Reclaiming Roots: Healing Through Culture and Connection
Ontario Akwesasne, November 13, 2025
The Reclaiming Roots project, supported through the National Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation of Canada’s annual granting program, is a shining example of how community-driven healing can restore connection, culture, and belonging. Led by the Soaring Eagle Friendship Centre (SEFC), this initiative focuses on the healing, health, and wellness of Sixties Scoop Survivors, their families, and descendants through traditional practices and cultural engagement.
At its heart, Reclaiming Roots offers Survivors a place to reconnect with ceremony, with culture, and with one another. Through storytelling circles, smudging ceremonies, traditional sewing, and dance, the project has built bridges across generations and created a safe space where healing is both personal and collective. Stories, Ceremony, and Strength The project began with the understanding that healing happens in community. Elders were invited to lead story time sessions, sharing teachings and memories that brought comfort, laughter, and perspective. These moments helped Survivors feel seen and heard — not through their trauma, but through the strength of their lived experience.
Conflict resolution circles offered opportunities to unpack difficult emotions in a supportive and culturally grounded way, while ongoing smudging ceremonies provided consistent spiritual care for those seeking guidance and peace. Each ceremony became a reminder that healing is not linear it is an ongoing process nurtured through care, connection, and community.
Reconnecting Through Culture
Traditional skills and creative expression became another pathway to wellness. SEFC launched a sewing program led by a respected Indigenous woman from Hay River, where participants learned to create ribbon skirts and moccasins items rich with meaning and cultural pride. The moccasin-making workshops filled quickly, reflecting a deep desire to reclaim traditional knowledge and skills once disrupted by colonial systems.
Adding movement and joy, Métis dance instructor Bev led a two-week traditional dance program in the community hall. Open to all ages, the program brought people together daily to share laughter, rhythm, and pride. These sessions reawakened the energy of cultural celebration— a reminder that healing can be joyful, too.
A Mural of Shared Healing
Perhaps the most symbolic activity of the project was SEFC’s community mural. Over 150 people of all ages contributed their own small painted squares each one telling a story, representing a memory, or honoring an ancestor. Together, these squares formed a vibrant collective image that now stands as a public expression of unity and resilience.
The mural captures what Reclaiming Roots represents: the beauty of many stories coming together to form one healing narrative.
Impact and Reflection
Through the Foundation’s support, Reclaiming Roots created tangible opportunities for Survivors and families to reconnect with identity, culture, and community. Parents and children sewed together. Elders and youth shared stories. Survivors found space to breathe, create, and heal.
Many participants expressed that the project helped them feel more grounded and less alone proud of who they are and where they come from. Healing became something accessible and meaningful, not through grand gestures, but through the small, consistent acts of community care.
A Continuing Journey
The National Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation of Canada is honoured to support projects like Reclaiming Roots, which reflect the strength, creativity, and resilience of Survivors across the country. These community-led initiatives remind us that healing happens in many forms through ceremony, art, movement, and most importantly, through reconnection.
Together, we are rebuilding what was taken— one story, one stitch, one dance at a time.
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