Medicine Wheel Model of Mental Health

Canada has always boasted about being a cultural mosaic; a place where people of many different cultures can live together in peace without giving up their familiar languages and ways of life. For the First Nations of this country, the experience was very different. Their culture was lost in the Federal residential school system to accommodate the so-called mosaic. In Western Canada in the late 1990s, a dedicated group of nationally sponsored counsellors worked with the author of this book to serve thousands of First Peoples, and provide them with the psychological support they needed. Participants came voluntarily, stumbling out of the darkness that surrounded them and their families. The fires of their grandparents teaching had gone out in memory and practice, and they were left struggling to find their voices in a Canada that was unrecognizable to them. This book presents many of the core beliefs of the original First Peoples as they have been rediscovered and reborn in this new world.