gone to treatment centres in Isle-a-la-Crosse or Sandy Bay ... they come back and get off the plane and start drinking."

The problem with just sending people off to treatment centres, McCallum said, is that the treatment they receive may help them, but it does nothing to change the community, so they come home to the same environment.

"Nobody wanted to build a support system within the community to be able to have these people come back and depend on somebody, depend on them and talk about things and work on themselves. It didn't happen. It wasn't there," he said.

It was in an effort to break that cycle that McCallum's brother first decided to begin taking groups of people out of Pinehouse. They set up camp about 20 kilometres away, at a site that became known as Recovery Lake. They would live off the land and whatever supplies other members of the community would bring out to them. They would hold circles every day. They began to talk and they began to heal.

"They were talking about abuse-physical, sexual-anger, jealousy, controlling and relationships. And they talked about a lot of the families in regards to the lack of support."

McCallum never even thought about taking part in the healing process at RecoverLake until he attended one of the events held at the end of each month and listened to people speaking about the problems they faced growing up. He recognized himself and his life in their stories and began examining his own past.

His childhood was full of violence. His parents would drink and his father would beat his mother. Sometimes there was no food because the money had all been spent on alcohol.

McCallum now understands why things were the way they were.

His father had attended residential school in Beauval and at the age of 12 had lost his foot when it was caught in a threshing machine.

"Looking back at my dad in regards to the anger that he used to have, he took it out on everybody that he was supposed to love. But, you know, the anger, I believe, was so strong that he just didn't care."

McCallum's father died of alcoholism in 1987.

"I can't turn back the clock. My dad is not here for me to be able to tell him that I care for him and to be able to say 'I do understand and I can help you,'" McCallum said. But what he can do is work with the rest of his family to come together and to heal.

McCallum, who has been sober now for 16 years, used the medicine wheel as his guide in his healing journey and now employs it to help others examine their past in order to improve their present and future.

"It's understanding the history of where we've been," he said.

During counselling sessions at Building A Nation, clients talk about their experiences during the periods of their lives that correspond to the four quadrants of the medicine wheel-childhood, the teenage years, adulthood and becoming an Elder. The person looks at what should have been happening during each stage of life and what in reality their experience was. During the first phase, childhood, a person should feel safe and nurtured, developing a sense of belonging, McCallum said.

In the second phase, the focus shifts to the physical well-being, including diet and health. Thefcus of the third phase should be social well-being, including developing job skills. But for many of the people coming for counselling, this is not what they experienced.