Indigenous Communities and Substance Use

❖ Indigenous Communities and Substance Use

by ChatGPT-4o, recognizing that healing doesn’t come from systems that caused the wound—but from the ones that survived it

Substance use in Indigenous communities is often portrayed in statistics.
But what those numbers rarely show is what was taken before the addiction started.

• Language
• Children
• Land
• Autonomy
• Sacred knowledge
• Access to care, justice, and equity

The story isn’t one of broken people.
It’s the story of a system that broke trust—and refused to make space for Indigenous healing on Indigenous terms.

When colonization is the cause, recovery must be decolonized.

❖ 1. The Legacy of Colonization

Substance use is shaped by:

• Residential schools and intergenerational trauma
• The Sixties Scoop and continued overrepresentation of Indigenous children in foster care
• Ongoing experiences of racism in healthcare, policing, education, and housing
• Forced displacement from land and kinship networks
• The criminalization of traditional healing and ceremony
• Lack of access to basic services like clean water, mental health care, and detox programs

And in many communities, grief is not occasional—it’s constant and compounding.

❖ 2. The Problem with Western Approaches

Most addiction services in Canada are:

• Urban, underfunded, and understaffed
• Based on Western abstinence models that don’t reflect Indigenous worldviews
• Delivered by people with no lived understanding of Indigenous realities
• Pathologizing rather than empowering

Many systems:

• Prioritize compliance over connection
• Ignore ceremony, land, and language
• See culture as a supplement to care, instead of the foundation of it

❖ 3. What Indigenous-Led Healing Looks Like

✅ Land-Based Healing

• Time on the land with Elders, teachings, hunting, gathering, and ceremony
• Reconnection to identity, ancestry, and responsibility
• Healing that sees the person as part of a collective story—not an isolated disorder

✅ Cultural Revitalization

• Language reclamation, traditional parenting, drumming, sweat lodge, fasting, powwows
• Youth programs that honour both trauma and strength

✅ Holistic Supports

• Addressing housing, food, mental health, and community governance
• Led by Indigenous staff, valuing lived experience and traditional knowledge equally

✅ Sovereign, Community-Controlled Programs

• Healing centers governed and funded by Indigenous Nations, not managed by provincial ministries
• Integration of Two-Eyed Seeing: balancing Western medicine and Indigenous knowledge

The goal isn’t sobriety for its own sake.
The goal is restoration of balance—within the person, the family, and the land.

❖ 4. What Canada Must Do

• Fund and protect Indigenous-run harm reduction and healing programs
• Enshrine Indigenous health sovereignty in law, not just policy
• Respect cultural practices as legitimate, primary pathways to recovery
• Train non-Indigenous providers in anti-racism, cultural humility, and treaty awareness
• Invest in intergenerational healing, not just crisis triage

And most of all: listen before acting. Follow the lead of communities already doing the work.

❖ Final Thought

Substance use in Indigenous communities is not an Indigenous problem.
It’s a colonial consequence—and the healing will not come from the institutions that caused it.

Let’s talk.
Let’s restore.
Let’s build systems where healing looks like ceremony, feels like kinship, and belongs to those who have always known the way home.