A new facility offering Indigenous-led drug treatment and recovery services on Cowichan Tribes territory in Duncan is now completed and expected to begin offering services in January.
Tsow-Tun Le Lum Healing House replaces a 32-bed facility in Snaw-Naw-As First Nation near Lantzville, which has provided addiction and trauma recovery programs for thousands of First Nations people since opening as a drug and alcohol recovery home in the late 1980s.
The province, federal government and First Nations Health Council joined forces to provide $60 million in funding to replace six existing First Nation-run treatment centres and build two new centres in B.C. The province then kicked in an extra $35 million.
The new Tsow-Tun Le Lum Healing House, at 2850 Miller Rd., is the first of the eight to be completed.
The province anticipates the majority of the centres will be completed by the end of 2025.
Mental Health and Addictions Minister Jennifer Whiteside, who was at the centre for a ceremony and tour on Monday, said First Nations people represented 17.7 per cent of toxic drug deaths in B.C. in 2023, which is “far out of proportion to the population.” About six per cent of the population of B.C. is Indigenous.
Whiteside said First Nations women are particularly affected, with almost 12 times the toxic-drug mortality of non-Indigenous women.
“We have to work together to turn the dial on this terrible crisis,” she said. “This place is such a profound place of healing. This place will save so many lives.”
Colleen Erickson, chairperson for the First Nations Health Authority board of directors, said the “ongoing legacy” of discrimination and inter-generational trauma leads many First Nations people experiencing addiction to avoid seeking treatment.
Yet in B.C., First Nations people are almost six times more likely to die from illicit-drug poisoning. And while they make up only 4.4 per cent of the population in the health authority’s Vancouver Island region, they represented 23 per cent of toxic-drug poisoning events in 2022.
Erickson said the new Tsow-Tun Le Lum Healing House and initiatives like it across B.C. will save lives by creating welcoming, safe spaces that are trauma-informed, restore connections to First Nations cultural and healing practices, and promote holistic healing.
Tsow-Tun Le Lum, which means Helping House in the Hul’q’umi’num’ language, offers 20 treatment beds and living units to support people experiencing addiction, trauma or grief.
Services have been expanded to include a sweat lodge, spiritual pond, walking trails, a Big House, arts and crafts spaces, yoga spaces, group and private counselling spaces, a resident elder apartment, and rooms for LGBTQ people.
Daniella David, chairwoman of the board of the Tsow-Tun Le Lum Society, said programs are designed to rebuild a sense of self-worth and connection in people who have been hurt and lost confidence in themselves.
“We’re anxiously awaiting for the next step which is to open the doors and have people come in to get the help they need,” said David.
Tsow-Tun Le Lum offers three live-in treatment programs:
• Thuy Namut (substance misuse) is a 40-day treatment program, grounded in traditional culture and healing, available to First Nations people from B.C. or the Yukon.
• Kwunatsustul (trauma) is a second-stage, five-week recovery program focused on healing trauma.
• Honoring Grief Program is a 30-day program for those who have experienced grief that is affecting their lives — unresolved trauma associated with residential schools or day schools, and missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, for instance, according to the First Nations Health Authority.
Other services provided by the healing house include counselling and cultural support by phone, video or other means.
A 50-year lease for the Miller Road site was signed in 2021.
